This past summer I had the wonderful opportunity to visitmy favorite place in the United States: Los Angeles,California. I love Los Angeles because of its plethora of opportunities, beautiful coastline, and variety of cultures. As someone who loves Los Angeles and the rest of California, I cannot ignore the state’s climate crisis. When I visited Los Angeles from August 31 to September 6, I
experienced temperatures up to 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Having lived in Upstate New York and New York City, I have never been anywhere over one-hundred degrees in my life. Every day that I
was in Los Angeles, there was a “Flex Alert” in place from 4 to 9 p.m. A “Flex Alert” signals to Californians that they cannot turn thermostats any lower than seventy-eight degrees, charge electric
vehicles or use high-voltage appliances. Although sometimes inconvenient, Flex Alerts prevent major power outages such as the ones in 2021 during a Texas snowstorm. Flex alerts beg the
question of whether or not our current power grids can handle theongoing climate crisis and what can we do to improve them. Temperature is not the only climate battle California is facing.
When landing at LAX, I had a beautiful aerial view of Los Angeles County. I saw what appeared to be an empty freeway, which confused me since Los Angeles is famous for its traffic jams. It turns
out that the “empty freeway” was actually the dried-up Los Angeles river. This river had less water than most creeks I’ve seen.A dried-up river is a huge sign of just how serious California’s
drought is. Although many Californians do their part to conserve water, the uber-rich tend to consume an exorbitant amount.Celebrities such as Kourtney Kardashian have faced backlash for
using more water than they are allocated. (Kardashian used 245 percent of her water allotment in one month, amounting to an astonishing 101,000 gallons of water.) With nearly forty million
people living in California (ten million in Los Angeles County alone), having enough water and other resources to support a population is of utmost importance.
Fires have also been a huge problem in California. While I waslanding into LAX, a fire in the Castaic area burned 5,208 acres and led to seven firefighter injuries. This fire caused two lanes of
Freeway 5 to close and threatened five-hundred homes. This was just one of several fires that occurred during my week in California. Not only do these fires burn thousands of acres of land, they also threaten the health of residents by contributing to harmful air quality. Los Angeles’s air remains one of the most polluted in the United States due to fires, vehicle emissions, and emissions from manufacturing. In 2021, Los Angeles County had only forty days out of the year where the air quality was categorized as “Good.” According to the LA Almanac, the remainder of the days ranged from “Moderate” to “Very Unhealthy.”
In the face of the severity of California’s climate crisis, many groups have put effort into combating climate change. Higher- education institutions such as the University of Southern California and the Claremont Colleges have initiatives to become more sustainable. The University of Southern California (USC) has created the USC Center for Sustainable Solutions and has designed its campus so that it is walkable and bikeable. The Claremont Colleges including Pomona, Scripps, Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, and Harvey Mudd have created an Environmental Analysis Program, a program that prepares students to combat climate change. In 2015, Claremont McKenna notably removed twenty- five percent of their lawns which reduced the amount of water consumption for non-essential crops. Additionally, with the ban on selling gas-powered vehicles taking effect in 2035, the amount of electric vehicles has significantly increased. If the electric power sources can be zero emissions, the pollution from vehicle traffic will significantly decrease. With these steps in the right direction,
California can remain a sustainable place for life.