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August 03, 2007
California's Global Warming Budget Crisis
Curious drama in the California capitol this week, as Republican state senators have refused to approve the proposed budget (already six and a half weeks late)--not because they don't like the budget, but because they don't like Attorney General Jerry Brown's current position that CEQA (California's environmental review process) must now take into consideration the contribution to global warming of all new local plans and developments. While the impasse seems unlikely to last very much longer, it is worth noting. Republican hold-outs are saying they won't approve the budget until global warming impacts are exempted from CEQA review. Also at issue are proposed changes to the method of awarding state transportation funds (e.g. SB 375) that would essentially reward regional plans that decrease vehicle miles traveled (the idea evidently being: the less mobility, the less greenhouse gas emissions). The tactics being employed here are questionable, but the characterization by opponents of the move by state Republicans is even more absurd. Consider:
Republicans in the California Senate continue their outrageous demand for major rollbacks to California's bedrock environmental law as the price of their support for the state budget.
--Bill Allayaud, State Director, Sierra Club California
Republican members of the State Senate (Mr. Maldonado now excepted) are refusing to vote for the budget unless CEQA is gutted, with respect to global warming.
--Gary Patton, Executive Director, Planning and Conservation League
A point of clarification: what senate Republicans are asking for doesn't in any way amount to "eviscerating" CEQA (why CEQA provisions are so consistently compared to entrails is another question...). Global warming has never been an aspect of CEQA review, and there is no indication that adding this provision to CEQA was intended by the passage of California's greenhouse gas emissions law (AB 32) last year.
Republicans are being made to look like the worst of uncompassionate conservatives right now, holding the budget hostage while hospitals and clinics struggle to stay open without needed Medi-Cal funds. But adding global warming to the list of CEQA considerations might be worse: essentially holding hostage all development--including, say, development of new hospitals and clinics--indefinitely, while localities struggle to apply unfamiliar and untested methodologies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through urban planning.
Finally, various coverage of this debate has cited results of the Public Policy Institute of California's recent survey of Californians' opinions on the environment. The survey found that, for the first time, majority of Californians (54%) say they think global warming "poses a very serious threat to the state’s future economy and quality of life." What is more interesting, and more problematic, is that the survey seemed to indicate that the more Gov. Schwarzenegger raises the profile of climate change as an issue through action at the state level, the more Californians see climate change as a critical issue, and the less they approve of the level of state action on it.
Also important: For the seventh year in a row, Californians across all political parties, all regions of the state, and all racial and ethnic groups rank air pollution, not climate change, as the state’s most important environmental problem. The major variation in how critical of an issue residents consider air pollution to be is, not surprisingly, correlated with how bad air pollution actually is where they live (Inland Empire, Los Angeles area, and Central Valley residents ranking it highest).
So are Republican Senators "dramatically out-of-step with Californians"? Not really. Are they disemboweling CEQA? Only if you think that the only two options are for CEQA to grow or be "gutted."
Here's to the (slim) hope that cooler heads will prevail...
Posted by skaidra at August 3, 2007 01:59 PM
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