Editorial: Housing shortage, hot economy take toll on environment

California’s housing crisis doesn’t just affect people struggling to live and work here right now. There’s growing evidence that it could impact everyone who lives here, and elsewhere, in the future.

The authors of the new California Green Innovation Index — an annual report prepared by Beacon Economics and released by Next 10, a nonprofit group funded by the venture capitalist F. Noel Perry — found that, following years of progress on California’s ambitious climate policies, transportation-related emissions have begun to rise.

The culprit? A healthy economy — coupled with a lack of affordable housing.

Between 2006, when the Legislature and then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger passed landmark climate legislation, and 2015, California’s greenhouse gas emissions decreased by 12 percent per capita. Meanwhile, California’s per capita gross domestic product rose by nearly $5,000 per person — double the national average.

California’s feat of combining emissions reductions with strong job growth has been the subject of international attention and a source of pride for state officials.

But thanks to the state’s past mistakes, California may be reaching the end of this golden period.

Total emissions are still declining, but the rate of decline is slowing. That’s largely because there’s been a spike in emissions from transportation. This year’s index found that emissions from transportation rose 2.7 percent statewide from 2014 to 2015.

At least one of the reasons for the increase is an obvious one: Californians’ commute times are increasing.

With commute times in California increasing by 2.8 percent from 2014 to 2015 — and public transportation trips declining by 4.8 percent during that same time — the data are clear about what’s happening to California workers.

They’re having to travel farther and farther to their jobs. The decline of public transportation trips suggests that they increasingly live in places without good transit options.

The source of the problem is obvious: The state’s job centers don’t have nearly enough housing that employees can afford.

Part of the solution will be for the state to develop more, and cleaner, transportation options.

If California is going to meet its emissions goals, it has to invest in regional transit solutions outside of the large city centers. Increased use of public transit is good for the environment and good for communities’ quality of life. Developing and building these solutions would be good for job production, and it could encourage innovations outside of the state’s usual tech hubs.

But an even bigger part of the solution will be increasing the state’s housing supply.

This is especially true for the coastal cities that drove the state’s economic recovery and increasingly drive the state’s job production.

Housing production in California’s coastal areas has been restricted for decades.

The reasons for the shortage have been said many times before — Proposition 13 made building housing less attractive to cities at the same time local communities increased barriers to development via byzantine regulations on local zoning, land-use rules, and various other NIMBYisms.

But it can’t be said enough times that the results of this shortage have been devastating, especially for younger Californians.

The new Green Innovation Index suggests that this shortage will affect our ability to fight climate change — so it could be devastating for the next generation of Californians, too.

In the coming decade, California has to find ways to reduce emissions by 5 percent each year. This challenge will require innovation, investment in renewable sources of energy, and a determination to make communities more sustainable through proven methods, like better public transportation.

It will also require a more unusual form of sustainability: housing.

This commentary is from The Chronicle’s editorial board. We invite you to express your views in a letter to the editor. Please submit your letter via our online form: SFChronicle.com/letters.