The Atlanta Journal editor is a leading spokesman for the notion that the only way we can solve the problems created by urban sprawl and unregulated growth is by increasing urban sprawl and unregulated growth. Build more roads, he hollers. Low density lowers pollution. More complicated solutions are evil plots hatched by the pointy-headed and beltway-bound. Would that he were right. But the air pollution problems we're facing aren't imaginary. They aren't chimeras dreamed up by Commie tree-huggers harboring inexplicable desires to dominate local zoning boards. We're not talking about saving the snail darter: We're talking about little Johnny collapsing after Little League because he can't drag enough ozone-saturated molecules across the constricted aureoles in his lungs.

Whine about the EPA and federal obstructionism all you want, but the real issue is whether we possess the civic will to make real lifestyle changes to improve our air. We used to be up to challenges like these. In fact, Americans used to consider it a civic virtue to make sacrifices for the larger good.

Now people like Wooten are telling us that the only American virtue is unlimited development. Not content to point fingers merely at the feds, he's even suspicious of Georgia-based efforts to create regional solutions for regional pollution spreading from downtown Atlanta to Rabun Gap.

And rather than avoid the development dead-ends that left cities like Los Angeles smogbound, we're paying their planners to repeat the same mistakes here. Wooten praised carpetbagging transportation consultant Wendell Cox's recent efforts to convince the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority to dump a plan designed specifically for Georgia, by Georgians, in favor of emulating the traffic plan Cox created for Los Angeles decades ago.

In order to achieve the curious goal of making Atlanta's traffic more like L.A.'s, Cox's plan would rely heavily on paving over existing neighborhoods. Exactly how does this honor the purview of local governments and local zoning control?

Solving our air quality crisis is going to require leadership and sacrifices, not talk-show paranoia. GRTA and many elected officials recognize this and also recognize the stakes are too high to pretend that the problem doesn't exist. That's why they're sucking it up and working with the EPA's carrot-and-stick approach to federal highway funding, rather than whining about it.

Atlanta is home to two environmental visionaries: Jimmy I turned down the heat in the White House and you can too Carter and Ted I live on the roof of my office and don't breathe much Turner. Surely we can innovate. Surely we don't need to look to California to solve our air and traffic woes.

This article appears in Dec 2-8, 2000.