This city council candidate wants your opinion

OK Patch readers, I’ve come across three items that are so interesting that I wanted to share them with you and solicit your opinions. However, I’d like to do it formally, as the sort of resolution that a high school or college debate club would argue about:

Resolved: The arguments surrounding the mixed-use (Whole Foods) development are not an example of environmentalism vs. development. Rather, they are an example of old-school environmentalism vs. new-school environmentalism.

Old-school environmentalists say NO to traditional development. New-school environmentalists say YES to “development that promotes compact, mixed-use commercial and residential development that is walkable and bikable and close to mass transit, jobs, schools, shopping, parks, recreation and other amenities.” (quote source, item #2 below)

For the debate, I suggest three very interesting items for your review:

Item #1) A New York Times article entitled “Critics Say California Law Hurts Effort to Add Jobs.” The article sites an example a San Francisco’s plan to paint bicycle lanes that was delayed for four years by a CEQA lawsuit claiming that they would cause pollution.

Here are some quotes:

Environmentalists in this greenest of places call the California Environmental Quality Act the state’s most powerful environmental protection, a model for the nation credited with preserving lush wetlands and keeping condominiums off the slopes of the Sierra Nevada.

But the landmark law passed in 1970 has also been increasingly abused, opening the door to lawsuits — sometimes brought by business competitors or for reasons unrelated to the environment — that, regardless of their merit, can delay even green development projects for years or sometimes kill them completely.

Here are two alternative links to the story. In addition, you can paste the title directly into Google and find the article that way:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/us/to-add-jobs-many-in-california-look-to-alter-green-law.html?_r=1&hp

http://tinyurl.com/8tsxao2

Item #2) This is the URL for the Bay Area regional planning initiative called One Bay Area. According to the website:

Plan Bay Area grew out of California’s 2008 Senate Bill 375 (Steinberg), which requires each of the state’s 18 metropolitan areas to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from cars and light trucks. This is important because the transportation sector represents about 40 percent of the GHG pollution that scientists say is causing climate change.

Under SB 375 each region must develop a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) that promotes compact, mixed-use commercial and residential development that is walkable and bikable and close to mass transit, jobs, schools, shopping, parks, recreation and other amenities. If successful, Plan Bay Area will give people more transportation choices, create more livable communities and reduce the pollution that causes climate change.

http://www.onebayarea.org/

Item #3) A very interesting item I found on the UC Berkeley Blog, written by Ethan Elkind, climate-change research fellow at Berkeley law school. The article asks the provocative question, “Is environmentalism bad for fighting climate change?”

I’ve included two different ways to link the article below. Because this item is short, I’ve included the full text at the very end of this blog post.

http://blogs.berkeley.edu/2012/05/30/is-environmentalism-bad-for-fighting-climate-change/

http://tinyurl.com/9sf565y

To summarize, gentle readers, here is the debate topic once again:

Resolved: The arguments surrounding the mixed-use (Whole Foods) development are not an example of environmentalism vs. development. Rather, they are an example of old-school environmentalism vs. new-school environmentalism.

Old-school environmentalists say NO to traditional development. New-school environmentalists say YES to “development that promotes compact, mixed-use commercial and residential development that is walkable and bikable and close to mass transit, jobs, schools, shopping, parks, recreation and other amenities.”

I’ve love to hear your thoughts.

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Is environmentalism bad for fighting climate change?

Sure, it sounds like a paradox.  The environmental movement has done a lot of good for the planet and for pollution.  But in the face of the greatest environmental threat of our time, the movement may be fundamentally ill-suited to tackle the climate crisis.

For most of its history, environmentalism has essentially been about stopping things, or at least slowing them down.  Whether it’s sprawling subdivisions, industrial development on sensitive habitat lands, or factories spewing pollution, environmentalists have mobilized support to prevent these projects from happening, or at least make them more efficient and therefore more expensive (think scrubbers on smokestacks or building efficiency codes).  The successes are undeniable: significantly cleaner air and water and the prevention of some environmentally destructive projects.

But when it comes to fighting climate change, a movement designed to stopping things is counter-productive.  We need the opposite dynamic, because our task now is to build our way toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions.  That means building a significant amount of new housing, services, and job centers in urbanized areas near transit; building renewable energy facilities both locally and in rural regions; building new rail and busways through developed cities and towns; and fostering a regulatory environment where innovation in clean technologies can take place without years of delay and uncertainty brought on by often well-intentioned environmental laws.

Unfortunately, the broader environmental movement has helped to stymie each of these efforts.  Whether it’s resistance to loosening environmental review and land use requirements in infill areas, Clean Air Act impediments to on-farm renewables, or permitting processes for renewable energy projects, the movement has been schizophrenic at best, counter-productive at worst.

To be sure, there are many environmental advocates and groups that are deeply committed to building these kinds of projects.  And there are often reasonable disputes involving alternatives and opportunities for local mitigation.  But the movement is organizationally and culturally built on an agenda of local resistance to building things.  As a result, environmentalists have largely failed to articulate a compelling, progressive agenda for fighting climate change.  While we see bits and pieces, such as local visions for infill development and reports on clean and local energy systems for select cities, as a whole, the movement lacks leadership and vision to make a case to the public about what needs to be done to dramatically reduce our carbon footprint.

Ironically, in this leadership void, members of the business community have now become some of the leading voices for fighting climate change.  Infill real estate developers, clean tech innovators and installers, and even car companies are now doing more to advance a low-carbon agenda than many environmentalists.  In some cases, you’re more likely to see climate change leadership from Silicon Valley venture capitalists then you are from some of our most respected environmental institutions.

Perhaps this outcome is not terrible.  After all, the case for fighting climate change is about economic growth: doing more with fewer resources and developing and harnessing our local, sustainable resources.

But businesses will tend to push their narrow economic agenda.  We still need environmental leaders who can make the case to the public and to decision-makers that there is a positive, over-arching vision for fighting climate change.  We can provide citizens with better and more convenient housing options, we can end our dependence on large electric utilities and oil and gas companies and instead spend that money locally, we can clean our air and water and stop wasting finite resources, and we can feel positive about the prospects for preserving our standard of living for future generations.

But to make these arguments, the environmental movement may need to eat some sacred cows.  Individuals may need to make sacrifices about the kind of projects that get built in their community, whether it’s a wind turbine, a new bus or railway, or a multifamily housing unit.  We may need to pay more upfront to modernize our electric grid and invest in new technologies.  But at the end of the day, we – and the planet – will be better for it.  It’s time the environmental movement made that case.