CARB Adopts Official SB 375 Greenhouse Gas Targets

If California's redevelopment agencies vanish on July 1, as Gov. Jerry Brown has proposed, it's clear the task of mending the state's blighted neighborhoods will likely grow more complicated. Less obvious is the fact that California's effort to clean up the Earth's atmosphere may grow more difficult as well.

Don't start dreaming about that downtown loft just yet. 

Gov. Jerry Brown's proposed state budget will do more than merely plug a $24 billion deficit. According to some, it will also lead to shuttered factories, recidivism among ex-convicts, and the flight of companies and jobs to rival states such as Arizona, Nevada, and Texas. Faltering clothing manufacturer American Apparel could be pushed closer to the brink of bankruptcy. 

At least if Brown's proposal to do away with Enterprise Zones is adopted along with the proposed elimination of the redevelopment program.

When Proposition 84 passed in 2006, it reflected a booming economy. Providing $5.4 billion for clean water, parks, and open space the measure was seen as an important way to protect the state's natural resources at a time before many were worried about $28 billion deficits or maxing out the state's bonding capacity. 

Prop. 84's primary focus is on waterways and water management. However, it also includes a relatively tiny set-aside for innovative planning that is proving to be a godsend to planning departments that are suffering unprecedented budget cuts (see CP&DR Insight Vol. 25, No. 5, March 2010). 

The California Air Resources Board's long-awaited greenhouse gas emissions targets probably are not perfect, to say the least. But they may be the closest thing California has to a consensus these days.

The staff of the California resources board has released a staff report (pdf) and CEQA functional equivalent (pdf) document with its proposals for per capita greenhouse gas emissions targets for the state's four largest MPO's. The report comes roughly two months after ARB staff presented the board with a target range of 5-10 percent per capita reductions for 2020 for the four urban MPOs and "placeholder targets" for those of the Central Valley.

Somewhat unexpectedly, ARB staff has recommended different targets for each of the "big four." 

To supporters, the wisdom of Senate Bill 375, the 2008 law that promotes emissions reductions through coordination of transportation and land use, lies in its holistic approach to planning and its kitting together of disparate elements of the urban fabric. But, in light of budget crises at all level of government, one piece that is essential to SB 375's success is rapidly coming off the rails: money to run buses and trains 

Not long ago, when California's economy was booming and concerns about rising seas were mounting, California tapped into its environmentalist traditions to pass popular laws that promised to lead the nation in greenhouse gas mitigation. While there are no sure signs that the global climate has cooled, the same cannot be said for the state's support of anti-climate change legislation. 

This morning, Hector Tobar, a respected Los Angeles-area commentator, personally heaped all the ecological sins of humankind on to the current residents of Los Angeles in an editorial in the New York Times, a publication that has gotten increasingly feisty about its hatred for California of late. Tobar writes:  

As the inane "debate" over climate change drags on in the more benighted corners of our republic (Washington, D.C., included), it's becoming abundantly clear that California is no longer the place where America's fruits, nuts, and loose ends come to rest. I've been on the periphery of the stateside discussion of SB 375 for the past two years, so I know that it's not news to say that there have been many earnest, productive discussions about it across the state.

As the inane "debate" over climate change drags on in the more ignorant corners of our republic (Washington, D.C., included), it's becoming abundantly clear that California is no longer the place where America's fruits, nuts, and loose ends come to rest. I've been on the periphery of the stateside discussion of SB 375 for the past two years, so I know that it's not news to say that there have been many earnest, productive discussions about it across the state.

Among some conservative circles, it's become fashionable to say that liberals "hate America" any time Democrats try to do, well, anything.