Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies

A California Coastal Conservancy study indicates low- and middle-income households, people of color, and younger people are less likely to stay along the coast overnight.   “The high-level conclusion is that today the cost of visiting the beach for a day trip, and even more so for an overnight stay, is getting out of reach for...

The fire-scorched state’s history has long been marked by calamities. But its latest disaster did not come to teach Californians a lesson. “Every crisis is not an apocalypse, and every fire isn’t either,” said Jon Christensen, an environmental historian, writer, and professor at the UCLA Institute of the Environment and Sustainability. “These are serious challenges,...

Jon Christensen writes for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists about climate change and California’s wildfires.  “We are living in a world of media hot takes. They come at us fast and furious, like embers blown from a firestorm by a fierce Santa Ana or Diablo wind. In an instant we’re surrounded on all sides. Quick judgments are...

It’s time to shift the conversation around parks in California. New data is illuminating the need to look at state parks in communities a bit differently. Rather than measuring their value by their undeniable beauty, new research illustrates a clear opportunity to measure parks by their impact on our public health and communities. It is...

All cities hunger for new property tax revenue. But all of these park projects at some point aspired to provide green space in neighborhoods that historically had little access to it. This pattern of new parks creating housing pressure might lead observers to wonder whether such investments are a good idea, if they threaten to...