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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Sustainability - Setting the Foundation

I enjoy debating the various aspects of growth policy and there are several issues on this blog that touch on the role government should play in directing, restricting and visioning growth. My comments on the County's Sustainability regulations have been a good source for argument; it has made me reflect on how this got started at the County level. Of course, when Will Toor went from Boulder City Council to County Commissioner in 2005, he knew he had a bigger stage to work on with ideas from Boulder. But in general such ideas were evolving anyway.

Back in 2005 the County did a survey that was a vanguard of data that could support various County level policy changes. I wrote back then about how language in that survey was skewed to help certain results give weight to new policies. If you want my subjective description of the County's assessment of public support for these green building mandates, check out GoArticles.com. To see the full survey results check out the Boulder County website.

An excerpt to give you the gist:

Continuing in the we'll-tell-you-what-you-can-do mode, people said they favored regulations to strengthen historical preservation requirements (75%) and promote energy efficiency and use of renewable energy (89%). The County is hearing loud and clear that people support restrictive guidelines - when people are thinking about others.

When asked a question that turns the thought process back towards themselves, the message Commissioners hear is the opposite. 72% said more emphasis should be placed on individual property rights. This response rate blows a big hole in the integrity of the previous answers. How can the County create policy based on such conflicting sentiments?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

And, don't forget, Will Toor initially went from CU's environmental center to the Boulder City Council...

It will be interesting to see where the County goes with this. Dan's property rights message is never stronger than when building size limits are mentioned. As mentioned in response to the last topic in this vein, my "bogus policy detector" (you know what I'm talking about) is on full alert with some of the building materials requirements that are being shopped around from jurisdiction to jurisdiction as "green" codes. The County does need to clearly identify a problem, before they'll get this crowd to buy the solution.

Nevertheless, I disagree with the characterization of the County's survey as biased. People in Boulder County want to have their cake and eat it too. Is that any secret? The problem does not come from any secret, devious plan to trick people into supporting things they don't. The problem with this survey is that people didn't have to make a choice between two exclusive alternatives.

I continue to support the County's exploration of resource conservation in land development practices, because I do believe that we will eventually have to make some real choices, locally and globally.

The politics of the situation foster broad but dilute regulation, which means we are likely to eventually be looking at "green code" type solutions. The advantage of green codes is they do promote new markets, which eventually may transfer over to or become the mode of the mass market, for building materials. The disadvantage is that this type of approach does not tend to take into account the unique attributes, needs, and opportunities of the locality, and it is innovation-neutral.

Looking forward to more editorial remarks from Dan as the issue moves forward.

Anonymous said...

You're right Alex, the trade-offs between policies was never forced in the language of the citizen survey. It is rare to see a budgetary or regulatory discussion put into the larger context of how it will be paid for or otherwise executed in the face of the total funding available or competing regulatory directives. My experience with the Boulder Valley Comp Plan Update process in 2005 gave me a deep understanding of how a City Council can let everyone get what they want and wind up with a guiding document full of visions and directives at cross-purposes.

On their own, a ton of ideas seem reasonable and worthy. They shrivel only when people have to decide where they should be placed on the hierarchy of must-haves and nice-to-haves. I feel for the souls who are on our local Councils and Boards who wrestle with this reality on behalf of all of us, while the rest of us can feign ignorance and wish for the moon. Then gripe when we don't get it.

That's why a debate over which issues should be higher on the list of priorities - and why - is worthwhile; yet most people simply believe their cause is paramount regardless of whatever else is going on in the world (or town).

It is painful/coldly entertaining/difficult to watch when a passionate advocate is told thier cause is a good one, but not important to enough people to by put at the top of the list.

Hence ballot initiatives and the nuclear bomb of that concept, the dreaded constitutional amendment ballot issue. Sore losers in detailed debate taking their argument to the level of sound bites and slogans and emotional appeals. Making a mockery of a constitution's true purpose. But that's another post.

Anonymous said...

A question for you guys. The stuff I have read on sustainability argues that the key to it is population control. The more people there are. the more land is consumed for housing, the more energy is needed, and more and more cars and roads.

At the only Colorado Municipal League conference I attended, Ken Salazar was there to talk about water issues. Afterwards I asked him why not slow growth down? He moved on without comment.

