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For California agriculture to survive, we will need nothing short of a revolutionary re-envisioning of the future. The alternative is extinction. Stephanie Pincetl is a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA. This article was produced in partnership with Zócalo Public Square.
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Stephanie Pincetl, a professor of environment and sustainability, said the new infrastructure law is not enough to completely address the problems facing American infrastructure today. She said she believes the law is not truly unprecedented, but rather that people are not used to seeing infrastructure investments. Pincetl added the government should provide more generous funding, considering the larger sums spent on other sectors of the economy and the military. “What we actually need is a Congress that is willing to spend taxpayer money on taxpayers and an investment for the nation’s future,” Pincetl said.
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However, the state of California has not done much to curb water consumption, said Stephanie Pincetl, a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability and the director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities. Part of this comes from a general lack of official regulation, she said, but added that the failed recall against Newsom also may have impacted the state’s response. The recall was the major focus of Newsom’s attention for a couple of months, and Pincetl said that it likely would have been politically delicate for Newsom to expand on water conservation. However, Pincetl also said the state is only one factor in the whole water system. The Metropolitan Water District, a special district that provides water to 26 agencies in Southern California, is an important aspect of providing Californians with the necessary water, she added.
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Los Angeles is known for great weather and beaches as well as iconic movie studios and sports teams. Soon you can possibly add an amazing 50 mile riverwalk community to this list. The multi billion dollar LA River revitalization project is advancing and some say this could be the greatest riverwalk in the United States. Certainly this massive design is not without its controversy or its critics. Watch Dr. Pincetl's interview (starting at ~15:00) with Sustaining US on KLCS/PBS.
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For LA residents climate change is no longer a distant or abstract concept because its effects are already being felt throughout the region. During just the past three years, for example, several new record high maximum daily temperatures have been recorded in numerous LA neighborhoods, with Van Nuys experiencing 118 °F in 2018 and more recently, in 2020, parts of Woodland Hills enduring temperatures of 120 °F. These developments are clearly illustrated in the figure below which shows the percentage of sampled maximum daily temperatures within the LA-Basin that were above different high heat thresholds for each year from 2005 to 2020.
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Season two premiers Wednesday, Oct. 6, and will air weekly on Wednesdays at 10 p.m. and the following Mondays at 5:30 p.m. Viewers can watch on Ch. 58 or livestream on KLCS PBS. Topics and respective UCLA experts in season two include: The Los Angeles River: Stephanie Pincetl, founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA
