Opinion: CEQA attacks come as our warming planet most needs the law

Phil Bokovoy’s CEQA lawsuit against UC Berkeley has touched off renewed debate about the state’s environmental law.If the recent attacks on California’s landmark environmental law sound tired, that’s because they are. Ever since the California Environmental Quality Act went into effect in 1970, there have been calls to tweak, reform or completely throw it out.

The latest U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report tells us we’re quickly approaching a climate warming threshold that will cause devastating and irreversible harm to people and wildlife — and the natural systems that sustain us all. In light of this dire news, it’s an utterly inappropriate time to call for CEQA’s demise.

Let’s entertain the faulty notion that by eliminating CEQA, or watering down its strongest provisions, we can somehow improve communities by removing barriers to development. In a world without CEQA, this university town still wouldn’t get a single additional residential unit and the community would lose its chance to participate in public decision-making.

A strong environmental review law like CEQA compels decisionmakers to look before they leap. And by protecting CEQA, we protect our communities, our climate and our health. Near Joshua Tree National Park, an environmental review for a housing development allowed community members to raise serious concerns about destroying rare desert habitat and drawing resources away from low-income and communities of color. The CEQA process worked without litigation when the Riverside Board of Supervisors rejected the harmful project.

Source: Healthcare Press (healthcarepress.net)

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