19 ms·

Principled is a way of making it sound less terrible than 'restrained'. California is a perfect example of what happens when you let environmentalists handle ho

Principled is a way of making it sound less terrible than 'restrained'. California is a perfect example of what happens when you let environmentalists handle housing policy, the poor suffer because environmentalism is classism in disguise in these social contexts.

sitkack 7y ago
Nice how you slipped your pet bugaboo into your argument. Enviros are not responsible for the height caps and the sprawl.
ogre_codes 7y ago
This is literally the exact opposite of what an environmentalist would want in terms of urban growth and planning. Environmentally friendly planning means you have housing near where people work to avoid highly polluting long commutes. The problem is NIMBY bullshit in the purest sense. People will use every excuse in the book to prevent new housing in their neighborhood. While a fair amount of the time environmental policies are abused to block development, zoning laws are also abused, parking/ land use legislation, hell I've seen houses blocked because they increase the shade in a park by 2% for half an hour during the evening. None of this is "environmentalism", its rich people standing on a high hill screwing over everyone else beneath them.
- turk73 7y ago
  I just love how all these Kali liberals are just such incredible hypocrites. It is astounding to watch. They blame everyone else but themselves and double down whenever challenged and then run headlong into these untenable situations. My liberal Kali relatives care about one thing and one thing only: The value of the two properties they own! They are their retirement nestegg and must be protected at all costs. Plus, they prance around like multi-millionaires based on those illiquid assets.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  Ah, so exactly what happened with Hong Kong and their public housing. Blocked by homeowners who don't want their real estate to go down in value. Now it's one of the most expensive place in the world with New Territory largely empty.
  - api 7y ago
    Property owner cabals blocking development like this is cartel capitalism at the local level. What you have here is a cartel restricting supply to profit from scarcity.
- sbierwagen 7y ago
  >Environmentally friendly planning means you have housing near where people work to avoid highly polluting long commutes. Vehicle miles driven doesn't make as big of a difference as one might expect. A paper[0] I saw linked on reddit had an interesting graph: https://imgur.com/a/n7u8fGH https://imgur.com/a/n7u8fGH In this paper, what carbon emissions you lose by not driving you gain from building emissions. Maybe because the study area was New York, with more fuel oil-heated buildings? Presumably, decarbonized heating and electricity generation would make a difference, but New York state already is pretty good by that metric: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/newyork/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/newyork/ (Though nowhere near carbon neutral, or carbon negative, as would be required for keeping global warming to 2C) --- 0: Andrews, C. J. (2008). Greenhouse gas emissions along the rural-urban gradient. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640560802423780 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640560802423780 If you don't want to buy the PDF, then visit the crow site.
  - MrMoenty 7y ago
    I think part of the problem of this graph is that it attributes commercial building emissions to the municipalities in which they are placed, even though these buildings might be used by residents and commuters alike. So if you move into the city instead of commuting, you might be using the same commercial buildings a before, but their emissions are suddenly attributed to you.
  - zamfi 7y ago
