Climate Change
Planners Claim Reduction in Car Pollution, but Details Show Overall Increase
Inscrutable “per capita” and “business as usual” comparisons hide rise in total greenhouse gases
Essentially, it’s a math trick: The per capita figure hides a predicted regional population growth of 28 percent. That means total passenger vehicle emissions regionwide would actually rise by 9.1 percent — an indication that regional planning is not helping California’s efforts to become a model in combating climate change.
This story is part of a special report on climate change in the Summer print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.