The Importance of the California Environmental Quality Act to Global Warming: Why Changes Should be Rejected in the Budget Bat

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Kassie R. Siegel
Director
Climate, Air, and Energy Program
Center for Biological Diversity

Let’s be clear about the California Environmental Quality Act and global warming.

As our state’s flagship environmental law, CEQA requires all state and local agencies to assess, and then to reduce, to the extent feasible, all significant environmental impacts from new projects. Greenhouse gas emissions are among the most important impacts that CEQA addresses, and thus the law provides an ideal opportunity as well as a legal mandate for cities, counties, and other agencies to consider the greenhouse gas emissions from new projects they approve and then to adopt measures to reduce those emissions. The CEQA environmental review process is not about stopping projects, but about improving them. This process is established across the state and has a long, proven record of success. The CEQA is a key component of the suite of laws and policies already on the books to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in our state.

This is what the Senate Republicans are trying to destroy with a proposal to eliminate the authority to enforce CEQA with respect to greenhouse gas emissions. This proposal is at the top of a wish list on behalf of oil companies and developers for which the Senate Republicans are holding up the state’s entire $145 billion budget bill.

This proposal is so outrageous that its sponsors have done everything possible to hide their efforts from the public, including introducing the idea during the dark of night in the utterly inappropriate Budget Act context. They are also attempting to misrepresent the efforts of the California Attorney General and conservation organizations to enforce CEQA as “premature” attempts to enforce the California Global Warming Solutions Act (AB 32, 2006). It’s the type of misrepresentation that isn’t easily identifiable to most members of the public, but those who are promoting it certainly know that they are twisting the facts to cripple California’s environmental laws.

My organization has been asking local agencies to properly consider the greenhouse gas emissions of the projects they approve since at least 2001. The obligation to do so predates and is separate from the new mandates of the Global Warming Solutions Act and other laws. The behavior of cities and counties not accustomed to thinking about the greenhouse gas pollution implications of their land use and planning decisions has been slow to change – but it has been changing, thanks in large part to Attorney General Jerry Brown’s efforts to enforce CEQA. Faced with the ironclad argument that agencies and project applicants must assess and reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the extent feasible through the CEQA process, a number of special interests are now seeking to eliminate CEQA’s requirements with regard to greenhouse gas emissions.