To specifically rail on the "liberal" Bay Area and numerous other "liberal" cities in the US:
The NIMBY housing policies and restrictions on building new housing are a massive part of sprawl, and with it the huge amount of excessive carbon emissions from commuting in single passenger cars.
A dense city is about the best organization of people for the environment. To get things you need, you travel the furthest distance. You centralize utilities and infrastructure. You preserve natural habitats. You reduce the effective footprint, actual and resource-wise, of the average person by huge amounts. It maximizes the effectiveness of public transport, and makes private transport less valuable. It makes transport modes like bikes, ebikes, scooters, or even walking viable. And people generally seem to prefer it.
Of course it's America, the incentives are completely messed up. The carbon tax exists as the one policy that everyone agrees would have helped reduce fossil fuel use to help avert global warming.
The other big environmental issue we face (well that we aren't facing up to) is the sixth mass extinction, which is primarily coming from sprawl. And the simple solution to that is to property tax the shit out of land in the exurbs and suburbs so that urban organization of housing is cheaper than suburban and rural, which is currently the opposite.
The externality to sprawl is the illusion that land is infinite. It most certainly is not. The real abundant supply in modern human architecture is going vertical, or even subterranean.
To get back to liberal cities where housing supply is being restricted, this is DIRECTLY causing environmental impacts, and has been for decades. It's not just a racial issue, it is very much an environmental one.
"the simple solution to that is to property tax the shit out of land in the exurbs and suburbs so that urban organization of housing is cheaper than suburban and rural, which is currently the opposite."
You can't really tax people money they don't have. Maybe it'd work in suburbs, but generally (at least in american cities) the more rural areas consist of
1. Farmland owners who likely contribute resources and get tax deductions anyway
2. mid-low income homeowners far from the city who's property cost as a whole pales in comparison to the cities. Either because of mass emmigration (which can be "White Flight" at worst, or simply dwindling resources/income at best in an evolving world) or simply happening to own/inherit land before costs went out of control.
There's not much to squeeze out of these people to begin with. And not exactly any alternative land to offer them that wouldn't be to their massive benefit (Again, this land isn't exactly valuable to begin with, comparatively speaking). Housing struggles to keep up as is and can't really afford this altruistic effort to try and consolidate everyone into a densely packed area.
The simple solution for global warming has been the carbon tax. But obviously it is a bad idea to do "shock" taxes. A shock tax in ICE vehicles wouldn't maximize the effectivity of stimulating long-term BEV demand, it would be a huge regressive tax on the huge number of people that don't rely on new cars, but used cars for everyday transport. It would inevitably simply lead to political backlash.
But a long term phase-in over a decade, which also is difficult to sustain over successive administrations and controls of congress, would be ideal. Obviously American governance is too incompetent to achieve that.
The carbon tax is for the current largest environmental threat: global warming.
But the sixth mass extinction will probably be the next big environmental issue once GW mitigations come into play. And the key to that is a big land tax to change incentives. And the same issues arise: how to avoid shock pricing and instead phase in over an economically adaptable timeframe.
It even has the same technological potential solutions but lack of supply: vertical farms and artificial meat have the potential to eliminate huge swathes of land that are currently used for 1) grazing and 2) crops that feed grazing animals.
Vertical farming and artificial meat should be getting massive research subsidies right now. Every research university should have substantial grants pursuing these. Because the habitats that we can reclaim back to nature and hopefully avert a total collapse of the "species web" is very important.
I feel we are constantly playing russian roulette with extinctions. Was this species so important that everything collapses? No. Well, how about this one? This one?
I mean, insect populations are dropping. Insects. Very concerning.
While I find some aspects of your comment interesting, I’d also throw out that the environmental devastation from farming far outstrips that of housing. However, in both scenarios, it’s clear that much of the solution space is vertical (pun intended).
I'll stick to my "sprawled out" city where we couldn't build tall even if we wanted to simply because the land does not allow it. I can get anywhere in the city in less than 10 minutes and have access to plenty of creature comforts.
Sprawl is only bad in big cities. In a city of 250k, it's not really a big deal.
The NIMBY housing policies and restrictions on building new housing are a massive part of sprawl, and with it the huge amount of excessive carbon emissions from commuting in single passenger cars.
A dense city is about the best organization of people for the environment. To get things you need, you travel the furthest distance. You centralize utilities and infrastructure. You preserve natural habitats. You reduce the effective footprint, actual and resource-wise, of the average person by huge amounts. It maximizes the effectiveness of public transport, and makes private transport less valuable. It makes transport modes like bikes, ebikes, scooters, or even walking viable. And people generally seem to prefer it.
Of course it's America, the incentives are completely messed up. The carbon tax exists as the one policy that everyone agrees would have helped reduce fossil fuel use to help avert global warming.
The other big environmental issue we face (well that we aren't facing up to) is the sixth mass extinction, which is primarily coming from sprawl. And the simple solution to that is to property tax the shit out of land in the exurbs and suburbs so that urban organization of housing is cheaper than suburban and rural, which is currently the opposite.
The externality to sprawl is the illusion that land is infinite. It most certainly is not. The real abundant supply in modern human architecture is going vertical, or even subterranean.
To get back to liberal cities where housing supply is being restricted, this is DIRECTLY causing environmental impacts, and has been for decades. It's not just a racial issue, it is very much an environmental one.