The church of the poisoned mind

My last post made a case for building housing along with a park at Santa Monica Airport after it closes at the end of 2028. Including housing in the plan gets us:

• A more public park

• A faster-built park

• A better-used park with more eyes on it

• Thousands more people getting to live in Santa Monica, an incredible place to live

More importantly than what I think, momentum is building for including housing at the airport. The newly elected pro-housing City Council seems to want it. The hotel worker’s union and other groups are rallying behind it. And state law may force the city to build it regardless.

All the political and practical momentum for housing-and-park at the airport is causing some of Santa Monica’s most hardcore NIMBYs to start hugging planes instead of trees. They are now suggesting the airport should be kept open past 2028 until a different, presumably more conservative City Council can be elected. These folks would rather have no park than a park with housing.

To be clear, plenty of other Santa Monicans are advocating in good faith for a park-only option without demanding the entire process be derailed. Many park-only supporters are the same folks who worked for years to close the airport, and they are probably aghast at the suggestion that it should stay open.

But back to the plane huggers. The quotes are amazing:

By “risk”, they mean housing. By “protect ourselves”, they mean from more housing.

Let’s talk about risk. Santa Monica Airport is used by small airplanes, most of which use leaded gasoline - the same kind of fuel that was banned in cars decades ago because it is so dangerous for children’s development. You may be familiar with the late Kevin Drum’s work on this topic, showing how the violent crime rate in the mid-20th century rose and fell in almost perfect sync with how much leaded gasoline had been used 20-ish years earlier. Babies born into an environment with more lead were more likely to commit violent crimes a couple decades later in their early twenties.

Small planes using leaded fuel also put kids at risk. Researchers found elevated lead levels in the blood of kids living within a kilometer of general aviation airports like Santa Monica’s. Another study found that kids living downwind of a small airport in Santa Clara County were more than twice as likely to have high blood lead levels. Regulations are shifting - California recently banned leaded aviation fuel starting in 2031 - and unleaded fuels are being developed, but that process is moving slowly.

Meanwhile, kids who live near Santa Monica Airport today are inhaling poison that damages their developing brains. They will grow up more likely to commit violent crimes, more likely to have a lower IQ, and less likely to have high socioeconomic status. Closing the airport is a wonderful gift to all the kids who live near it. It should have happened a long time ago.

Who could be against closing the airport? Both Marc Verville and Tricia Crane are veterans of Santa Monica’s slow-growth movement, working in groups such as Residocracy and Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City that have fought development in the city. Crane co-authored Measure LV, a failed 2016 local ballot measure that would have subjected almost every new development in Santa Monica to a public vote. Verville likes to hold Zoom meetings to argue the housing shortage is a myth using “a series of deeply researched graphs”.

Crane and Verville’s hostility to having more neighbors seems deeply ingrained. Never mind the years of hard work by their fellow citizens to get the airport closed. When the “risk” of more neighbors got serious, their reaction was to hug a plane.

Perhaps the plane huggers aren’t familiar with the dangers of aviation fuel pollution. Would they change their minds if they knew they were choosing the risk of brain damage in their grandkids over the “risk” of more people living in their neighborhood? Or has NIMBYism poisoned their minds more gravely than any amount of leaded fuel could? Perhaps as an antidote, a dose of 80’s britpop would help them accept the uncertainty of change and new neighbors:

I saw your eyes across the street
Who would be the fool to take you
Be more than just kind?
Step into a life of maybe
Love is hard to find
In the church of the poison mind