The Center for American Progress reports
On [April 8], L.A. mayor Eric Garcetti released an ambitious plan that puts environmental, economic, and equality issues front and center in helping determine the trajectory of the city, which plans to add another half-million residents by 2035.
[...]A few of the plan's highlights include: becoming "the first big city in the nation to achieve zero waste" by 2025, fully divesting from coal-powered electricity by 2025, reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, having zero smog days by 2025, and making it so that 50 percent of all trips taken by city residents are by bike, foot, or public transportation by 2035. The plan also makes commitments to reduce energy use in all buildings by 30 percent by 2035.
[...]The plan calls for a reduction of the urban heat island effect differential--the difference between the temperature of the city and the surrounding area--by 1.7°F by 2025 and 3°F by 2035.
[...]20 percent of L.A. is covered in rooftops and 40 percent in pavement of some form. Changing the reflective capacity of these areas and adding more greenspace will play a big role in reducing the heat island effect. [Executive director of the L.A.-based Climate Resolve and a former commissioner at the L.A. Department of Water and Power, Jonathan Parfrey] and other city officials have already been pushing for these changes. In December 2013, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously passed a building code update requiring all new and refurbished homes to have cool roofs--which use sunlight-reflecting materials--making L.A. the first major city to require such a measure.
[...]The city's new sustainability plans calls for 10,000 of these cool roofs to be in place by 2017.
The full plan spans 108 pages, covering everything from reducing potable water use by 10 percent in city parks to ensuring that 50 percent of the city's light-duty vehicle purchases are electric vehicles by 2025. With the drought in full swing and no reason to believe that prayers for rain will bring lasting results, the city is hoping to reduce overall municipal water use by 25 percent by 2025 and 30 percent by 2030.
Related Stories
The Center for American Progress reports
According to a new French law approved [March 19], rooftops on new buildings in commercial zones across France must either be partially covered in plants or solar panels.
Green roofs, which cover rooftop space with a layer of grasses, shrubs, flowers, and other forms of flora, offer a number of benefits. They create an insulating effect, reducing the amount of energy needed to heat or cool a building depending on the season. They increase local access to green space, which often comes at a premium in urban environments. They retain rainwater, thus decreasing runoff and any related drainage issues. They provide a space for urban wildlife, such as birds, to congregate and even nest, and they reduce air pollution by acting as natural filters.
Green rooftops also significantly reduce the urban "heat island" effect in which urban areas are noticeably warmer than their surroundings. The heat island effect can cause large cities to get 1.8°F to 5.4°F warmer than surrounding areas in the day, and 22°F warmer at night, according to the EPA. This effect happens when buildings, roads, and other developments replace formerly open land and greenery, causing surfaces to become moist and impermeable, and to warm up.
[...]the law was scaled back from initial proposals [made] by environmental groups [who asked that green roofs] cover the entire rooftop surface of all new buildings. The compromise gave businesses a choice to install solar panels instead or to only cover part of the roof in foliage.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @12:31PM
Why not work to stabilize or reduce the population instead of trying to jam even more people in there?
I've never understood why someplace with a "water shortage" isn't really just overpopulated. The land only carries a certain size population before the fauna starts to move away or die off.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @12:37PM
> Why not work to stabilize or reduce the population instead of trying to jam even more people in there?
If you believe the conservative party line california has been doing everything it can to discourage population growth with job-killing regulations.
> I've never understood why someplace with a "water shortage" isn't really just overpopulated.
The california water shortage is overwhelmingly an issue of over-farming, not over-population.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:21PM
It's not that the absolute amount of water for the population is the same but that the population has increased enough to need even more even for basic needs?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @03:07PM
If they get their normal amount of rain they wouldn't have a "water shortage". Let's not forget that California's agriculture feeds a lot more people than just California's population. If they cutback farming where the hell will all food to replace it come from?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @03:42PM
I just looked at the US map. Looks like there's a lot of land that isn't Los Angeles. Kind of seems like we could go farm there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @04:24PM
GP wasn't talking about Los Angeles. California, on the other hand, has a giant agricultural industry. The entire state has been suffering from a significant drought [ca.gov] for years.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @09:48PM
Most agriculture done in California takes place in the Central Valley. [mappery.com]
Folks will quickly notice that no part of that touches the ocean, which most of the giant cities are near.
