Fires & Los Angeles' Climate Action Plan(s)
A Few Empty Platitudes and Not Much Else
“LA is burning. And the derelict people responsible are worried that they are found out as charlatans and empty suits. The leftwing voters who enabled them are getting angry over the inferno that their chosen politicos green-lighted -- as if they are shocked, shocked by the consequences of their voting.”
So-called “climate whiplash” is “increasing exponentially” and is behind the ongoing LA fires, writes Damian Carrington at The Guardian.
Time Magazine’s Jeffrey Kluger insists, “L.A. Fires Show the Reality of Living in a World with 1.5°C of Warming,” and the sub-header to the most recent cover of the magazine is, “a world on fire.”
This outbreak of fires for LA residents is, as LA Times Climate columnist Sammy Roth claims, “our most jarring confrontation yet with global warming.”
After a bit of cycling back and forth between blaming these fires on a global economy backed by fossil fuels, the US establishment being entrenched by fossil fuel interests, and (of course) billionaires. Roth took a break from his modern day portrayal of a Puritan witch hunter to proclaim, “Don’t leave it to chance. Demand better.”
If only LA had a plan to address these inevitable fires…
If only LA’s residents and rulers did demand better…
Governments across the country enacted so-called Climate Action Plans which contain supposed wishes, goals and, metrics such governments must do to prevent and/or mitigate the worst effects of what is seen as a climate crisis. San Diego’s (second) version of their Climate Action Plan has been covered multiple times here1. America’s Finest City’s original 2015 Climate Action Plan was seen as not good enough by local (anti-nuclear) climate hysteria bullies who sued the city forcing them to go back to the drawing board.
LA have a Climate Action Plan of their own, well, a few actually.
Let’s jump in and see what they say about fires.
First, there was Mayor Villaraigosa’s Green LA from 2007. Villaraigosa, who was mayor from 2005 to 2013 in a speech from the era noted one of the things climate change would bring to the city are “more devastating wildfires.”
To say this plan flopped and was subsequently memoryholed might be an understatement. It’s difficult to find out of this 2007 plan had any meaningful action items or goals pertaining to fires because the plan is simply no longer out there on the web to find. According to Progressive LA, this plan was “so quickly forgotten that the authors of Mayor Eric Garcetti’s new Sustainable pLAn did not even know they existed.”
Then, under Eric Garcetti (2013-2011) the 2015 Sustainable City pLAn sought to tackle this supposed existential crisis seriously but wasn’t made official city gospel until 2019. On top of that, Garcetti’s regime brought in the new and improved LA's Green New Deal in 2020 and after that additional “plans” such as 2021’s LA’s Green New Deal: Leading by Example which initiated a Decade of Action.
The Sustainable City pLAn is hard to find on the city’s website since it’s largely dedicated to virtue spouting and platitude casting. For anyone whose dealt with anything related to the city of LA expecting a sliver of transparency, this isn’t surprising.
That document is below (attached).
In the 108 page document, the term fire is only present nine times. Two of those pertain to coal (coal-fired), and one to someone’s surname (Firestone).
The others:
"LA faces the consequences of climate change on several fronts: a future of increased extreme heat, worsened drought, a longer fire season, and low-lying neighborhoods vulnerable to rising sea levels."
and
"We must prepare Los Angeles for future earthquakes and increasing climate disruptions facing our city, including bigger wildfires, longer and hotter heatwaves, and rising sea levels. Whether in the form of distributed water solutions to help increase local water supplies and fight fires post-earthquake, or the integration of grid-tied solar powered backup systems to keep fire stations running, it is immediately necessary to have proactive solutions to prepare the city."
One would think that if fires are such a central tenant to the city’s future under climate change, there would be some meaningful goals, legal mandates, etc., but alas there isn’t much.
Under a section addressing the city’s need to ensure it’s ready for climate related disasters, on bullet point simply says, “develop local/regional water storage and backup firefighting system.”
That’s it.
There’s also zero mention of the city’s electric and water utility, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which owns and operates the city’s electric transmission and distribution systems along the water infrastructure required by the city’s fire department.
One too would think that after dozens of devastating fires in the state caused by vegetation falling into overhead power lines or power lines falling under heavy winds, there would be plans the city’s electrical system. But completely missing are any mentions of vegetation management around LADWP’s overhead lines, changing LADWP’s aging wood poles to new poles, installing covered conductors, or converting overhead lines to underground. Instead the document is full of bragging and blabbering about the utility’s “success” in reducing fossil-fuel generated electricity for “carbon-free” and “clean” renewables.
As
covered earlier this week, LADWP have a “plan” of their own but it’s focused primarily on, renewables, transportation and building electrification, hydrogen, DEI, and all the other empty platitudes pushed by climate catastrophists.Bryce noted that the entire document he reviewed had just one paragraph discussing the topic of fire mitigation.
That’s not to say that LADWP did nothing.
In 2019, the utility replaced wood overhead poles and lines - long past the end of the typical service life for such assets - with steel poles, covered conductors, and raptor-proof covers on the equipment and insulators. LADWP said this project was to “help ensure power reliability and safety, while helping reduce wildfire threats. These wooden poles were installed between 1933 and 1955 and are now past their useful service life.”
But they drew the ire of a local Karen, er, amateur botanist, who accused the utility of destroying an endangered plant during the project. An investigation was launched, the notorious California Coastal Commission and Public Utilities Commission looked into it and LADWP paid 1.9 million dollar fine. While it’s true that LADWP’s crews damaged and killed an endangered plant, endemic largely to that specific area, said specific area was in Topanga State Park - near the epicenter of the ongoing Palisades Fire.
While the LA Times’ Editorial Board was largely in support of the ambitious Sustainable City pLAn, they even met the whole idea with skepticism.
By all means, go for it. But a vision on paper is meaningless, as the plan itself acknowledges when it notes that similarly ambitious reports have often ended up "gathering dust above the desks of the bureaucrats who commissioned them." The real test of Garcetti's vision is whether he will dedicate the time, energy and political capital to following through on his commitments.
Perhaps they had a point.
How about LA’s 2019 shiny new and improved Green New Deal?
The response to the question, “Why should L.A. have a Green New Deal?” in the FAQ for the LA Green New Deal Website states:
Four years after our original pLAn, climate change is only proving more devastating to our communities — historic droughts and flooding, power outages during heat waves, wildfires, and worsening pollution are wreaking havoc and disproportionately impacting low-income neighborhoods and communities of color.
Los Angeles must show cities around the world what it means to uphold the Paris Climate Agreement. We must prioritize disadvantaged communities. We must equip our city with the diverse, skilled workforce needed to meet the scale and scope of the climate crisis. And we must lead at the municipal level at every turn.
But in that 152 page document, the only mention of fire was in the opening statement from Mayor Garcetti largely repeating what he said in the original 2015 plan.
But we have simultaneously seen the dramatic effects of a warming planet in our communities — from oppressive heat waves that endanger our health, to drought and wildfires that have swept across Southern California. It’s time to think bigger.
As for Garcetti’s 2020 LA’s Green New Deal: Leading by Example and Decade of Action - that too is now gone from the bowels of the LA city’s website.
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The more I read about the failures of LA/CA leadership on this, the more I feel like they’re at an advantage: they sound so cartoonishly stupid that the causal observer assumes you’re exaggerating when you try to explain what’s going on.
Nice job here laying it out