    I think you missed the central point of this paper. It's true that there is an offsetting factor of building energy use vs. VMT, but the reality remains that denser environments, with jobs near residents, emit less per capita -- as that graph you linked to shows. What's surprising is that at the other end of the spectrum, in rural (not sub-urban) areas, other factors (forests, etc.) combine to cause lower per-capita emissions than suburbs (and in some cases, negative per-capita emissions because of sequestration). Basically, from a carbon-emissions perspective, post-war suburbs are unsurprisingly worst, rural areas get some help from sequestration in forests (this fact being the contribution of the paper), and dense urban environments are the least-emitting.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  It's not rational environmentalism, but I'm sure a lot of NIMBYs are honestly convinced they're fighting for Mother Earth, and the simultaneous explosive value increase of their home is purely coincidental. Motivated Reasoning is a hell of a thing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
  - joe_the_user 7y ago
    GP: Curse those environmentalists Parent: This obviously isn't environmentally friendly or motivated and the opposite of what an environmentalist would want. You: Well, they believe they're being environmental, even if it's self serving BS (here, let define self-serving BS).
    - BurningFrog 7y ago
      One realization that's helped me a lot: Yes, people talking self serving nonsense are lying. But they're primarily lying to themselves!!! Essential book: https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyday/dp/0190495995 https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyda... TED talk version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V84_F1QWdeU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V84_F1QWdeU
      - joe_the_user 7y ago
        Yes, people talking self serving nonsense are lying. But they're primarily lying to themselves! When we're talking this kind of phenomena, we certainly using language at a very high level of abstraction. But the "color" of how one expresses one's self matters even more. What "primary" means here is key, for example. People talking self-serving nonsense often believe what they're saying, maybe more than someone taking a rational position ('cause rationality involves some self doubt). The main question, in a sense is "are these people 'out to get us'?". On the one hand, one can give the defense, "they aren't consciously trying to put their interests ahead of yours and aren't trying to deceive you" but there's the other factor that this sort of strategy can be the very best strategy for people putting their interests ahead of you and /or deceiving you, which makes them your most effective enemies. I mean, if you dig deep down, the terrible people "are victims too". Does that mean you shouldn't blame them? Well, the terrible people need to be defeated and punished appropriately, in a judgmental way, to prevent them from doing the stuff we don't like and to fill those who might consider it with fear (still non-judgmentally).
yonran 7y ago
By “principled,” I mean that the RHNA sends the signal from the state government to the local governments of the state interest (regional quantity of housing to promote housing affordability and availability), while preserving local control over legitimate local concerns, which is what the opposition to SB 50 wanted. It makes sense theoretically; it just doesn’t work in practice due to the lowballed numbers and long time frames.
alasdair_ 7y ago
>California is a perfect example of what happens when you let environmentalists handle housing policy, the poor suffer because environmentalism is classism in disguise in these social contexts. Most of the environmentalists that I know are very much in favor of increasing housing density and reducing commute time in ICE vehicles. Current housing policy does neither of these things.
- linkregister 7y ago
  Environmentalist support for density increases is only about 20 years old. When these policies were created, it was done by the previous generation of lawmakers.
  - njarboe 7y ago
    Progressives now desire to live in the urban cores of large cities. It make sense for them to have their various political views reinforce each other.
- jibe 7y ago
  Most of the environmentalists that I know are very much in favor of increasing housing density as long as it isn't in their neighborhood.
  - mc3 7y ago
    But doesn't rezoning land to higher density increase it's value?
  - p1necone 7y ago
    I don't think that's unique to environmentalists, turns out a big subset of everyone is selfish like that.
    - jibe 7y ago
      Yes, it may be selfish, but for environmentalists it is selfish and hypocritical. I'm specifically looking at the wealthy, anti-growth, green community on the SF Peninsula.
