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UCLA community reflects on climate report, ways to take action for environment

Tackling the interconnected political, economic, societal and environmental issues of climate change and the large-scale forces at play can be daunting, said Stephanie Pincetl, a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. Students can turn climate anxiety into action by identifying and tackling issues they’re passionate about solving, said Pincetl, who is also director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA. She said students can get involved by creating or joining groups that advocate for change and hold lawmakers and governments accountable.

Dr. Pincetl spoke with the Environmental Science without Borders UCLA Chapter

Getting Beyond Tropes: Cities for the 21st Century Dr. Pincetl spoke to the Environmental Science without Borders (ESWB), a subsidiary of UCLA's Center for Diverse Leadership in Science (CDLS), which connects students and early-career scientists from around the globe, regarding her research on urban metabolism water and energy policy, habitat conservation efforts, and the impact of land use in conjunction with climate change and climate policies. 

Eric Fournier talks to ABC 7 about Oregon’s Bootleg Fire threatening California’s power supply

“What is happening more and more is that the geographic scope of high heat and also the geographic scope of fire risks is increasing pretty significantly. And so in Southern California, because of the interconnectedness of the power system, we’re actually fairly vulnerable to both disasters and high temperatures that are occurring somewhere else,” said Eric Fournier with UCLA’s Institute of Environment and Sustainability.

Stephanie Pincetl in CalMatters: Water shortages: Why some Californians are running out in 2021 and others aren’t

Stephanie Pincetl, director of UCLA’s California Center for Sustainable Communities, who has studied Southern California’s reliance on distant water sources, said the decisions had far-reaching, if unintended, consequences: Los Angeles’ water grab from the Owens Valley exploited distant ecosystems, and urban sprawl was fueled by the Metropolitan Water District’s imports. “It’s really the growth machine of Southern California … by providing all this water to inland places, and allowing the sense that there’s unlimited water and the sense that you can build as far as the eye can see,” Pincetl said. Still, she said, “You can point fingers a lot, but you can also be reassured that you can actually turn the tap on and have water come out of it, most of the time.”

Stephanie Pincetl comments in Popular Science: Wildfires could hit your hometown

‘“If you suppress fire and ignite fire, guess what? You get big fires,” says Stephanie Pincetl, founding director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA. And suppressing flames doesn’t just amp up the risk for humans living in fire zones—in places that have been very tightly managed like the Sequoia National Forest, the trees aren’t able to bounce back without natural, low-level fires, Pincetl says.

CCSC’s Research Director Eric Daniel Fournier comments in HuffPost: Cleaner ‘Bridge’ Fuels Are Killing Up To 46,000 Americans Per Year, Study Shows

“While natural gas burns more cleanly than coal does, its usage still results in significant co-product emissions and corresponding public health impacts,” said Eric Daniel Fournier, the research director at the University of California, Los Angeles’s California Center for Sustainable Communities, who was not involved in the study. “As gas comes to represent a larger fraction of the county’s primary fuel portfolio, it will naturally come to be responsible for a larger proportion of the health impacts from stationary sources, of which electricity production is a major contributor.”

Stephanie Pincetl on In Our Backyard: Heat is the deadliest aspect of climate change. It’s turning some underserved LA neighborhoods red hot

But Stephanie Pincetl says, “Trees don't grow well in this region. So you must create conditions that are hospitable in the urban environment for those trees to survive.” She’s a founder of the Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, and she advocates denser zoning in some places, surrounded by trees to provide shade for parks, playgrounds and sidewalks. 

Stephanie Pincetl in The Guardian: How bad will California’s fire season be? Experts on the threat – and what can be done

Stephanie Pincetl, a professor and director of the California Center for Sustainable Communities at UCLA, agreed and said the state needed to take more steps to adapt. “California has always burned,” she said. “But we live in a hysteria about fire because we put people in the wrong place.” Though environmental conditions exacerbate risks, a key problem lies with people, according to Pincetl. “There is nothing wild about these fires. These are human-created conditions that induce higher risk,” she said. “We need to acknowledge that these are our problems that we created, and if we are going to deal with it we have to start where the problem begins.”

Dr. Pincetl in the Guardian: California is poised for a catastrophic fire season. Experts say its plan isn’t nearly enough

The plan also sets aside $25m to grant food to low-income homeowners to fund the updates and renovations needed to fireproof their homes. “Of course, it’s good – but the question is how far will this money go?” said Stephanie Pincetl, a professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability who specializes in the intersection of urban planning and environmental policy.