California Has a Controversial Plan to Solve Its Housing Crisis.

“The only way we will meet our climate and air quality goals is to build a lot more housing and to do so in urbanized areas accessible to public transportation,” Sen. Scott Wiener said.

There’s research to back up that SB827 will help the planet. Dense cities generally have lower emissions than sprawling suburbs. The University of California-Berkeley School of Law and Terner Center for Housing Innovation found that by putting all new residential development within three miles of a transit stop through 2030, the projected reduction in emissions would equate to removing 378,000 cars from the road, and account for almost 15 percent of what’s needed to reach the state’s emission target. Ethan Elkind, director of the Climate Change and Business Program at UC-Berkeley and UCLA Schools of Law, calls Wiener’s proposal “one of the most important climate bills in California.”