When Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti revealed his city’s version of the Green New Deal in April, he issued a clear call to action. “Los Angeles needs to lead, but the whole world needs to act,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “This plan gives us a fighting chance.” He called the climate action and sustainability plan a “greenprint,” expressing hope that other cities around the world would make use of it.
In the West, his words have proven prophetic to an extent. In August, Seattle’s city council unanimously passed its own plan aiming for carbon neutrality by 2030 through, among other things, the adoption of renewable power, elimination of pollutants, and free public transportation. Other coastal cities may not be far behind in adopting their own ambitious versions of the Green New Deal, which was sparked by climate activists and popularized by high-profile progressives such as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In Portland, residents are clamoring for policies that would phase out fossil fuels, while San Francisco officials are considering transforming the wreckage of utility PG&E, which filed for bankruptcy due to wildfire liability, into a city-run utility that could speed the adoption of green energy.
Most of these plans have yet to materialize, but in Los Angeles, the clock has begun ticking on a lofty goal: zero carbon emissions and zero waste by 2050. It’s an especially tall order for a metropolis like L.A. that’s been perched atop the list of most polluted cities for so long that it’s become virtually synonymous with smog. In fact, California has a near-monopoly on that front; the American Lung Association says the state is home to seven of the 10 smoggiest cities in the U.S. In recent years, L.A. has also been plagued by heat waves, floods, mudslides, and a series of deadly wildfires that have cost the city billions of dollars in damage. All the while, temperatures remain on a steady upward trajectory that’s unlikely to change without a colossal effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
In keeping with the enormity of the task before it, Los Angeles’ 2019 Sustainable City pLAn — its take on the Green New Deal nomenclature — includes a dizzying range of targets spanning all sectors of daily life. The plan pledges that, by 2025, Angelenos will reduce their driving by an average of two miles per day; that the city will be recycling every drop of wastewater by 2035; by 2045, that it will run entirely on renewable energy; and to achieve zero net carbon emissions come 2050.
They’re audacious targets, but what’s missing in many cases are the concrete steps to reach them. This lack of detail has led to some skepticism about L.A.’s ability to stick to the stated timeline. For instance, former California State Assemblyman Chuck DeVore wrote in a Los Angeles Daily News op-ed that “reducing Los Angeles’ high ozone days from 143 to zero is impossible anytime soon, but not for the reasons some believe.” DeVore argued that Garcetti’s lofty vision ignored a series of factors ranging from geography to the inflated costs of battery-powered energy.
On the other side of the debate are those who worry these myriad Green New Deals aren’t nearly aggressive enough to head off the worst impacts of climate change. That faction includes the Sunrise Movement, a nationwide network of young people pushing for more strident action on eliminating greenhouse gas emissions. The organization’s L.A. chapter issued a warning in the wake of Garcetti’s announcement: “With Mayor Garcetti’s current plan for net-zero emissions by 2050, Los Angeles is on track to be twenty years too late. By the year 2030, we will have reached a point of no return — where feedback loops driven by carbon emissions will have propelled beyond our control.”
A spokesperson at the mayor’s office characterized the current moment as the “getting the ball rolling” phase of the project.
Janet Kübler, a marine biologist at California State University, Northridge who studies the effects of climate change, believes L.A.’s Green New Deal walks a delicate line with adroitness. “The targets and the plan are on the optimistic side of realistic, which is exactly as they should be — inspiring but technologically possible,” she said.
And Kübler is already noticing changes in the behavior of Angelenos. “I see the impact of street trees and the tree planting plan already. Also, the beginning of restoration of the L.A. River is inspiring to people. These are the kinds of changes that impact public opinion and support for further progress.”
Kübler considers the plan to be a force of public good greater than the sum of its parts. “This shift of perspective from single issues like housing, transportation, and air quality all competing for funds and time to an integrated vision and plan to solve higher-level challenges is exactly what is needed,” she said.
That comprehensive nature is what sets the L.A. plan apart, according to Sean Hecht, co-executive director of the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law. At the core of L.A.’s plan, he said, is the ethos that the “environment isn’t just for wealthy people. It’s something that encompasses the public health of all the communities in the region.”
As the nation experiences ever-greater consequences of climate change, Hecht expects to see additional cities adopting their own proposals to address the unique challenges of their environments. “For example,” he said, “any community in a region where there’s water scarcity is going to be thinking about water planning.”
Sustainability plans require the teamwork of multiple agencies, which means an immense amount of not just cooperation, but funding. That’s why Hecht expects larger cities, for now, to be the ones tackling such long-term projects. He is hopeful, though, that in the future comprehensive climate plans will begin to spread beyond metropolises. Places dependent on oil, gas, and coal extraction, for instance, could begin to see the connection between their economic future and staving off environmental degradation.
“That kind of thing could be very attractive,” Hecht said. “There are cultural and political reasons why we don’t associate those kinds of communities with those kinds of politics nowadays, of course, but it seems like we could.”
