The 2030 challenge is a widely embraced worldwide initiative to make all new buildings carbon neutral by the year 2030. Initiative organizers make no bones about the apocalyptic fear that drives their mission.

According to the Architecture2030 web site, “Rapidly accelerating climate change (global warming), which is caused by greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, is now fueling dangerous regional and global environmental events.”

As I pointed out at the forum, such statements are un-founded, likely untrue, and wildly irresponsible. My fellow panelists argued that whether global warming is imminent or not, green building makes sense. To their credit, none among them thought it should be mandatory.

Had it been not for the research I had done for my new book, What’s the Matter with California, I might have agreed with them on the value of the sustainability movement. On paper, it seems to make perfect sense. It’s just that on the ground, in the real world, it doesn’t.

As hard as it is to believe, in the 1970 song “I am . . . I said” Neil Diamond sang about a Los Angeles where “Palm trees grow and the rents are low,” and no one doubted him. As late as 1973 home prices in Southern California were below the national average.

That has obviously changed. In the Kansas City area a family of median income—roughly $56,000—can afford to buy 87 percent of the homes on the market. In greater Los Angeles, a family of median income—about the same as Kansas City’s—can afford to buy an astonishing 2 percent of the homes. A decade ago in LA that figure was closer to 50 percent.

What happened? 

To be sure, home prices began to spike as California went green in the 1970s and 1980s. But then the green movement took on a momentum of its own.

If the regulations have not changed much in the last decade, the regulators, inspired by their apocalyptic visions, surely have. Eco-activists replaced the retiring good old boys in agencies like the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the California Department of Fish and Game. They make what was once voluntary not voluntary at all.

“If you’ve got a wheel rut, you better hope it doesn’t rain,” said one developer with whom I spoke. “Otherwise, you’ve got a navigable waterway.” He wasn’t kidding. To protect some standing water on a recent Ventura County project, the regulators forced him to give up at least six roadside acres.

As the developer explained, the cities and counties try to help. Most have streamlined their permitting processes.

Still, they fear lawsuits and the sympathetic courts that hear them, and so they tend to overreact to potential problems.

Nor does the state legislature do much good. The Democrats that control both houses sit on their hands for fear of offending their greenish base. That base, however, has no fear of offending the Democrats.

“If they gathered to form a firing squad,” said one eco-warrior of the progressive politicos, “they would assemble in a circle.” The right errs in thinking that environmentalists form one big happy left wing family. They’re not a family, and they’re never happy.

I had hoped to follow one large development project through the permitting process, but two factors made that well nigh impossible. One was the length of the process—three years on average—and the second was the fear of retribution. This is not the way sustainability is supposed to work.

In northern California, the sustainability movement has left an even deeper footprint, and no county in the north is more sustainability-conscious than San Mateo. For ten years now it has been producing an amusing document called “Indicators for a Sustainable San Mateo County.” 

The document evaluates 31 trends “that form a snapshot of sustainability.” Given the political nature of the document, the county is willing to give itself a few pats on the back. So on the first page of the 2005 10th anniversary document, the county congratulates itself for “increased use of solar,” “fewer contaminated sites,” “more transit oriented development” and even “improved academic performance.” 

It is not until page 2 that the county slips in a chart showing that a family of median income—higher in San Mateo than just about anywhere—can afford to buy only 12% of the homes in the county, down from 19% a decade ago, and exactly 1/4 the national average. Nor is there any acknowledgement that certain green measures—particularly restraints on building—are what have priced the middle class out of the county.

Sustainability is an indulgence of the affluent. I am not sure Kansas City can afford it, let alone the rest of the world.