The climate is getting warmer and people are contributing to the change. What should we do about it? Many people think they are fighting climate change and keeping the environment pristine by banning the development of vast tracts of land in California and otherwise making it prohibitively expensive to build there.
They’re wrong. Building restrictions in California and other temperate regions are making building new homes in the greenest, most climate-friendly places unaffordable and pushing people to the browner, less climate-friendly, carbon-spewing South.
Read Bryan Caplan’s new book Build, baby, buildwhich I reviewed for AIER here. Caplan explains the optimistic economic and ethical – and pessimistic politics – of building regulation and shows how many social problems can be addressed, if not entirely alleviated, simply by letting people build more housing. With regard to climate change and the environment, he explains research by economists Edward Glaeser and Matthew Kahn show how restrictions on building in California and the Northeast have driven up housing prices and encouraged migration to less climate-friendly areas. I’m writing this from my Sweet Home Alabama, which has a lot to offer, but would be virtually uninhabitable from April to October without air conditioning.
In graduate school, I applied for a job in San Jose, California. I remember looking at the weather and being shocked: it now shows lows of 42 in December and January and highs of 82 in July and August. Birmingham, meanwhile, has lows of 36 and 33 in December and January and highs of 91 in July and August. Birmingham has five months – May, June, July, August and September – with high temperatures greater than or equal to the hottest part of the year in San Jose. The average sales price of a single-family home in Birmingham? $189,450. Compare that to $1.7 million in San Jose. Yes, San Jose is expensive even for California, but the average sales price of a single-family home in Oakland is over $1 million. Even our very nice, centrally located, well-insulated five-bedroom home, built in 2018, is worth about a third of San Jose’s average sales price.
Yes, San Jose looks like a very nice place to live, and the mild climate means people’s lives are kinder to the environment. However, California’s highly regulated housing market means that many people are priced out of places where their carbon footprint is smallest and pushed into places where their carbon footprint is largest. A browner, warmer planet is the unintended consequence of California regulators’ demand for low-density, “green” housing.
If you’re looking for a great introduction to the environmental issues Caplan discusses, Kahn (one of the authors he discusses) has done the world a huge favor by writing Fundamentals of environmental economics and published it on Amazon for $1 a little over a decade ago. It’s the perfect gift for Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, birthdays and other gift giving occasions, and it’s both cheaper (and greener) than a greeting card. It might even make people understand that cities like San Francisco need far more housing than recycling bins.
Art Carden is a Professor of Economics and Medical Properties Trust Fellow at Samford University.