Golis: Marin’s footprint problem

Poor Marin County. After all these years of touting its environmental credentials, a new study from the University of California says Marin has one of the largest carbon footprints in the Bay Area.

The report from UC Berkeley’s CoolClimate Network (and underwritten by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District) found that the average Marin household produces 46.8 metric tons of carbon-related gas emissions each year.

By comparison, Sonoma County produces the second smallest amount of greenhouse emissions among Bay Area counties, 40.4 tons per household. The emissions from 11 cities and towns in Sonoma County were all below the statewide average.

The UC study arrived only a few days before another major environmental story: Scientists on Wednesday reported that 2015 was the warmest year on record. Unless you live on Mars, or you’re a Republican candidate for president, you now know that climate change is real.

We’ve always had multiple reasons to stop wasting energy and stop polluting the air - and now we have one more.

For Marin, it turns out, it isn’t easy being one of the wealthiest counties in America. With all that green - the folding kind - you’re obliged to own bigger houses, drive bigger cars, fly to exotic places and buy more stuff. You may be a dues-paying member of your favorite environmental group, but you’re still producing more greenhouse gases than other people and contributing more to climate change. (The average household income in Marin, before taxes, is $139,154, according to documentation included with the report. The average household income in Sonoma County is listed as $89,184.)

People with wealth “just consume more,” the report’s co-author, Christopher Jones, told Staff Writer Guy Kovner.

The Bay Area’s smallest carbon footprint can be found in San Francisco, where people live in smaller homes and are more likely to walk or ride transit to their job or to a store. The greenest places in America are now the big, densely populated cities with successful transit systems.

All of us can do better, of course, but folks who have dealt with Marin activists over the years are quietly wishing this becomes the moment when those activists stop lecturing others about their environmental failings.

Marin can be proud of its environmental successes - a model farmlands preservation program, a first-rate recycling effort, a pioneering commitment to clean-energy through community choice aggregation.

But the county must also acknowledge its singular opposition to housing for the people who work there. (The median price of a single-family home in Marin passed $1 million in May.)

If Marin didn’t want to build housing for working people, it could have stopped commercial development, too, but it wanted to have it both ways. Fancy shopping centers and sleek office complexes? Yes, please. Subdivisions and apartment buildings? Not in my backyard.

Everyone knows the consequences: Regional highways are jammed with commuters from Petaluma and Rohnert Park, Vallejo and Fairfield.

All this was done in the name of environmental protection, but thousands of cars spewing carbon emissions every day are nobody’s idea of environmental stewardship.

Then came the moment in 2008 when Marin’s most prominent environmental organization, the Marin Conservation League, declared its opposition to a tax measure to support Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit. It would be “an environmentalist’s nightmare,” said one MCL leader.

SMART estimates its trains will reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars by 124,000 pounds per day.

Responding to the UC report, Ann Hancock, executive director of Santa Rosa’s Center for Climate Protection, noted that vehicle emissions remain “the 800-pound gorilla” when it comes to reducing greenhouse gases. The report said transportation is responsible for a third of all emissions.

At the end, the report lists what people can do to reduce their contributions to climate change: Buy more electric vehicles. Heat your house with renewable electricity, not natural gas. Rely on renewable energy. Confine new construction to existing urban areas. Build smaller homes. Rely on “low-carbon diets,” meaning more fruit and vegetables, less meat. Buy locally-sourced services and products.

You will notice that some of these remedies are easier said than done. What people of means sometimes miss is that these measures remain beyond the reach of people scrambling to pay the bills each month.

Still, whether you live in Marin or Sonoma, these recommendations become signposts on the way to a healthier planet. And many can afford to do more.

Pete Golis is a columnist for The Press Democrat. Email him at golispd@gmail.com.