CommentsPLATKIN ON PLANNING--For those who care about the planet’s future, it has not been a good week. There are no shortages of public officials who have dropped the ball, despite their power and bully pulpit to do good. (Graphic above: Maps of planet earth documenting observed global warming.)
The most egregious example took place at the recent United Nations Climate Conference in Bonn, Germany, where holdouts Syria and Nicaragua finally signed the Paris Climate Accords. This leaves the United States as the sole country that is not a signatory.
At Bonn the U.S. delegation also made the peculiar case for the continued burning of fossil fuels, including coal, as a mitigation program to slow down climate change. Before a jeering crowd, chief U.S. negotiator, George Banks, declared, “Without question, fossil fuels will continue to be used, and we would argue that it’s in the global interest to make sure when fossil fuels are used that they be as clean and efficient as possible.”
Not to be outdone, California Governor Jerry Brown, a long-time fracking supporter, pushed back at anti-fracking demonstrators who chanted, “Keep it in the ground!” He told them, “Let’s put you in the ground,” before proceeding to his rationale: “I wish we could have no pollution, but we have to have our automobiles.” He concluded by arguing that if California stopped fracking, it would simply import polluting oil from somewhere else, so there was no reason to oppose fracking.
While both conservative and liberal politicians make parallel arguments, climate change continues its relentless rise. According to the Scientific American, in 2016 carbon dioxide, the chief component of the Green House Gases responsible for climate change, reached 403.3 parts per million. The planet earth last experienced this level three to five million years ago!
For those who still question if this CO2 increase has consequences, well known climate writer and environmental activist Bill McKibben offered the answer on the national news program Democracy Now. “I wrote the first book on climate change 30 years ago. Back then it was abstract. We knew what was coming, but we didn’t know exactly what it was going to look like. By this point, every single issue of your broadcast is a kind of gazetteer of the destruction wrought by what we’ve done to the environment.”
Are there grounds for pessimism, perhaps leading governmental authorities to focus on climate change adaptation rather than climate change mitigation? Yes. Does this apply to the City of Los Angeles, one of this country’s greatest generators of Green House Gases? The answer is that L.A.’s City Hall has dropped the ball on climate change just as much as the Trump administration and Governor Jerry Brown. In fact, our local officials are also accomplished at polishing their reputations as climate change opponents while turning a blind eye to the demands of the oil, automobile, and real estate industries.
To begin, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti has ballyhooed his office’s urban cooling campaign to reduce the urban heat island effect. While this sounds like climate change mitigation, it only addresses the added increment of temperature increases resulting from buildings, streets, and cars, not the underlying surge in heat waves caused by climate change.
Mayor’s Office of Sustainability: Likewise, the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability has adopted its own climate change document, the Sustainable City pLAn. But what the Mayor’s office calls a “sustainability plan” is no plan it all. It is merely an executive document that expires when Mayor Garcetti either returns to part-time college teaching or moves into the post-Michael Pence Vice Presidential bastion in Washington, DC.
More specifically, pLAn is not part of the City’s official General Plan, nor does it conform, except by coincidence, to the extensive resource material on climate change mitigation and adaptation included in the new 2017 California General Plan Guidelines. The pLAn is not based on public participation, and is not based on workshops or public hearings before the City Planning Commission and the City Council.
It has never been subject to public testimony, official debate, an environmental review, or an official Council vote. It is neither a formal policy document nor an implementation ordinance. It also has no relationship to the City’s budget or the work programs of any City Department. Likewise, it is not subject to any of the requirements of the City’s mandatory General Plan, that it be internally consistent and timely.
General Plan Climate Change Element: Los Angeles desperately needs a Climate Change General Plan element, and other California cities, like Richmond, Vista, and Livermore, have demonstrated how it can be prepared, adopted, implemented, and monitored. If the L.A.’s elected officials are serious about climate change mitigation and adaptation, a Climate Change Element needs to be their top priority, not photo shoots or boosting luxury housing construction through unverified claims that apartments built within a half-mile of bus stops cut Green House Gases.
What should this Climate Change element include? Foremost, it needs to address management of the Urban Forest, which some cities treat as a separate General Plan element, and which could become a stand-alone General Plan element in L.A. In fact, Jill Stewart and Ileana Wachtel of the Coalition to Preserve L.A. have already prepared a detailed position paper outlining the contents of a stand-alone Urban Forest element. There is no way to sufficiently emphasize the importance of the urban forest’s role in mitigating and adapting to climate change. Trees breathe in CO2 and sequester carbon in leaves and plant tissue, while simultaneously breathing out oxygen. Trees also capture three components of SMOG and Green House Gases: small particles, sulfur dioxide, and carbon monoxide.
Trees also perform other mitigation and adaptation functions.
- Well-planted trees can reduce the energy consumption of houses for heating and air conditioning by 10 percent.
- Trees can shade sidewalks and streets, enhancing walking and biking in lieu of driving, as Los Angeles steadily heats up throughout the 21st century.
- Trees buffer hard rains, allowing precipitation to percolate into the ground.
CEQA: The other key tool for City Hall’s decision makers to mitigate and adapt to climate change is the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The State legislature amended CEQA to measure Green House Gases so decision makers would be informed about the climate change impacts of public and private projects. In addition, CEQA’s Environmental Impact Reports (EIR’s) offer decision makers environmentally superior alternatives for each project. If this information were followed, officials could use their decision-making authority to approve project alternatives with fewer climate impacts.
It is a preventable tragedy that our elected and appointed officials routinely abuse their authority to consistently approve the most environmentally damaging alternatives, especially for private real estate projects. Through their boilerplate Statements of Overriding Consideration, they approve one environmentally damaging project after another. Their flimsy justifications, that these projects will create jobs or bolster transit use are never subject to monitoring to document the appearance of the promised jobs and transit ridership.
While changes in the review of public and private projects could become a powerful tool for the City of Los Angeles to seriously address climate change, they would become even stronger if linked to a new Climate Change General Plan Element.
The time has already passed for City Hall to stop dropping the ball on climate change. Our leaders need to join the ranks of other local officials who are taking a strong stand, not posing as climate change advocates while pursuing policies that are exactly the opposite.
(Dick Platkin is a former Los Angeles city planner who reports on local planning controversies for City Watch LA. Please send any comments or corrections to [email protected].)
-cw
