California environmentalism is at a crossroads in 2025. Despite decades of leadership on clean energy and vehicle standards, the state is falling far short of its carbon reduction goals. The reason isn’t just smokestacks or tailpipes; it’s our land use.

The way we build housing dictates how much we drive, how much energy we use and how much open space we consume. The State of California’s own research indicates that our only viable path to carbon neutrality by 2045 is to build significantly more housing in walkable, transit-rich locations.

Yet even when cities have planned for this, many climate-friendly housing projects have stalled for years or been killed altogether because of California’s most important environmental law.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was established in 1970 to illuminate the environmental impacts of major development projects. In the postwar boom, California built $10.5 billion worth of freeways in addition to “sixteen dams, eighteen pumping stations, nine power generating plants, and hundreds of miles of aqueducts, canals, and levees.”

For decades, many of these public works projects ran roughshod over the environment and vulnerable communities. That’s why environmental and community planners welcomed CEQA as an essential safeguard against industrial polluters, sprawling subdivisions and highway expansion. Environmentalists cheered when CEQA expanded discretionary approval beyond public projects also to include private development, strengthening the best tool to defend the environment from harmful development.

CEQA was a vital law for its time. Yet it is now clear that California cannot meet the contemporary challenge of climate change if the law remains unchanged. For decades, environmental progress in California has meant adding new protections and review processes. Yet today, the bigger challenge is that some of these same regulations now delay and block environmentally-friendly projects.

This is evident in California cities. Despite local governments planning and zoning for denser housing, many modest infill housing projects were still subject to review under CEQA, a process that is both redundant and actively harmful. Across the state, opponents of housing have routinely weaponized CEQA, not for concerns over the environment, but instead to protect parking or neighborhood aesthetics.

The result? CEQA ultimately preserves the high-carbon, sprawling status quo at the expense of low-carbon, walkable cities.

In Los Angeles, where we live, there are countless examples of CEQA abuse. Lorena Plaza, a 44-unit affordable housing development next to a light-rail station, took 18 years to complete. Why would a project that both advances California’s climate goals and allows working-class families to live near clean transportation be so comically delayed? A CEQA lawsuit initiated by a neighboring business offers one explanation. The suit was eventually dismissed, but not before years of delay and millions in costs.

Across California, infill housing projects designed to be climate-friendly have consistently faced the risk of lawsuits under CEQA. In 2022, CEQA was used to block UC Berkeley from building new housing for students, with the court initially siding with the neighbors against the university on the grounds that living next to college students could be considered a form of pollution.

Consider that in San Francisco and Santa Monica – two prominent, progressive and self-described climate-friendly cities — nearly all new housing developments face some form of discretionary review, leaving projects vulnerable to CEQA lawsuits that delay housing for years.

Cases like these slow both climate action and housing production. Examining census data on the age of housing units in Los Angeles, we observe that between the ‘50s and the ‘80s, the city added between 166,000 and 250,000 homes per decade. Since 1990, that number has dropped to fewer than 100,000 homes per decade.

The City of Los Angeles Housing Needs Assessment acknowledges that “the percentage of housing built in the 1990s and 2000s is the lowest of any decade,” based on this data from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2014-2018. Estimates from 2010 onward have been updated since this chart’s publication.

Like what you’re reading? Get a browser notification whenever we post a new story.
You’re signed-up for browser notifications of new stories. No longer want to be notified? Unsubscribe.

California environmentalism is at a crossroads in 2025. Despite decades of leadership on clean energy and vehicle standards, the state is falling far short of its carbon reduction goals. The reason isn’t just smokestacks or tailpipes; it’s our land use.

The way we build housing dictates how much we drive, how much energy we use and how much open space we consume. The State of California’s own research indicates that our only viable path to carbon neutrality by 2045 is to build significantly more housing in walkable, transit-rich locations.

Yet even when cities have planned for this, many climate-friendly housing projects have stalled for years or been killed altogether because of California’s most important environmental law.

The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was established in 1970 to illuminate the environmental impacts of major development projects. In the postwar boom, California built $10.5 billion worth of freeways in addition to “sixteen dams, eighteen pumping stations, nine power generating plants, and hundreds of miles of aqueducts, canals, and levees.”

For decades, many of these public works projects ran roughshod over the environment and vulnerable communities. That’s why environmental and community planners welcomed CEQA as an essential safeguard against industrial polluters, sprawling subdivisions and highway expansion. Environmentalists cheered when CEQA expanded discretionary approval beyond public projects also to include private development, strengthening the best tool to defend the environment from harmful development.

CEQA was a vital law for its time. Yet it is now clear that California cannot meet the contemporary challenge of climate change if the law remains unchanged. For decades, environmental progress in California has meant adding new protections and review processes. Yet today, the bigger challenge is that some of these same regulations now delay and block environmentally-friendly projects.

This is evident in California cities. Despite local governments planning and zoning for denser housing, many modest infill housing projects were still subject to review under CEQA, a process that is both redundant and actively harmful. Across the state, opponents of housing have routinely weaponized CEQA, not for concerns over the environment, but instead to protect parking or neighborhood aesthetics.

The result? CEQA ultimately preserves the high-carbon, sprawling status quo at the expense of low-carbon, walkable cities.

In Los Angeles, where we live, there are countless examples of CEQA abuse. Lorena Plaza, a 44-unit affordable housing development next to a light-rail station, took 18 years to complete. Why would a project that both advances California’s climate goals and allows working-class families to live near clean transportation be so comically delayed? A CEQA lawsuit initiated by a neighboring business offers one explanation. The suit was eventually dismissed, but not before years of delay and millions in costs.

Across California, infill housing projects designed to be climate-friendly have consistently faced the risk of lawsuits under CEQA. In 2022, CEQA was used to block UC Berkeley from building new housing for students, with the court initially siding with the neighbors against the university on the grounds that living next to college students could be considered a form of pollution.

Consider that in San Francisco and Santa Monica – two prominent, progressive and self-described climate-friendly cities — nearly all new housing developments face some form of discretionary review, leaving projects vulnerable to CEQA lawsuits that delay housing for years.

Cases like these slow both climate action and housing production. Examining census data on the age of housing units in Los Angeles, we observe that between the ‘50s and the ‘80s, the city added between 166,000 and 250,000 homes per decade. Since 1990, that number has dropped to fewer than 100,000 homes per decade.

The City of Los Angeles Housing Needs Assessment acknowledges that “the percentage of housing built in the 1990s and 2000s is the lowest of any decade,” based on this data from the US Census Bureau’s American Community Survey 2014-2018. Estimates from 2010 onward have been updated since this chart’s publication.

Like what you’re reading? Get a browser notification whenever we post a new story.
You’re signed-up for browser notifications of new stories. No longer want to be notified? Unsubscribe.