How can California be a global environmental leader if its runaway housing crisis makes climate change worse?
This question was at the heart of the 2017 edition of our annual Lake Arrowhead Symposium, held in October around the theme “Global Climate Change, Local Growing Pains.” It’s now being asked in the national media, in a new article in Bloomberg Businessweek. “California risks losing the lead in the fight against climate change if it can’t reduce its citizens’ commutes,” reporter Esmé E. Deprez concludes. “To do so, it’ll need more housing.”
Deprez’s piece tracks how the lack of affordable housing in California cities forces lower-income people to move further and further outside the urban core, producing more greenhouse gas emissions. Several Arrowhead panels touched on some of the reasons why this is happening: Exclusionary policies that prevent housing construction in many urban neighborhoods, misconceptions about the causes of traffic, and the lack of integrated local climate plans.
Read the full Bloomberg piece here, and watch insights from some of the 2017 Arrowhead panelists below: