It's increasingly clear that land use planners are not quite sure what to do about climate change.

For the third consecutive year, the subject of climate change dominated the annual conference of the American Planning Association, California Chapter. What was evident during this year's event, which concluded September 16 in Squaw Valley, was that the issues are extraordinarily complex, and the available tools are not ideal. Planners, as well as engineers and attorneys, acknowledge they are "just making it up as they go." No one appears to feel comfortable about it.

State lawmakers wrapped up the first year of their two-year session without taking action on numerous bills regarding land use planning, development and natural resources. But some of the legislation could receive consideration before the end of the month because lawmakers are likely to return for special sessions called by Gov. Schwarzenegger.
 
The Legislature passed bills that would require fire safety to be a larger factor in land use planning, allow farmworker housing to be built on agricultural land and give local government the authority to limit the conversion of mobile home parks to resident-owned condominiums. Schwarzenegger has until October 11 to sign or veto the bills.

News from around the state: Sonoma County drops plans to take more water from the Russian River, angering cities; CSU Monterey Bay agrees to mitigate some of its off-campus impacts; Lake County may get a fourth Indian casino.

With the election of President Obama and the emergence of a Democratic majority in Congress, it appears that the federal government may soon pass sweeping legislation to address greenhouse gas emissions. Based on a preponderance of research linking greenhouse gas emissions to urban sprawl and reliance on automobiles, a national program may usher in the next great trend in urban planning. If so, California may find itself well ahead of its fellow states.

A project that had become a California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) lightning rod has apparently died. Nestlé Waters North America notified the McCloud Community Services District that it is dropping plans to convert a closed lumber mill in Siskiyou County into a water-bottling plant because it is building the facility in Sacramento instead.

A Kern County voter initiative prohibiting the disposal of sewage sludge on fields in the county has new life. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a federal District Court judge's ruling that the initiative violated the United States constitution's commerce clause.

The planners may have all gone home from Squaw Valley, but the planning talk has continued apace in San Jose, where the League of California Cities annual conference started on Wednesday. Most of the talk, not surprisingly, is about money – specifically, how Sacramento keeps taking it – but there's also plenty of policy talk, especially about affordable housing.

The recession's very personal impacts provide the real story at the APA California conference that concludes Wednesday in Squaw Valley.

Sure, we're all going to panels about climate change and LEED and CEQA and form-based zoning codes. But in between and after the panels about saving the world, the talk is about layoffs, unexpected career changes, firm mergers, doing more with less, and a lack of private sector work.

A lot of the talk here at the California APA Conference in Squaw Valley is about climate change – and, more specifically, about how to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change. But there's more and more talk – important but poorly attended – about the other side of the coin, which is dealing with sea level rise and other consequences of climate change.

It's always been a mystery to me why traffic modeling – and traffic mitigation – is such a big part of analysis done under the California Environmental Quality Act. After all, traffic in and of itself is not an environmental impact, any more than building a building is an environmental impact. Traffic may cause certain environmental impacts – air pollution, for example, depending on the fuels used – but there's nothing inherently damaging environmentally about traffic.

The executive director of the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency told the lunch crowd at the APA California conference today that her agency provides a model for regional planning. She was right – but not in the way she intended.

A bill that would exempt a planned football stadium and an adjacent 3 million-square-foot entertainment and retail complex in the City of Industry from the California Environmental Quality Act, and state planning and zoning law is speeding through the Legislature at a rapid pace.