Reform land use to reduce gases

It was gratifying to see news of Colorado’s just-released greenhouse gas reduction roadmap, which will ser ve as a guide to a 90% reduction in climate-warming emissions by 2050. Key elements of the plan include shifting electricity generation away from coal, reducing methane emissions from oil and gas production, and encouraging a shift to electric cars.

Particularly notable is a section on encouraging less driving through smarter land use. It reads in part: “Designing and building communities that allow for and encourage the use of biking, walking, transit and other low-carbon modes of transportation will decrease emissions. Local governments often make decisions that have the effect of separating housing at long distances from employment … and often (use) exclusionar y zoning to limit the ability to increase housing supply within communities.

“In many cases, limited state transportation funds are then used to tr y to address the high levels of traffic that come from these land use decisions. These land use patterns negatively impact the state budget and often lead to racial and social inequities as lower-income workers are forced into ver y long commutes, and worsen GHG and other air pollution.”

This state-level recognition is a welcome first step toward reversing a century’s worth of harmful impacts of exclusionar y local land use policies.

A couple of days after the state roadmap was released, State Senate Majority Leader Steve Fenberg, D-boulder, authored an opinion piece in the Camera, in which he highlighted climate change as a priority for this coming legislative session.

This is welcome, but unfortunately he did not mention land use, despite it being a key strategy for emissions reduction as well as for equitable economic development. I urge Mr. Fenberg and other legislators to study the roadmap, and to include progressive land use reforms as part of their legislative agenda. kurt NORDBACK

Boulder