As for the GP, it's amazing how many people think nothing has changed since the 1920s--specifically, the cost of land.
Any "farming" done in the incorporated areas of L.A. County is of the boutique variety.
This guy grows food, Jules Dervaes, Urban Homesteader [wikipedia.org]
but he doesn't get to purchase water by the acre-foot.
He pays residential rates like other city dwellers.
To find industrial farming in SoCal, again, you have to get away from the ocean and go to a place where real estate prices aren't so outrageous aka the Inland Empire. [wixstatic.com]
.
...and with cities making up only 20 percent of water use in Cali, even if that consumption is cut in half[1], it will barely make a dent in the problem.
Once again, Governor Jerry Brown is pandering to Big Business.
The FIRST thing on his list should have been something that would make a GIANT difference: drip irrigation. [google.com]
[1] Significant reductions in cities will not be achieved until smart systems are mandated that check soil moisture and only water grass according to that reading.
Those 40 year old timers whose smallest increment is a half hour are just stupid.
Mostly, they water the sidewalk.
Even better: mandated xeriscaping. [google.com]
N.B. There was a story some years back on the other site about a guy in north Orange County who ripped out his lawn and got busted by his city.
He's looking really wise these days.
-- gewg_
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @12:05AM
In the big city, when land is idle for most of the week and isn't making anybody any money for days in a row, that land gets bought up by someone with big plans.
Add in that the current activities in that area make a bunch of noise and that housing developments have sprouted up around it, the city fathers will want it repurposed.
The last racetrack in L.A. County is about to suffer that fate.
Irwindale.Speedway+outlet.mall [google.com]
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday April 14 2015, @02:38AM
That's been a problem across the country. Any real estate that used to be "out on the country" is, if not already there, getting closer to the suburbs every day. Local farmland has been particularly hard hit. New Jersey's nickname is the "Garden State", not because everyone has a garden but because they used to grow a vast amount of produce. Very fertile soil, adequate rainfall and a growing season long enough for any temperate climate crops. Now? Most farms, particularly since the 80's, have been sold off and developed as condos and strip malls, a far inferior use of great land than producing food. The same process has been repeated across the country, with more agriculture concentrated in fewer and fewer locations. Instead of every supermarket offering fresh, flavorful, locally grown produce (and beef and poultry and eggs and dairy and...), almost any place you shop offers the same food from the same places. The quality certainly has not increased.
While California has always had the sunshine, they have made significant trade-offs in acquiring the water necessary to sustain a large population and big agriculture. There is a constant battle over water from the Colorado River and from the Owens River, both of which now rarely, if ever, reach their natural final destination with most going for agriculture and in the case of the Owens, going to Los Angeles. Even as early as the first decades of the 20th century they were damming rivers and flooding national treasures (look up Hetch Hetchy) to provide water for their population centers. I worry at what this prolonged drought in California is going to do to food prices.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Reziac on Sunday April 12 2015, @05:49PM
There's not a lot of land in the rest of the U.S. that's anywhere near as suitable for fruits (including wine grapes) and vegetables, which are a significant chunk of CA's ag. Fruits and vegetables are a helluva lot more profitable than grain, so it's not like farmers are avoiding growing 'em elsewhere -- rather that the climate just isn't suitable. You won't find kiwis, avocados, or oranges growing in North Dakota no matter how hospitable that climate may be for wheat.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 13 2015, @05:37PM
Its a labor cost thing. Tijuana is on the other bank of a river. On the other hand its a much longer voyage to get to Minnesota. That doesn't mean there's no illegals in the midwest, not at all, just not as many as the desert southwest.
We'll still eat asparagus, its just it'll be somewhat more expensive from Alabama rather than CA.
Its an open question if migrant farm workers will be treated worse because absolute conditions are worse and even further from home, or they'll be treated better due to shortage of them. We might even see white people harvest food, unlikely as it sounds!
