The climate is getting hotter, and people are contributing to that change. What should we do about it? Many want to fight climate change and keep the environment pristine by banning development on large tracts of California land or otherwise making it prohibitively expensive to build on it. I believe that
they are wrong. Building regulations in California and other temperate regions make it prohibitively expensive to build new homes in the greenest, climate-friendly places, forcing people to move to the browner, less climate-friendly, carbon-emitting South. I will have to move.
Here’s Brian Caplan’s new book, Build, Baby, Build, which I reviewed for AIER. Caplan explains the optimistic economics and ethics, as well as the pessimistic politics, of building regulations, and how simply getting people to build more housing would solve many social problems, if not completely alleviate them. It shows you what you can do. On climate change and the environment, he draws on economists Edward Glaser and Matthew Glaser to show how building regulations in California and the Northeast have increased housing prices and encouraged migration to climate-unfriendly areas. Explain Kahn’s research. I’m writing this article from Sweet Home, Alabama. Alabama has a lot going on, but you can’t really live there without air conditioning from about April to about October.
During graduate school, I applied for a job in San Jose, California. I remember being shocked when I saw the weather. Currently, the minimum temperature in December and January is 42 degrees, and the maximum temperature in July and August is 82 degrees. Meanwhile, in Birmingham, the minimum temperatures in December and January are 36°C and 33°C, and the maximum temperatures in July and August are 91°C. Five months in Birmingham (May, June, July, August, and September) are as hot or hotter than San Jose’s hottest months of the year. What is the median sales price for single-family homes in Birmingham? $189,450. Compare that to San Jose’s $1.7 million. While San Jose is certainly one of the more expensive cities in California, the median sales price for single-family homes in Oakland is over $1 million. Even a very nice, centrally located, well-insulated five-bedroom home built in 2018 is worth about a third of San Jose’s median sales price.
Yes, San Jose seems like a very nice place to live. The mild climate means that people’s lifestyles are environmentally friendly. But California’s highly regulated housing market means that many people are priced out of places with the least environmental impact and are pushed to places with the greatest environmental impact. A browner, warmer planet is an unintended consequence of California regulators’ lower-density “green” housing requirements.
If you’re looking for a good introduction to the environmental issues Kaplan discusses, Kahn (one of the authors he discusses) wrote Fundamentals of Environmental Economics a little over a decade ago, available for $1 on Amazon By publishing this book, you have made a huge contribution to the world. . They’re the perfect gift for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birthdays, and other gift-giving occasions, and they’re cheaper (and more environmentally friendly) than greeting cards. It might even help people understand that cities like San Francisco need far more housing than recycling bins.
Art Carden is a professor of economics and health wealth trust fellow at Samford University.
