Berkeley’s ‘No’ to Sustainable Transit a Wake-Up Call

The fight over development and sustainability continued last night and it serves as a wake up call to sustainability advocates across the globe. The City of Berkeley, California (USA) decided not to study an option to build bus rapid transit that would run from Oakland through the city and connect to BART in it’s downtown. The City Council voted to reject a BRT project with 4 yeas, 2 against, 2 abstentions, and 1 absent member. [Video of the meeting is available at: http://berkeley.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?publish_id=664]

The project was one of the Obama Administration’s top priorities yet in the Berkeley political process it fell flat. While testimony on the topic was split evenly among supporters and the opposition, it was clearly one divided along generational lines with younger citizens in favor and older opposed. It was also and heavily influenced by local neighbors fearful of the transit project.

One main opponent of the plan was Councilman Kriss Worthington who fed fears about loss of local bus service and loss of local business. Many street vendors attested that their business would be threatened despite the fact that the pedestrian space available to them would increase significantly under the project. Paradoxically a UC Berkeley sustainable design professor and neighborhood resident (Matt Kondolf; a hydrologist by expertise), spoke out against the project because he did not believe data in studies indicating that the project was sustainable and would produce greenhouse gas reductions. This was in direct position to support from environmental advocacy groups such as Sierra Club, TransForm, Livable Berkeley, Bicycle Friendly Berkeley, and Friends of BRT.

This combination of unfortunate events leads us here at Livagreen.com, not only to question the primacy of Berkeley as one of the leading environmental communities in the US, but to think about the condition of the environmental movement in general. In a time were ‘paradigm shift’ is a key buzz word to address climate change, how do we balance the perspective of old environmentalism (small, quaint and green) against new environmentalism (livable, dense and urban)? Can we support no-growth and smart growth at the same time? How can we as a community invest in transit when environmentally conscious Prius drivers won’t support local projects? Environmental planning has become fractured along these lines – something that compromises the entire movement.

A July 2009 article in the East Bay Express began,

Berkeley (CA) has been a national leader in the fight against global warming. Last fall, the city launched its innovative, municipally financed solar-power program. And in early June, the city council adopted an aggressive Climate Action Plan that seeks to greatly lower Berkeley’s greenhouse gas emissions. And yet the current fight over a proposal that would help curtail suburban sprawl by allowing dense development in downtown has been fierce…

Dense development in Berkeley did fail, and this alludes to the problem in Berkeley and elsewhere around the country. The problem is that many of us practice hypocritical sustainability. We will vote one way and act another. We ask our leaders for change and then complain about it when it occurs. We are content with change as long as it doesn’t impact us. We practice NIMBYism under the guise of idealism.

For Berkeley, a city that has had such a shining track record of environmental achievement and positive activism in the past, it is unfortunate that they have become the example of what not to do; a circus of bad environmental policy. For the rest of us — it is a wake up call. We cannot afford to be complacent in our personal lives. Change, and ultimately pain, must be dealt with if we are to seriously address climate change. We cannot continue to live lives of environmental hypocrisy.