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Sunday April 12 2015, @05:28PM
And over farming has nothing to do with population at all, right? Farmers just plant all those crops because they can.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Tork on Sunday April 12 2015, @06:50PM
🏳️🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️🌈
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 12 2015, @04:33PM
Why not work to stabilize or reduce the population instead of trying to jam even more people in there?
Move the people where? Water isn't the only consideration for why people live where they live. Due to its climate, California happens to be a really good place for people to live.
I've never understood why someplace with a "water shortage" isn't really just overpopulated. The land only carries a certain size population before the fauna starts to move away or die off.
Or the fauna starts importing water.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @12:55PM
This was for 900 cities and towns that make up GREATER L.A, than a single city in the metro-plex.
Greater Los Angeles population 16.37 Million
City of Los Angeles population 3.88 Million
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Sunday April 12 2015, @03:17PM
Gotta start somewhere though.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday April 12 2015, @01:15PM
Makes you wonder if climate change will do the city in before the cite mitigate at least their part of the climate change?
By 2035 - 2050 there will perhaps not be a city to save?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @02:04PM
LA area is mainly near-desert or very very arid area. It way water-wars haven been running in the area for upwards of 100yrs, pulling water to area over 100's of miles distance. They been trying to hold on to lust-green-land dream all that time.
They are already done in, it is really a question of: "When will everyone else stops humouring them with their addiction?".
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Sunday April 12 2015, @04:13PM
At the rate we're going, there's a decent chance that California is completely screwed.
Certainly the Central Valley is screwed. Right now, because their cheap imported water rights are running dry, all the farms there are pumping out groundwater as fast as they can ... which will mean they will run out of groundwater soon too, in classic Tragedy of the Commons style. It was absolutely daft to build farms in a desert, but they built 'em anyways, just to show 'em!
Most of the rest of the population of California is at severe risk of flooding as the sea level rises. Those that aren't will get caught with wildfires.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Funny) by redneckmother on Sunday April 12 2015, @04:31PM
So, problem solved? ;-)
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 12 2015, @04:52PM
Most of the rest of the population of California is at severe risk of flooding as the sea level rises. Those that aren't will get caught with wildfires.
How would sea level rise affect them? Most of the population of California lives well above sea level. And wildfires are quite manageable.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Sunday April 12 2015, @05:30PM
Sea level rise, lol. Yeah I hear those 6 cm over the next couple hundred years are going to be a real killer.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 13 2015, @12:46AM
They could import water by boat?
Of course at that point it starts being insane..
As an alternative one could start massively power hungry osmosis plants or continental pipelines. If one can be built in Alaska, why not California?
Dryfornia? :D
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Monday April 13 2015, @08:42AM
Bill Hicks will be miffed - the lizard scum will escape before The Big One brings us all Arizona Bay.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 13 2015, @05:45PM
How about earthquakes?
I'm just sayin that when its federal handout time, if San Fran had the big one and was completely leveled in 1990, it would superficially appear to be a no brainer for the rest of the country to bail out all those idiots. Also the country was wealthier back then, compared to now.
But in 2020, post dotcom 2.0, post housing bubble, the century long drought getting worse yet also still barely started, THEN getting leveled by a quake, followed by the idiots holding their hands out for our money... I donno, I 'm thinking it'll be a harder sell. Depends how corrupt .gov is, nobody ever underestimated the corruption level of the .gov, then again, at some point, CA pretty much has to be cut off. All trends that can't continue forever, do eventually end.
Look how "well" we've rebuilt new orleans outside the tourist areas, and that city at least has an economic reason to exist.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday April 12 2015, @04:39PM
By 2035 - 2050 there will perhaps not be a city to save?
I'd say it's far more likely that LA does a Detroit and self-destructs than climate change does anything measurable to it.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Sunday April 12 2015, @05:52PM
If the city plans to add another half-million residents by 2035, you bet your ass that is exactly what will happen.
What isn't mentioned are the backgrounds of those extra half-million residents. Will they be doctors? Lawyers? Scientists? Engineers? Hell, artists? Philosophers?
