More than one-sixth — 3.7 million tons a year — of Hawai`i’s carbon emissions come from cars, trucks, and other vehicles. And a large fraction of that, in turn, is generated by daily commutes of workers and students, shopping trips, and other errands for which automobiles are always used.
If Hawai`i is to make meaningful reductions in its carbon emissions, reducing the volume that come from tailpipes is imperative. Imperative, but not easy.
Hawai`i’s reliance on the automobile is heavier than that of many other states. Part of the reason is the virtual lack of public transportation available for most residents on islands other than O`ahu. But even where public transit is available, it is underutilized, with residents complaining of infrequent or inconvenient schedules and routes.
Improving bus service or promoting alternative modes of transportation (such as bicycles) would be an important element in any program to reduce carbon emissions. Mitigating against this, however, is the pattern of urban and suburban development that has occurred not only on O`ahu, but in most other urban areas of the United States. The less dense urban development is, the more difficult it becomes to provide cost-effective, user-friendly public transportation.
Blurred Landscapes
Hawai`i’s land use law, Chapter 205, was intended in part to prevent urban sprawl. Yet its success has been limited. Large-lot subdivisions have proliferated in land that has been designated for urban development — what might be called the pastoralization of urban lands. Meanwhile, in lands designated for agriculture, counties have allowed the proliferation of small-lot “martini ranch” subdivisions allowed under county zoning ordinances — in other words, the urbanization of pastoral lands.
Together, these two phenomena have resulted in a blurring of the distinction between urban and ag lands, protection of which was one of the chief reasons behind passage in 1962 of the state’s Land Use Law.
Making the link between land use regulations and emissions has come slowly to many of those who are in key policy-making positions. The state Land Use Commission and, at the county level, the planning commissions or councils that vote on zoning requests have not made consideration of carbon emissions from new developments part of their routine review of applications. Traffic impact analyses are almost always required, but the concerns that these analyses address are limited to whether roads servicing proposed project are sufficient to bear the increased traffic with no reduction in level of service, or whether new roads should be built. To date, the pollution that is created by sprawling suburban or rural subdivisions has not been regarded as a show-stopper in the approval process. In fact, it has not been given so much as a walk-on role.
Land use regulators must bear chief responsibility for this oversight. Yet they are not alone in failing to see the connection between patterns of sprawl, on the one hand, and increasing emissions and dependence on fossil fuels, on the other. The Energy Division of the Department of Business, Economic Development, and Tourism has only recently embraced the notion that land use planning can be a tool to reduce carbon emissions. The state’s Climate Change Action Plan, published by DBEDT last November, includes the recommendation that land use planning be used to reduce fuel use by curbing the need for trips.
— Patricia Tummons
Volume 10, Number 2 August 1999