codemac 7y ago
Are Napa, Atherton, and Malibu filled with environmentalists? I'm so confused by your reaction, are there specific housing policies that are focused on the environment that have had bigger effects than things like prop 13? or cities with 30k jobs in a year but 300 units of housing (looking at you, mountain view)?
- jibe 7y ago
  The endangered species act probably had 10x the effect on stifling building as Prop 13. Can you imagine a project like Foster City happening in the current environment? https://www.fostercity.org/community/page/creation-foster-city-land https://www.fostercity.org/community/page/creation-foster-ci... It takes Palo Alto 30 years to do flood mitigation because of a couple frogs in the creek. If Mountain View needs housing, make more land. It will never happen because there are always myriad obstacles to building. https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2010/09/30/landfill-and-liquefaction/ https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2010/09/30/landfill-and-liquefact... Look how much of the city of SF was built on landfill. When was the last time a major bay area development was done on reclaimed land?
  - Gibbon1 7y ago
    After WWII the Army Core of Engineers had a plan to fill most of the bay.
- avocado4 7y ago
  Atherton looks so funny from a satellite: https://imgur.com/a/kKpymj9 https://imgur.com/a/kKpymj9 You can see the NIMBY lines so clearly.
  - ceph_ 7y ago
    I think speaks more to the average lot size. The surrounding towns are also mostly single family homes as well. They're just subdivided into smaller plots. But lot size restrictions are a factor of zoning laws.
  - rconti 7y ago
zpallin 7y ago
While Environmentalism is definitely classist, and CEQA has played a part in preventing affordable development in cities, there are so many other factors that boiling it down to environmentalism is absurd. If anything, CEQA and other environmental regulations have contributed more to improving the quality of life for working class people and the poor than it has contributed to their detriment. California is the median for poverty in the US and also happens to be in the top 15 for quality of life while also being in the top 10 most environmentally friendly states. Because of that, I don't see a correlation between environmentalism and poverty.
- rayiner 7y ago
  California is at the bottom for poverty on the only measure that matters (the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for cost of living): https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-california-poverty-rate-20180913-htmlstory.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversatio...
  - zpallin 7y ago
    Fair enough, but even considering that, the other states at the top of the list are a grab bag consisting of some of the worst states in terms of environmental regulations. My point is that there is no absolute correlation with environmentalism and poverty.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
api 7y ago
Most environmentalists are in favor of increased density. The opposition is more NIMBYs who either don't want their neighborhood to ever change, don't want poor people anywhere near them, or want their house value to go up.
rednerrus 7y ago
> environmentalism is classism in disguise.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Karishma1234 7y ago
Thank you for saying this. Environmentalism is an old fashioned imperialism dressed up in new clothes. "Some" people who think they are better than others decide that "denser" housing is somehow better and when someone disagrees with them obviously those people are too selfish for protecting their own interest and not accepting the vision of these masterminds.
CalRobert 7y ago
It's what happens when you let homeowners form a cartel and vote on how much new housing to create (and thus how much to dilute their own home's worth by). Environmentalism has nothing to do with it.
supercow12 7y ago
The article says that SB 50 was supported by environmentalist groups. >The bill also garnered support from environmental organizations, including Natural Resources Defense Council and California PIRG, because of its potential to reduce the carbon pollution that comes from long driving commutes.
thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
when you restrain housing, everyone suffers.

