In the 1970s and early 1980s, smog levels were awful in Los Angeles. Starting in the mid-1990s, ambient ozone declined sharply in Los Angeles County. Across eight monitoring stations that monitored ambient ozone in 1980 and in 2000, the average annual pollution daily excedence (when air pollution exceeds the Clean Air Act standard) count for these eight monitors declined from 103 days per year to 13 days per year.
These pollution gains are especially notable because between 1980 and 2000, the Los Angeles Basin’s population grew by 42 percent and total automobile mileage grew by 88 percent. Vehicle emissions control regulation deserves a lot of credit. New cars today are 95 percent cleaner than new cars built in the early 1970s. These emissions control improvements persist over time even as the vehicle ages. Put simply, emissions per mile of driving have decreased faster over time in Los Angeles than miles driven have increased.
Climate change could reverse some of this progress. The details of atmospheric chemistry concerning how volatile organic compounds and oxides of nitrogen mix to form ozone are complicated, but it can be said that heat waves are likely to cook up more summertime smog. Smog problems will grow the most away from the ocean, in East Los Angeles. Relative to West Los Angeles, East LA’s communities are poorer and have more Hispanic residents. Due to this differential pollution exposure across demographic groups, climate change will bring environmental justice concerns to the forefront.
It is no surprise that wealthy, white households live in cool, clean West Los Angeles, while poorer Hispanics are more likely to live in the hot, smoggy eastern section of the city. For homes that sold in 2008, the average price of a home declined by 1.4 percent with each kilometer of distance from the beach. This housing price gradient guarantees that wealthy people will cluster closer to the high-amenity area. If climate change increases smog exposure for poor minorities, this would reverse twenty years of progress in achieving environmental justice goals due to effective Clean Air Act regulation. In earlier work, I documented that between 1980 and 2000, the average Hispanic household in Los Angeles was exposed to thirty fewer smoggy days a year because of disproportionate improvements in air quality in communities where Hispanics tend to live. Climate change may reverse this progress.
In Malibu, Barbra Streisand had access to clean air even in the early 1970s when the rest of the metropolitan area was terribly polluted. The Clean Air Act’s success at reducing smog over the last thirty years has had little effect on Malibu and other coastal communities. Instead, it helped to bring about convergence between inland areas and the cool, clean coast. Clean Air Act regulation has narrowed this air pollution exposure gap between the haves and the have-nots. This is another of the main lessons that LA can teach us: climate change is likely to affect the poor far worse than it does the rich. If Malibu did become unlivable for a few weeks a year, perhaps due to high heat or smoke from nearby fires, then Streisand and friends could retreat to a bucolic Montana cabin.
The Death of Green Grass?
When I lived in New York City, I had never heard of koi ponds. Having lived in Westwood for three years, I am now an expert on them. They abound in Los Angeles. Although it rains only 11 inches per year in Los Angeles, millions of its residents expect to be able to shower, flush their toilets, water their beautiful lawn’s grass, play golf on green fairways, and swim in Olympic-sized private pools. As incomes in this mega-city have grown, people have come up with new ways to consume water, including garden waterfalls that help block street noise.
Despite the fact that it rarely rains in Los Angeles, households in this desert area have no incentive to view water as a scarce commodity. They are charged less than one cent per gallon of water. Public water authorities refuse to engage in “price gouging,” which makes voters happy in the short run—we get to enjoy our swimming pools and ample green grass. But it means that a day of reckoning lurks in the notso- distant future. Low prices remove any incentive to get “lean and mean” and reduce one’s water use. This low pricing creates a culture of waste. When my family goes for a walk in our neighborhood near UCLA, we are amazed at the gallons of water being used for watering the lawns and, due to broken pipes and other mishaps, just flooding the roads. Los Angeles has created a “hot line” for reporting such water wastage. Like an Eastern European living under communism, I have reported my neighbors to this “Secret Water Police." Why? Although I dislike my neighbors, I especially dislike their wasting a scarce resource for no good reason. But nobody from City Hall has ever gotten in touch with me, and nobody has given me a medal.
