Bay Area Transportation and Housing Policies Cannot Stop Climate Change
A false solution to a true problem
Bay Area transportation and housing initiatives are often portrayed as solutions to the climate catastrophe we are facing due to excessive greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. The thinking is that if we could get everyone to live in apartments near stations on electrified transit systems, thereby removing their need to drive, we can forestall the worst impacts of global warming. But the Bay Area is too small, and its climate solutions are too costly to have a meaningful impact.
In 2022, the Bay Area produced about 0.13 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. I arrived at this proportion by first consulting greenhouse gas inventories for Santa Clara County and the rest of the Bay Area, which showed total emissions of 11.2 and 59.9 million tons of CO2 equivalent respectively. I then divided this total by global greenhouse gas emissions of 53.33 billion tons of CO2 equivalent for 2022 as shown on Our World in Data.
The Bay Area’s share of greenhouse gas emissions is only somewhat higher than its share of global population (about 0.10 percent), so, by affluent society standards, we are already doing relatively well.
But our relatively small contribution to climate-changing emissions means that local policies will have little to no effect on global warming. Even in the most extreme case of Bay Area governments banning all fossil fuel use, the world will still generate 99.87 percent of its current total.
A fair rebuttal to this argument is that the Bay Area can punch above its weight by setting an example for other regions and countries to emulate. But unfortunately, our climate solutions tend to be so cost ineffective that most of the world could not afford to copy us.
Consider, for example, one of our more successful projects: Caltrain electrification. This project cost $2.4 billion while its Environmental Impact Report projected annual greenhouse gas emission reductions of about 189,000 tons of CO2E, representing a roughly 0.3 percent decrease in area-wide emissions. And the actual savings are lower than the EIR projections which did not anticipate the rapid shift to electric vehicles in the Bay Area or the reduction in Caltrain ridership following the COVID-19 pandemic. While electrification has been associated with a spike in ridership, the spike is from a reduced ridership base.
The numbers look worse for Bay Area climate solutions that are not performing as well as Caltrain electrification. Consider, for example, the BART extension through San Jose which has seen repeated scheduling setbacks and cost increases. Today, the project is expected to cost $12.75 billion and be completed between 2037 and 2039. Assuming the most recent ridership projections are accurate, I estimate that the extension will replace just 0.4 percent of car trips in Santa Clara County.
Unless train lines can be extended throughout the Bay Area quickly and affordably, there will not be enough sites for transit-oriented development to house a significant proportion of the Bay Area’s population. And, even if many new apartment buildings are constructed at costs approaching and sometimes exceeding $1 million per unit, there is no assurance that apartment dwellers will stop driving. I, for one, have lived in apartments for decades, while also using my car for shopping trips and recreation.
Using climate change as a justification for expensive transit and housing projects involves a fundamental conceit: the false belief that these projects will have any meaningful impact on the trajectory of global greenhouse gas emissions. Since they cannot, these projects should be assessed using more traditional cost-benefit analyses.
Marc Joffe
SHIFT-Bay Area Director of Finance
Marc Joffe is President of the Contra Costa Taxpayers Association and a visiting fellow at California Policy Center.