sitkack 7y ago

Nice how you slipped your pet bugaboo into your argument. Enviros are not responsible for the height caps and the sprawl.

ogre_codes 7y ago

This is literally the exact opposite of what an environmentalist would want in terms of urban growth and planning. Environmentally friendly planning means you have housing near where people work to avoid highly polluting long commutes. The problem is NIMBY bullshit in the purest sense. People will use every excuse in the book to prevent new housing in their neighborhood. While a fair amount of the time environmental policies are abused to block development, zoning laws are also abused, parking/ land use legislation, hell I've seen houses blocked because they increase the shade in a park by 2% for half an hour during the evening. None of this is "environmentalism", its rich people standing on a high hill screwing over everyone else beneath them.

turk73 7y ago
I just love how all these Kali liberals are just such incredible hypocrites. It is astounding to watch. They blame everyone else but themselves and double down whenever challenged and then run headlong into these untenable situations. My liberal Kali relatives care about one thing and one thing only: The value of the two properties they own! They are their retirement nestegg and must be protected at all costs. Plus, they prance around like multi-millionaires based on those illiquid assets.
Aperocky 7y ago
Ah, so exactly what happened with Hong Kong and their public housing. Blocked by homeowners who don't want their real estate to go down in value. Now it's one of the most expensive place in the world with New Territory largely empty.
- api 7y ago
  Property owner cabals blocking development like this is cartel capitalism at the local level. What you have here is a cartel restricting supply to profit from scarcity.
sbierwagen 7y ago
>Environmentally friendly planning means you have housing near where people work to avoid highly polluting long commutes. Vehicle miles driven doesn't make as big of a difference as one might expect. A paper[0] I saw linked on reddit had an interesting graph: https://imgur.com/a/n7u8fGH https://imgur.com/a/n7u8fGH In this paper, what carbon emissions you lose by not driving you gain from building emissions. Maybe because the study area was New York, with more fuel oil-heated buildings? Presumably, decarbonized heating and electricity generation would make a difference, but New York state already is pretty good by that metric: https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/newyork/ https://www.eia.gov/electricity/state/newyork/ (Though nowhere near carbon neutral, or carbon negative, as would be required for keeping global warming to 2C) --- 0: Andrews, C. J. (2008). Greenhouse gas emissions along the rural-urban gradient. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640560802423780 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09640560802423780 If you don't want to buy the PDF, then visit the crow site.
- MrMoenty 7y ago
  I think part of the problem of this graph is that it attributes commercial building emissions to the municipalities in which they are placed, even though these buildings might be used by residents and commuters alike. So if you move into the city instead of commuting, you might be using the same commercial buildings a before, but their emissions are suddenly attributed to you.
- zamfi 7y ago
  I think you missed the central point of this paper. It's true that there is an offsetting factor of building energy use vs. VMT, but the reality remains that denser environments, with jobs near residents, emit less per capita -- as that graph you linked to shows. What's surprising is that at the other end of the spectrum, in rural (not sub-urban) areas, other factors (forests, etc.) combine to cause lower per-capita emissions than suburbs (and in some cases, negative per-capita emissions because of sequestration). Basically, from a carbon-emissions perspective, post-war suburbs are unsurprisingly worst, rural areas get some help from sequestration in forests (this fact being the contribution of the paper), and dense urban environments are the least-emitting.
BurningFrog 7y ago
It's not rational environmentalism, but I'm sure a lot of NIMBYs are honestly convinced they're fighting for Mother Earth, and the simultaneous explosive value increase of their home is purely coincidental. Motivated Reasoning is a hell of a thing! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motivated_reasoning
- joe_the_user 7y ago
  GP: Curse those environmentalists Parent: This obviously isn't environmentally friendly or motivated and the opposite of what an environmentalist would want. You: Well, they believe they're being environmental, even if it's self serving BS (here, let define self-serving BS).
  - BurningFrog 7y ago
    One realization that's helped me a lot: Yes, people talking self serving nonsense are lying. But they're primarily lying to themselves!!! Essential book: https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyday/dp/0190495995 https://www.amazon.com/Elephant-Brain-Hidden-Motives-Everyda... TED talk version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V84_F1QWdeU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V84_F1QWdeU
    - joe_the_user 7y ago
      Yes, people talking self serving nonsense are lying. But they're primarily lying to themselves! When we're talking this kind of phenomena, we certainly using language at a very high level of abstraction. But the "color" of how one expresses one's self matters even more. What "primary" means here is key, for example. People talking self-serving nonsense often believe what they're saying, maybe more than someone taking a rational position ('cause rationality involves some self doubt). The main question, in a sense is "are these people 'out to get us'?". On the one hand, one can give the defense, "they aren't consciously trying to put their interests ahead of yours and aren't trying to deceive you" but there's the other factor that this sort of strategy can be the very best strategy for people putting their interests ahead of you and /or deceiving you, which makes them your most effective enemies. I mean, if you dig deep down, the terrible people "are victims too". Does that mean you shouldn't blame them? Well, the terrible people need to be defeated and punished appropriately, in a judgmental way, to prevent them from doing the stuff we don't like and to fill those who might consider it with fear (still non-judgmentally).

yonran 7y ago

By “principled,” I mean that the RHNA sends the signal from the state government to the local governments of the state interest (regional quantity of housing to promote housing affordability and availability), while preserving local control over legitimate local concerns, which is what the opposition to SB 50 wanted. It makes sense theoretically; it just doesn’t work in practice due to the lowballed numbers and long time frames.

alasdair_ 7y ago

>California is a perfect example of what happens when you let environmentalists handle housing policy, the poor suffer because environmentalism is classism in disguise in these social contexts. Most of the environmentalists that I know are very much in favor of increasing housing density and reducing commute time in ICE vehicles. Current housing policy does neither of these things.