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17 Comments
Add CommentI really wanted to like this piece, but it relies too much on intellectual shortcuts. The anecdote about the writer's mother-in-law on page 7 is a prime example. The water agency is trying to cut water use by incentivizing saving, but the writer believes this is silly because his MIL got a check for cutting her water usage, when in reality she was overseas and hence her water use fell. Are you really using a single anecdote that relies on an outlying phenomenon (i.e., not everyone can afford to spend a whole month traveling in Italy) to dispute the generally accepted notion that financial incentives can influence human behavior? The same goes for example of how Candy Spelling's giant estate pays less per gallon of water used than the writer does. Is one rich person's anomalous water bill enough to toss out the entire idea of tiered rates? Finally, your view of L.A. is way too westside-centric. You should hang out in some other neighborhoods a bit. The fact that a handful of UCLA students won't venture downtown proves nothing. Oh, and you misspelled the mayor's name.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.notenoughtowaste.org/notenoughtowaste/Headwaters.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSome of your facts are not totally correct, we do get 15 inches of rain not 11 and not everybody wastes water, check out more facts about Securing LA water future here. http://www.notenoughtowaste.org/notenoughtowaste
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisCurious. So Cal is heading towards the coolest summer on record. July 8 saw the lowest maximum high in 132 years of record keeping in San Diego. Lowest record highs breaking decades old records have occurred continuously this summer on the California coast. Didn't we have record snows this winter back east? And where exactly are the hurricanes the ;ast four years now? Certainly makes on wonder how this stuff is measured.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBTW, everyone talks about how bad LA/OC is but nobody seems to be leaving, apparently even you. That's why the song say's 'We love it!'. After an awesome day today around the pool it should be obvious to the most effete Eastern snob.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndeed, climate is an important factor for attracting people living in LA, but LA has many different characteristics from other region for its charm. It's really interesting that the author discusses the climate issue on an economic view.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs one lucky enough to take my family and escape the cesspool of SoCal, I can't imagine that anyone still believes the false claims that LA is some sort or nirvana or desirable in any way. The traffic alone is reason enough to hate the place. I live 65 miles from the nearest freeway.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMost of the article is about water. Typical LA attitude that the author thinks that water should be taken from farmers for the lawns of the city. What don't you understand about the fact that WE GROW YOUR FOOD!
Now that LA is just Tijuana Norte, I'm very happy that I don't live in Mexifornia anymore.
What is the reasonable/fair method of calculating the appropriate use of energy/resources by nation states on planet earth??? Should it be based on the resources used per person or per square mile???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHow may we support you? Your invention is desperately needed.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Climate change cant alter the blue skies or access to the beach and mountains, but it will pose four tangible threats: The summers will grow hotter, the air will be smoggier, there will be more fires, and there will be much less water."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOk, is it just me or how bi-polar is this statement? sure, whatever we do here won't affect the fact that there are stars overhead either.... WTF? worry, but, don't worry? at some point, this "writer" needs to take a stand and quit taking the middle road. its not all about profit. at some point, you have to take a stand - that is, if you believe in something.
the author is talking like a fool, you should pay more attention at how to exist in the earth longer, if you are all gone with the bad climate economy is zero, all things are 000000000
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI take issue with a couple points. One is on the subway where you say it will have 200,000 riders a year. The current subway has 150,000 riders per day not per year, so basically you calculation is off by a factor of 365. That $1,000 taxi ride just went to $3.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAlso, you claim that the skies will become smoggier. As you correctly stated, air pollution has dropped dramatically in the last 30-40 years and continues to drop. With the advent of electric cars and more technological improvements this will likely continue, but you suddenly give a more doomsday scenario because of warmer weather. Also, warm weather is not necessarily a producer of smog. Los Angeles suffers from an inversion layer of cooler air below warmer air. If the cool air does not come in from the coast this inversion does not happen so warmer days are not necessarily the most smoggy. This is often true today as the warmest days are generally not the smoggiest inland necessarily.
Hard to get past the first page of name-dropping and tourist advertising. Kahn and his wife must be up for the next Real Housewives of L.A. Who the hell would read his stupid bool?This guy is just putting lipstick on a pig and calling it beautiful.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe real issue is...where do these giant metro areas like L.A. and Vegas get their water? The reality is that they steal it from others. By doing so they desire to create a serfdom where the lowly rural inhabitants only exist to serve their city-dwelling masters. The most valuable commodity is fresh water.
The only way to stop the madness is to abandon the growth economy model and concentrate on a sustainable future. Mexifornia (nice one, notslic) is the present model for a failed state, with its $20 billion deficit and plan to again start handing out IOU's for the services it purchases. When it goes down the toilet, it will only end up where all the rest of its sewage does...3 miles out to sea.
"The summers will grow hotter, the air will be smoggier, there will be more fires, and there will be much less water", Matthew Kahn is talking Global Warming. The evidence for GW has evaporated. LA has bigger problems than climate.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I arrived in SoCal 1972 from the NorthEast, I watched heat-infused sunsets, drank margueritas, ate chile rellenos, and thought I was in heaven (and picked up a BSEE). Having been to all 50 states and many countries, I still think SoCal is heaven. Please consider Shakespeare by the beach or opera at the Dorothy Chandler, cocktails at the Biltmore or dinner at the old train station. Take in the LA Marathon or volunteer at a soup kitchen. What's a little humidity? It's a very elastic and accepting social environment. And, very adaptable. Being rich is not how much you have but how little you need.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Almost everyone in Los Angeles was not born here."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHint...the vast majority of the Hispanic kids are NOT ousiders. They were born in greater LA. As were Vietnamese. Chinese, etc.
There are also outright twisted facts about precipitation, recent tremperatures, etc.
Are there no editors at Scientific American to weed out fluffy nonsense articles full of errors?
To me, it's clear that LA is not going to "adapt" so much as how the rest of the world is going to need to change. Different technologies and the use of completely clean power generation (say fusion in the future) could in fact make it very viable
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe'll see
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