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.

The truth is that it’s too painful right now.  The idea that Americans somehow changed their behavior after the release of Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth was exaggerated. What is did create was more beairacracy, more urban planning acronyms, jargon and level of government to achieve climate goals – not to mention spawning a new era in the machine of the environmental consulting industry and the production of environmental reports to ‘cover’ development.

The graphs and charts we see now show that maybe this is not working – that democratizing a common good leads to profiteering and divisiveness in how to address the problem.  Driving behavior has not changed and significant transport infrastructure projects see environmentalists as adversaries; residential populations continue to resist density in favor of the status quo and on claims of environmentalism; energy efficiecy programs are abundant but power loads are increasing.

People worry about federal dollars and stimulus, like trasit and renewable energy money that was promised in Obama’s first State of the Union address – however to be frank that money will be too much too late and it’s scale of impact to global. We need local leadership; we need people to stand up for more, affordable and environmentally friendly housing and jobs in the regional code.

Clearly to make the kinds of changes we need strong local and regional governmental leadership.  Recent estimates from the San Francisco Bay Area indicate that even to achieve modest GHG emission reductions the price driving must rise (to close to $5/gallon); more housing must be produced (more than 200,000 housing units are projected to be needed in downtown San Francisco); more renewable infrastructure projects must be pursued.

If this can’t happen maybe we’re just screwed and we should give up on our both our meetings and our goals.  We should all just live gluttonously and wait for the end in our V8 gas guzzlers while eating blue-fin tuna sushi.

“The new report, Moving Cooler: Transportation Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions, written by Cambridge Systematics and sponsored by a variety of organizations, identifies several dozen transportation climate change emission reduction strategies, including improvements to efficient modes (walking, cycling and public transit), pricing reforms and smart growth land use policies. It evaluates their emission reductions, implementation costs, impacts on vehicle costs, and equity impacts, and estimates the emissions that could be reduced by various strategy packages.”
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