like most Angelinos, I have been glued to weather reports, but still waiting for stories that link one of the wettest years on record to the climate crisis. As for City Hall\u2019s response, other than swift water rescues, removing downed trees, and repairing hot electric wires, there is little else.
The lead story remains how local government can use its self-imposed homeless crisis to justify lucrative up-zoning changes for big real estate owners and developers. Even though these handouts make the climate crisis worse\u2014because they lead to energy-intensive and auto-dependent luxury apartments\u2014this is what concerns City Hall.
While City Hall averts its eyes from the obvious\u2014droughts, wildfires, invasive species, storms, and sea level rise\u2014they cannot claim, \u201cNobody ever told us.\u201d The new IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) climate report from the UN was dramatically summarized by the UN\u2019s Secretary General, Ant\u00f3nio Guterres:
Today\u2019s report is a code red for humanity. The alarm bells are deafening, and the evidence is irrefutable: greenhouse\u001egas emissions from fossil-fuel burning and deforestation are choking our planet and putting billions of people at immediate risk. Global heating is affecting every region on Earth, with many of the changes becoming irreversible.
The internationally agreed threshold of 1.5\u00b0C is perilously close . . . We are already at 1.2\u00b0C and rising. Warming has accelerated in recent decades. Every fraction of a degree counts. Greenhouse\u001egas concentrations are at record levels. Extreme weather and climate disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity . . . All nations, especially the G20 and other major emitters, need to join the net-zero emissions coalition and reinforce their commitments with credible, concrete and enhanced nationally determined contributions and policies. . .. If we combine forces now, we can avert climate catastrophe. But, as today\u2019s report makes clear, there is no time for delay and no room for excuses . . (Edited for brevity.)
Unfortunately, if you wait for City Hall\u2019s response to the latest UN climate report, you will wait in vain. Despite detailed guidelines from the Governor\u2019s Office of Research and Planning, Los Angeles does not have a Climate Change Element in the City\u2019s Charter\u2019s required General Plan. City Hall has also ignored a new California law requiring all cities and counties to adopt a General Plan Environmental Justice element.
Instead, Los Angeles has put its eggs in the basket of up-zoning, which allows real estate investors to easily build highly profitable, auto-oriented market rate and luxury apartments. This approach is based on three absurd, data-free justifications that new expensive infill apartments built on expensive land magically trickle down to:
\uf0b7House the overcrowded and homeless,
\uf0b7Increase transit ridership, and
\uf0b7Reduce the Green House Gases emissions responsible for climate change.
What price do Angelenos pay for this negligence?
There are at least five ways City Hall’s non-response to the climate crisis degrades the quality of life for Los Angeles residents;
\uf0b7Upzoning inflates the price of land and \u2013 big surprise – the cost of housing.
\uf0b7Upzoning increases economic inequality, another cause of the housing crisis.
\uf0b7Because most new apartment buildings consist of market rate or luxury units, their tenants have high incomes, own cars, and rarely use mass transit. This is a major reason for declining transit ridership in Los Angeles, especially in neighborhoods like Hollywood, where many new, infill, auto-dependent luxury apartments are near subway stations.
\uf0b7When real estate investors pay cash for homes and apartments, the cost of housing, homelessness, overcrowding, and out-migration all increase.
\uf0b7If\/when upzoning leads to an increase in a neighborhood\u2019s population, existing infrastructure and services fail since the densification of older neighborhoods ignores parks, schools, fire stations, streets, sidewalks, street trees, water mains, electric grid, storm drains, sanitary sewers, and related systems.
What should City Hall do in lieu of its inaction on the climate crisis?
This list is only a beginning, a starting point for municipal efforts to reduce the Green House Gas emissions responsible for the climate crisis:
\uf0b7Immediately prepare and adopt General Plan Climate Change and Environmental Justice Elements, and then apply them to the future updates of LA\u2019s 35 Community Plans and two District Plans.
\uf0b7Increase the budget of the Bureau of Street Services Urban Forestry Division. Comparable cities spend four times as much on their street trees.
\uf0b7Follow the example of Kansas City and make transit free.
\uf0b7Design, pay for, and build First-Last Mile public improvements at all METRO light and heavy rails stations. Without parking facilities for cars, bicycles, and scooters, as well as smooth, shaded sidewalks, way-faring signs, and streetscape, transit ridership will not increase.
Repair LA\u2019s broken-down sidewalks and streets to increase walking for short trips.
even though the climate crisis is headed for the point of no-return, there is plenty that Los Angeles can do to mitigate and adapt to the new normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n