By Frank Landis, Chair Conservation Committee
Things are staying busy on the conservation front because projects and organizations are responding to the pandemic. Some are adapting, some are pretending that everything will go back to normal soon (for varying notions of soon), and some are trying to take advantage of the crisis.
In the long-term adaptation corner, I’ll place most of the conservation groups, including CNPS. What’s driving us isn’t just the pandemic, it’s climate change. As everyone reading this is aware, climate change has been a known problem for over 50 years. I was learning about it in college in the 80s, and there have been continual, unsuccessful efforts to “bend the curve” on greenhouse gas emissions since the 1990s.
There’s a lot of hope in the environmental community that the Covid-19 crisis, which has decreased greenhouse gas emissions a surprisingly large amount, will lead to societal changes that will help us deal with the larger, more intractable, and more dangerous problem of bending the curve on climate change. There is some action on that hope, too.
CNPS is one of those groups that inadvertently acted. At the organizational level, the CNPS chapter council has been considering whether to adopt a pledge for the organization to become carbon neutral by 2030 or so, and we’ll vote on it at our June meeting. One of the big questions was whether we could even meet such a pledge if we made it. What the lock down has proved is that yes, we very much can keep CNPS going with few or no carbon emissions as we all work from home.
Now, I’m not suggesting that what’s going on now is a lasting solution, but we have answered the question: yes we can do it. The questions we have to answer going forward are whether we want to keep trying to be carbon neutral, and how we do more CNPS activities like field trips and meetings while keeping our emissions down as low as they are now.
Across San Diego County, there’s been a similar realization that we can cut commuting far more than we thought we could, that it might be easier for people to telecommute rather than buy an electric car, ride a bus or a bike, or carpool to work. This appears to be playing into planning from SANDAG about the future of highways and transit. Obviously it’s not a simple or even necessarily a pleasant choice, but many people may prefer working from home more and commuting less. That simple decision cuts greenhouse gas emissions. What’s the tradeoff between Zooming and being stuck in a traffic jam? How many hours of one is worth an hour of the other?
Of course, working from home is not a panacea. Our region, especially the City of San Diego, is highly dependent on conventions, sporting events, and tourism for revenue. Those sectors, along with our previously thriving restaurant, brewery, hospitality, and personal service sectors, have all taken huge hits, resulting in lost jobs, lost businesses, lost livelihoods, and lost taxes. This has naturally created a strong push to try to open up and regain the old normal as fast as possible. Adapting to a socially distanced San Diego is going to close many businesses and drastically change a lot of lives. Obviously, a lot of people want to regain the lives and livelihoods they had a few months ago. I think all feel the tug, even those who realize that our former stance of speeding into a climate crisis was no more sustainable than what we’re doing now.
I’m seeing this reflected in development projects, where there’s a strong push to see what’s going on now as a temporary crisis rather than a permanent change. As a result, they’re steaming ahead with plans that are decades in the making. Examples of this thought process include developments like Otay Ranch Villages 13 and 14 (both now headed to the Board of Supervisors) and the City of SanDiego’s Park Master Plan. They are marching forward on thehope that everything will go back to the way it was in the Teens. Eventually anyway. Hopefully sooner rather than later.
The developments are all predicated on the assumption that people will spend on homes like it was 2018, even as opportunities for people to earn the money to pay for thesehomes are currently dwindling. That’s true for the Otay Village developments. It also appears true for Merge 56. That development broke ground this February, but it is grinding to a halt in the middle of grading due to the crisis. I got to listen in as the Merge 56 developer talked to a local planning board about obtaining a public money loan to build part of the project. That loan will be repaid, with interest, from fees on the homes if they’re ever built, so the homes will be evenmore expensive than they were before. But the planning board went forward on the hope that housing demand would return to what it was in the Teens.
The City update of its Parks Master Plan has been in the works for some time. Rather than rework it for the crisis, it is sailing ahead on the assumption that it will still be relevant in coming years. Since it is primarily focused on how many human services each park can provide, and rather less focused on conservation, I hope it can be updated to deal with our new reality. Perhaps it can help bend the curve on climate change too? We can hope.
And finally, there are those who are taking advantage of the crisis to try to strip environmental protections, primarily at the federal level. In previous months, these have been attacks on NEPA and clean water, and we can assume others will come.It’s despicable but predictable. Mass action is the best response to those trying to take advantage of the pandemic to roll back protections and rules. If you see requests to submit comments on such things, the best thing you can do is to submit them, because numerous voices raised in unified opposition count far more to this administration than does any expert opinion, as we’ve seen repeatedly during the pandemic.
As for the future, it is all very much in the air. Obviously, I hope that we can build a more resilient society out of this current mess, that we can find the means and the will to bend the curve on climate change. But I know, from experience, that it’s hard to change the habits of a lifetime. All I’ll say is that it may be hard, but it certainly is possible.
Stay safe.