Anonymous said...

The definition of sustainability depends on who you talk to. In the global context, there are those who believe population control is a key issue. Others point to the trend in some industrialized nations of not even maintaining steady population (e.g., Japan, Australia on the decline, the dominant factor in U.S. population growth is immigration). In the latter view, sustaining the global population is about resource allocation and efficiency. Both views are essentially true in my opinion.

But that is not what we are talking about here. We are talking about sustainability as a land use and building issue. You could have a relatively small population that consumes an incredible share of the world's resources, and subpopulations that consume a disproportionate amount of national and regional resources, and so forth. Now, does that sound familiar? It's not about population, though that may be some influence on where the problem is manifest, but sustainability in the land use context is fundamentally about the mode of consumption.

Which brings us right back to where this started: Should people be allowed to live wasteful lifestyles and build wasteful homes if they can afford it? What resources must critically be protected? What do reasonable regulations target? What do those regulations look like?

I don't want to scuttle the notion that one alternative might be to develop communities in a way that balances local population with local "foodsheds" and other measures of regional economic carrying capacity. The problem with those ideas is that no government has the authority to implement them (in the U.S., at least) and people don't, for the most part, behave in a way that would make such a system, in fact, economically sustainable.

Doktorbombay said...

Population growth does have a critical part in the sustainability discussion. It's ironic when some of the "let's leave as small a footprint as possible" proponents have more than the sustainable number of 2 children. But, yes, that's a different topic.

Leading edge technology shifts are historically led by those who can afford to pay the extra cost up front.

Personal computers were an outlandish expenditure when they first appeared in the '80s. I bought a Mac in '84 to use in my retail businesses, but I knew people who bought PCs and Macs because it was the thing to do, not because they had a real need for them. At the time, some PCs cost nearly half the price of a new car.

These people had a lot of extra disposable income. But, their early-adopter involvement drove the technology to the point where it became affordable for the masses.

Sustainability initiatives should be patterned with this in mind. Let's require any home in excess of 3,000 sf to pay a sustainability tax. This tax could be mitigated if qualified "green" products or processes are used in the construction. Any taxes collected could be used to further subsidize "green" developments.

I'm generally not in favor of government involvement in things like this. However, this technology has no glitz. You can't park it in your driveway. There's no "look what I've got" appeal to sustainability. So, it will get no long term traction on it's own in the marketplace. Taxation, when used properly, can artificially create a market.

Anonymous said...

So let's see. Homeowner # 1 has and 8000 sg. ft house on a 35 acre lot. 3 cars, married with two kids. One road in and out.

Next door is a development of 35 acres with 6 units to the acre. 2500 sq.ft homes. Around 180 homes and 600 to 800 residents. 500,000 sq. ft. of houses. 400 cars.

So what is better from a sustainability point of view?

Anonymous said...

Gee, where are the 596 to 796 other people in scenario A? Spread out all over the countryside on 179 more 35 acre lots? By my quick calculation, that will eat up 4 to 5 square miles of land in 35 acre estates.

This is the preface to the oldest argument in the book. The loaded question assumes the problem of sprawl and sustainability exists only in our own backyard.

For those who live an urban lifestyle - don't grow their own food, partcipate in the technological division of labor, on and on - you can pick option B, or you can have your cake and eat it too while the opportunities are still here. We can't all live on 35 acre ranchettes, though.

Really, all your question does, Kerry, is lead us right back to mine. I don't begrudge anyone the desire or opportunity to live on acreage, but ultimately the question of sustainability comes down to where to put everyone and how to do it in a way that internalizes the environmental and economic costs.

Anonymous said...

To Doktorbombay's excellent post, I would add that innovation and real performance should be the prime measures of "green" building.

I do agree that market-making has been an enormous justification for certain government interventions over time. Also agreed that the glamour in construction comes not, largely, from convservation and thrift but its opposite.

The thing that grates on me, though, about green points and other regulatory systems with which I have a fleeting familiarity is that many of the products that earn points (say, chipboard floor joists) are already the most cost-effective alternative. So you have builders marketing "green" homes with no cost to upgrade the construction or truly innovate on (or improve upon) the lifecycle cost of the home.