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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.
(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.