In California, College Students Are Now Officially Considered an Environmental Menacehttps://slate.com/business/2021/08/judge-rules-uc-berkeley-must-freeze-enrollment-under-environmental-regulation.htmlEnrolling more students at one of America’s best public universities might be bad for the environment.
That’s the conclusion of California Superior Court Judge Brad Seligman, who on Aug. 23 ordered the University of California–Berkeley to temporarily freeze the number of students it admits every year under the California Environmental Quality Act, putting crowded classrooms in the same category as heavy infrastructure like highways and airports. “Further increases in student enrollment above the current enrollment level at UC–Berkeley could result in an adverse change or alteration of the physical environment,” the judge wrote.
It’s the latest and most explicit example of California’s famously stringent environmental law being used for population control. Instead of governing the construction of dams or smokestacks, CEQA is frequently leveraged by anti-development groups in California to oppose apartment buildings, homeless shelters, and bus lanes, among other things. Now it’s being employed to micromanage university admissions.
Nice to see the Enviro-Nuts attacking their own!
