LOS ANGELES — It was an unusually hot summer, but July made history as the hottest month ever recorded on the planet. Climate change attributed to heat affected 6.5 billion people — about 81% of the world’s population - according to the nonprofit organization Climate Central.
And it’s going to get hotter.
Daily maximum average temperatures in California are projected to rise 4.4 to 5.8 degrees by the year 2051.
Extreme heat affects everything from agriculture to water to transportation. There are a multitude of regulatory efforts and programs in effect to respond to climate change. But one critical solution to fighting heat and how it affects urban areas is to a rather simple one — more shade.
And cities across California are learning how to navigate a warming world and implementing resiliency plans that use trees as the primary defense against the effects of urban heat islands.
On this week’s “In Focus SoCal,” host Tanya McRae spoke with Dr. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center and associate professor of Urban Planning and Geography, to break down her research on heat governance and how SoCal cities are creating resiliency plans to keep their communities cooler.
Turner said many cities in SoCal have stopped planting new palm trees, and are choosing trees that are able to provide more shade.
“One of the problems with trees is that they have roots and they have branches and they require maintenance things like leaf litter. And so a lot of cities see them as something that is difficult or expensive to care for,” Turner explains. “Another reason cities might be turning away from more trees is because they’ve perceived the watering costs to be a tradeoff with drought.”
“Shade is the most effective way we have to keep people cool outside,” Turner adds. “All else equal, someone standing in shade can be 20 to 40 degrees Celsius cooler than somebody standing in the full sun. And so we need to think of ways that include trees and non-tree shade structures to keep people cool.”
While some LA residents live near a forest, many others live in virtually treeless environments. These extreme differences create disparities and how residents access and benefit from the various social, environmental and human health benefits provided by trees.
The Korean Youth & Community Center is one of five urban tree-planting organizations in the Los Angeles metropolitan area and is part of Los Angeles’ Green New Deal climate action plan.
Steve Kang, KYCC’s Director of External Affairs, says one of the plan’s goals is to increase tree canopy and low income and severely heat impacted areas by at least 50% by 2028.
“Global warming is one of the real threats to our survival on this planet. And it is a top priority for the city, as well as our federal government as well,” Kang says. “We feel a sense of urgency to do our part in planting more trees to reduce the urban temperature to promote more sustainability and create a better environment for our next generation of youth.”
McRae also talked with the newest member of the LA City Council, Imelda Padilla, who is going into her fourth month representing the 6th district after winning a special election in June to replace former council president Nury Martinez. Padilla emphasized the importance of the city council gaining back the trust of Angelenos after multiple corruption charges against council members.
“The way that I am engaging in helping them with the healing process is by going back to the basics and serving them with you know, things related to quality of life, being very intentional with addressing our homeless crisis, intentional about bringing better jobs to the district, and being transparent in the process. Making sure that I have a team that feels like they have access to me so that they have answers that constituents might be asking.”
Padilla says she also wants the City Council to give LA’s neighborhood councils more support. “They’ve now been in existence for a good, I would say, 15-plus years, and yet, we’ve never as a city had a conversation to ask ourselves, ‘What works? What doesn’t work? And how can we make the system better?’”
Send us your thoughts to InFocusSoCal@charter.com and watch at 9 a.m. and noon Sunday.