linkregister 7y ago
Environmentalist support for density increases is only about 20 years old. When these policies were created, it was done by the previous generation of lawmakers.
- njarboe 7y ago
  Progressives now desire to live in the urban cores of large cities. It make sense for them to have their various political views reinforce each other.
jibe 7y ago
Most of the environmentalists that I know are very much in favor of increasing housing density as long as it isn't in their neighborhood.
- mc3 7y ago
  But doesn't rezoning land to higher density increase it's value?
- p1necone 7y ago
  I don't think that's unique to environmentalists, turns out a big subset of everyone is selfish like that.
  - jibe 7y ago
    Yes, it may be selfish, but for environmentalists it is selfish and hypocritical. I'm specifically looking at the wealthy, anti-growth, green community on the SF Peninsula.

codemac 7y ago

Are Napa, Atherton, and Malibu filled with environmentalists? I'm so confused by your reaction, are there specific housing policies that are focused on the environment that have had bigger effects than things like prop 13? or cities with 30k jobs in a year but 300 units of housing (looking at you, mountain view)?

jibe 7y ago
The endangered species act probably had 10x the effect on stifling building as Prop 13. Can you imagine a project like Foster City happening in the current environment? https://www.fostercity.org/community/page/creation-foster-city-land https://www.fostercity.org/community/page/creation-foster-ci... It takes Palo Alto 30 years to do flood mitigation because of a couple frogs in the creek. If Mountain View needs housing, make more land. It will never happen because there are always myriad obstacles to building. https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2010/09/30/landfill-and-liquefaction/ https://ww2.kqed.org/quest/2010/09/30/landfill-and-liquefact... Look how much of the city of SF was built on landfill. When was the last time a major bay area development was done on reclaimed land?
- Gibbon1 7y ago
  After WWII the Army Core of Engineers had a plan to fill most of the bay.
avocado4 7y ago
Atherton looks so funny from a satellite: https://imgur.com/a/kKpymj9 https://imgur.com/a/kKpymj9 You can see the NIMBY lines so clearly.
- ceph_ 7y ago
  I think speaks more to the average lot size. The surrounding towns are also mostly single family homes as well. They're just subdivided into smaller plots. But lot size restrictions are a factor of zoning laws.
- rconti 7y ago

zpallin 7y ago

While Environmentalism is definitely classist, and CEQA has played a part in preventing affordable development in cities, there are so many other factors that boiling it down to environmentalism is absurd. If anything, CEQA and other environmental regulations have contributed more to improving the quality of life for working class people and the poor than it has contributed to their detriment. California is the median for poverty in the US and also happens to be in the top 15 for quality of life while also being in the top 10 most environmentally friendly states. Because of that, I don't see a correlation between environmentalism and poverty.

rayiner 7y ago
California is at the bottom for poverty on the only measure that matters (the Supplemental Poverty Measure, which accounts for cost of living): https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversation/sd-california-poverty-rate-20180913-htmlstory.html https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/opinion/the-conversatio...
- zpallin 7y ago
  Fair enough, but even considering that, the other states at the top of the list are a grab bag consisting of some of the worst states in terms of environmental regulations. My point is that there is no absolute correlation with environmentalism and poverty.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

api 7y ago

Most environmentalists are in favor of increased density. The opposition is more NIMBYs who either don't want their neighborhood to ever change, don't want poor people anywhere near them, or want their house value to go up.

rednerrus 7y ago

> environmentalism is classism in disguise.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Karishma1234 7y ago

Thank you for saying this. Environmentalism is an old fashioned imperialism dressed up in new clothes. "Some" people who think they are better than others decide that "denser" housing is somehow better and when someone disagrees with them obviously those people are too selfish for protecting their own interest and not accepting the vision of these masterminds.

CalRobert 7y ago

It's what happens when you let homeowners form a cartel and vote on how much new housing to create (and thus how much to dilute their own home's worth by). Environmentalism has nothing to do with it.

supercow12 7y ago

The article says that SB 50 was supported by environmentalist groups. >The bill also garnered support from environmental organizations, including Natural Resources Defense Council and California PIRG, because of its potential to reduce the carbon pollution that comes from long driving commutes.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

when you restrain housing, everyone suffers.