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Climate Change, CEQA and Local Land Use
 
by Brian Schmidt

The specter of climate change — rising sea levels, decreased snow packs, lost farmland and lost wildlife habitat — weighs heavily on the Bay Area as it does on many parts of the world. While we may not be subsistence farmers for whom a change in climate can determine our survival, we still have much at stake and bear responsibility for solving the problem. Although Californians produce far fewer greenhouse gas emissions than Americans overall, we still produce far more than individuals in the developing world and need to take action.

How Sprawl Contributes to Climate Change
In addition to developing renewable energy sources and practicing energy conservation, we need to create wise land use policies to reduce sprawl. Sprawl causes climate change: it converts forests and grassland into suburbs, releasing carbon stored in trees and soil. Sprawl creates giant, energy-eating monster mansions requiring air conditioning. And sprawl forces people into cars that require more pavement or “heat islands” and spew more carbon, creating still more global warming.

The Committee for Green Foothills realized the danger of climate change years ago, arguing that development projects should document greenhouse gas emissions along with other destructive environmental impacts. Our arguments have been largely ignored, but times are changing. Last year San Jose had to withdraw a woefully inadequate Environmental Impact Report, in part, because of pressure from California Attorney General Jerry Brown over inadequate climate change analysis.

Controlling Climate Change
Future City and County General Plans will have to consider their effects on climate change or risk legal consequences from the Attorney General. Individual projects present another challenge, however, as Jerry Brown will not chase down every sprawl-inducing subdivision, dam, and quarry expansion. We at the Committee can be very effective by demanding that development projects control their greenhouse gas emissions.

Ultimately, under the California Environmental Quality Act, cities and counties will need to require Programmatic Environmental Impact Reports. Because it may be difficult to do a comprehensive analysis of every small project that contributes greenhouse gases, a Programmatic EIR can analyze those impacts and propose mitigations. And while mitigations could in theory be conducted anywhere in the world, why not do them nearby? Why not support local agriculture and better public transportation or buy ease-ments on land that would otherwise be logged?

As we do our work of fighting sprawl and protecting open space, CGF has a great opportunity to help control climate change. It is a problem that we all have to solve.

Published Spring 2008 in Green Footnotes.

Page last updated May 26, 2008.