Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 01/31/2008 5:31:32 PM PST by Lorianne
A statewide cap on driving?
Here’s the thing nobody is quite willing to say out loud about implementing California’s climate change law in the land use arena: The state may have to place an overall cap on vehicle miles traveled (VMT), even as it must accommodate more growth.
Last Friday at UCLA Extension’s annual Land Use Law and Planning Conference, keynote speaker Anthony Eggert, senior policy advisor at the California Air Resources Board, issued what amounted to a plea for help from the 400 land use practitioners gathered in the room.
CARB is charged with implementing AB 32. Land use is presumed to be part of the solution, but no specific implementation plan for land use has been adopted. Pinch-hitting for his boss, CARB Chair Mary Nichols, Eggert said it is not clear to CARB how much reduction in greenhouse gas emissions can come from reducing VMT, or from limiting VMT increase on future development projects. Without quite saying that there should be an overall restriction on VMT, he asked the land use practitioners for help in determining what level of greenhouse gas ,
Eggert said there are three ways to reduce transportation-related greenhouse gases:
1. Regulating vehicles 2. Regulating fuels 3. Changing or reducing vehicle usage as measured by VMT.
He acknowledged that it’s unlikely that the state will hit the greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets contained in AB 32, the state’s climate change bill, without attacking the question of VMT. Like everybody else who’s addressed the question in public, Eggerts stopped short of saying that VMT will have to be capped and/or reduced in order to meet the AB 32 target.
But he did say that CARB is still working on “the best mix of incentives and requirements” that will limit VMT – or, at least VMT growth – as a way of tackling the greenhouse gas problem. He was not specific about what these carrots and sticks would be, but he did say that CARB supported strengthening the role of regional planning agencies in forcing land use change that will limit VMT.
This is essentially the same approach contained in SB 375 (Steinberg), which is likely to be the legislative vehicle that will lay out the way AB 32 will be implemented in the land use arena. Again without being specific, SB 375 calls for regional planning agencies to create a “preferred growth scenario” that would meet AB 32 targets. Most experts believe that land use change must account for 10-15% of greenhouse gas reduction.
It’s hard to imagine how this would happen without creating a target – or maybe a cap – on VMT in each region around the state as a way of meeting a land use-related greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal.
Eggert and other speakers on Friday indicated that more aggressive use of the California Environmental Quality Act is part of the solution, but CEQA analyses are likely to identify how to limit growth in VMT, not how to reduce it.
More fun from what will one day be Gulag California.
Your papers please...
I bet the limit will be just shy of getting over the State line.
Let Commiefornia go to hell. History is cyclical, and it will be a matter of time before the people revolt and CA becomes conservative.
This confirms my paranoia!
I wouldn’t move back there if they made me the King. I am starting to think that we should split into two counties, the South, Midwest, etc as America while New England, California, Oregon, Washington, etc can merge with Canada. I suppose Western Canada would want to join us.
California needs HOV lanes. LOL!
Calif. A good place to be from.
Just fill the San Andreas Fault with STP, and give a shove!
Very frightening. More laws and taxes and control every day.
You can bet that any tax related to roads, vehicles, or driving will continue to go up.
And the cost of gas will go up because “demand is down”.
Yep. This was inevitable. And you know what? I don’t think there will be an outcry. The sheep will just accept it.
The Hotal Kalifornia has a room reserved in your name!
With Texas hospitals pumping out 70% of all babies delivered from illegal aliens producing tens of thousand of anchor babies monthly....Well you get the picture about where this *entire* country is going, and what is being forced upon us. Don't feel isolated, cause you're not.
Funny thing, the corrupt government ruling elite talk about Americans needing to conserve and pollute less etc, yet the feds and Bush stand down at the borders, rolling out the red carpet for tens of millions of illegals.
Who's kidding whom?
I’ve got a few more years until I retire. But, when the time comes, screw their limit.
Solution:
Just don’t issue licenses to illegals!
This is a parody...right?
And you think your in America living in Texas? Care to see the link that shows Texas hospitals pumping out 70% of all the babies are being delivered from illegal aliens producing tens of thousand of anchor babies monthly?
And if Texas so wonderful, and conservative, why in hell does Dallas and Houston have considerable more crime per capita than Los Angeles, Ca?
I think it's time for some of you to stop and look around instead of just burping out comments.
It's only a matter of time until they attempt to restrict travel in one way or another to all Americans.
I worked in China for 7 months over the winter of ‘76 - ‘77. The village of Shifu was on the Yangtze River and abutted two other provinces. The locals couldn’t cross the bridge to either of the other two provinces without papers. Never in my wildest dreams would I have ever thought the communists would get this far in my native country. Our nation is in serious danger.
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