On a hot summer evening, Patricia Luna brought a reporter to her backyard to show her the new generator she purchased after her power was cut off in the midst of one of California’s worst heat waves. Patricia lives in Monterey Park with her mother, who is both elderly and disabled and thus medically vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat. She told the reporter, “If we didn’t [have an AC] I would be on the verge of my mom having heat exhaustion”.
Patricia and her mother were two of the tens of thousands of Los Angeles residents put at risk by the city’s inability to meet the surge in electricity demand that have been triggered by California’s intensifying heat waves. In the next few decades, Los Angeles County is expected to experience a rise in extreme heat days, with mid-summer temperatures reaching over 95 degrees as a result of climate change.
Policy makers are faced with the mountainous task of planning a complete overhaul of Los Angeles’s energy grid to ensure that the county can meet future energy demands and the ambitious climate change targets enacted by the 2019 Los Angeles Green New Deal (aka pLAn). pLAn calls for a zero-carbon electrical grid, transportation system, buildings, and waste system by the year 2050. The plan also aims to secure a ‘just transition,’ which means a transition to carbon neutrality that does not overburden vulnerable populations, including people of color and those experiencing poverty.
Vulnerable communities are at greater risk of adverse health effects- such as heat stroke and death- during extreme heat events, like the heat waves that hit California this past summer.
Why is this happening? One answer is rooted in the inequities of Los Angeles’s electrical grid.
A study conducted at the University of Southern California found that affluent neighborhoods use AC’s more intensely than lower-income neighborhoods and have the highest rates of energy consumption during spikes in temperature. It is not only the mere ownership of an AC unit that increases a household’s energy consumption. Among all households across different income brackets that owned AC’s and experienced similar changes to local temperature, higher income households still had higher spikes in energy usage than lower income houses.
This means that higher income neighbourhoods are placing the largest energy burdens on the electrical grid during spikes in temperature.This triggers rolling blackouts and forces electrical companies to shut down portions of the electrical grid in neighbourhoods like Patricia Luna’s.
On the other side of town, low-income neighborhoods are using the least amount of electricity during extreme heat events. Low income households’ -especially those in the top 10% of poverty- cannot afford to buy AC units or pay to run them, making them the most vulnerable to heat stroke, other heat-related illnesses, and death.
Some of the most vulnerable neighborhoods in Los Angeles city include Maravilla, City Terrace, and Eastmont in East L.A. and Lynwood, Compton, and Inglewood in South L.A. Although the study did not explicitly tie in the connection between race and economic vulnerability, the neighborhoods listed above predominantly house people of color, particularly Black and Latinx communities. Due to the lasting impacts of racist housing practices such as redlining and disinvestment, neighborhoods that are divided by both income and race are experiencing the brunt of electrical disparities.
This study is a part of a growing body of literature and research aimed at helping policymakers address current and future systemic injustices while creating new infrastructures to adapt to, mitigate, and build resilience against climate change.
The study’s lead researcher Mo Chen says,”It has underscored the importance of preparing for shocks, particularly those that disproportionately impact under-served populations. We know that extreme heat events are increasing over time. We hope our work can be used to direct resources toward building resilience to warming in the vulnerable communities that might suffer most.”
Policymakers are looking to address the future’s catastrophic climate change impacts, but what about people like Patricia Luna who are feeling the impacts of climate change today? How are they being helped?
LA-based community organizations, such as TreePeople, are building local climate resilience in vulnerable communities. TreePeople is an environmental group based in Los Angeles that uses a variety of approaches- including urban forestry, community education, and policy research- to protect neighborhoods from air pollution, urban heat island effect, and other environmental problems. They work alongside under-served neighborhoods and elevate community members to positions of leadership to facilitate partnership in building climate resilience.
It is necessary that both climate change research and community-based activism continue to work in tandem to better address the multiple effects that climate change has on the local and regional scale.