Nope. They will be unskilled laborers, and despite being granted undue citizenship and the rights to be taxed by the government, many will still work under the table with earnings unreported to the tax-man and/or resort to crime to sustain themselves. If any industry benefits from that, it won't be the agriculture industry as much as it will be the private prison industry -- which will indeed convert L.A. to a giant prison. The only benefit to anybody else before then will be to the Democratic party, which will gain an instant half a million votes in exchange for handouts.
That's why the movie Escape from Los Angeles is prophecy, not merely distraction.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @06:22PM
Many will agree with the plan, but no one will go along with it. The "bike,walk" etc. plan is great - for the other guy.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 12 2015, @08:17PM
Take a trip to L.A. County and see what traveling in a car is like in SoCal.
Sitting in stop-and-go "rush" hour traffic, averaging 4mph completely sucks.
...and once you get to your "destination", you have to find a parking spot and walk from the parking area to your actual destination anyway.
If your stay is very long, you may have to walk back and feed the meter.
With a bike, you can "park" for free a few feet from the door.
L.A. County has built a bunch of electric light rail [la-electric-travel.com] and continues [wikimedia.org] on its plan to blanket the place with convenient mass transit. [laweekly.com]
I have taken the Green Line in Los Angeles County to within a few blocks of the airport; a gratis shuttle bus from there.
That light rail line parallels the Century Freeway between the 605 and LAX.
What struck me most about the experience was looking over at the stalled bumper-to-bumper traffic on the 105 as we zipped right past it.
You can take your bicycle with you on the train.
City buses also have racks on the front to carry bikes.
The concrete ditches that are rivers in SoCal have bike trails alongside them.
There have also been some efforts made at bike rental schemes that have met with mixed success so far.
If cities construct more bike paths and invest in greenbelts, cars and parking become less and less attractive.
-- gewg_
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday April 13 2015, @01:16AM
So if LA is blanketed with light rail. Everything is fine and a bright future is ahead?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 13 2015, @03:01AM
For starters, imagine that everyone agreed to not drive 1 weekday each week.
That's a 20 percent reduction in rush hour traffic every day.
I've heard experts say that's all it would take to get traffic moving.
...and as I said, when riding the train during rush hour, we were passing the car traffic.
It's not a cure for every problem, but it's a pretty great start.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Sunday April 12 2015, @07:09PM
The attempts to fix the heat island are probably the most helpful and realistic part of this plan.
There are lots of technologies that can help. Direct radiation of heat to space (above the atmosphere) is one of the newer solutions.
See http://www.livescience.com/48942-cooling-buildings-without-electricity.html [livescience.com]
Of course, sunshine also warms buildings. The new material, in addition to dealing with infrared light, is also a stunningly efficient mirror that reflects virtually all of the incoming sunlight that strikes it.
The result is what the Stanford team calls photonic radiative cooling -- a one-two punch that offloads infrared heat from within a building while also reflecting the sunlight that would otherwise warm it up. The result is cooler buildings that require less air conditioning.
Its not clear if this approach will work on smaller buildings, but simply painting those roofs white would go a long way. There are a zillion square miles of conventional housing with black, brown, or gray roofs.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday April 13 2015, @11:09AM
It's interesting that the big cities are the ones leading the way in waste reduction, energy efficiency, and general measures addressing climate change, at least in the United States. The keepers of the status quo have so locked down Washington DC and the statehouses that cities are the only place that anything can happen.
Even more interesting than the direct reductions in carbon usage, water usage, etc are the epiphenomena; big cities tend to be where tastemakers reside, so when they get used to green policies they help everyone everywhere else get used to it, too.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 1) by Murdoc on Tuesday April 14 2015, @10:39PM
HAhahahahaha! Man, I'd love to know what definition of "waste" they're using. Even ignoring the simple physics impossibility of it, LA has got to be one of the most wasteful cities in one of the most wasteful countries in the world. I mean, I certainly appreciate the desire to reduce waste, but you're not going to even get close until you scrap the market system and rebuild cities from the ground up. Yes, waste is bad for the environment and for society, we can all see that, but it's what keeps our economy going! We can't it both ways. One of them has got to go, and either we choose soon or the choice will be made for us, by physics.