In February, after yet another court decision stalling sorely needed housing development, Gov. Gavin Newsom declared that California’s landmark environmental law is “broken.”
The California Environmental Quality Act, known as CEQA, is supposed to protect the environment by requiring governments to study and mitigate any harms of development before they approve it. But as Newsom noted, CEQA has been “weaponized” by “wealthy homeowners” (among others) to block housing — often in the urban and suburban areas where people have the least environmental impact.
And housing isn’t all that’s on the line. To meet the state’s greenhouse-gas emission targets — and secure its share of federal green-energy funding — California needs to quickly approve wind and solar energy projects, electricity transmission lines, car-charging networks and mass transit. To that end, in May, the governor unveiled an 11-bill infrastructure package to “assert a different paradigm.” No longer would we “screw it up” with “paralysis and process.” Going forward, the state would commit itself to “results.”
