A Week of Understanding

I love the work that our friend Anna Zivarts does promoting the week without driving which is coming up in a few weeks. What’s interesting about it is that it makes those who try to live for a week without driving a car understand what the stresses are for people who depend on non-auto mobility. In the past you’ve heard stories of realization and understanding that likely wouldn’t have happened otherwise.

But what if we took that understanding a step further. Many elected officials are not only privileged to have easily accessible transportation, but basic needs are met due to their work and salaries. In just thinking about the things that I worry about even though I’m comfortable, what if there were a way to get decision makers to understand the deficiencies in housing, transportation, care infrastructure, and food.

What made me think of this was the article in the New York Times about how California legislators are making decisions that go against an environmental ideal that include new oil drilling and restrictions in how environmental laws like CEQA can be used.

But legislators are making the decision based on what they know. They know gas prices are high and what people complain about. But that’s a deeper issue with how we’ve developed, often creating car oriented infrastructure even outside of transit stations. People want their family budgets to go far and our land use decisions restrict that.

Additionally, limits to how people can use the Coastal Preservation Commission and CEQA isn’t anti-environmental as it has been framed, but rather in many instances pushing back on the use of environmental law for opposition to change. But that opposition also means higher cost of living for everything including care infrastructure (health care, child care) and food if you subscribe to the housing theory of everything.

So then what if legislators understood what the real problems were and that fixing them requires more than just letting oil companies drill in Kern County, which by the way has some of the worst air quality in the country.

There’s a need to focus on issues that matter to people. But what matters to people also means that energy policy should reduce emissions and health impacts and costs, transportation policy should reduce stress and increase access, and housing policy should keep everyone safely and affordably housed.

I know there are lots of interests pulling in lots of directions, but in the 21st century as costs rise and wealth inequality becomes more extreme, maybe legislators should take a week to really think about what people really need.

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