A Local Green New Deal
Los Angeles, CA
Population: >5,000,000 | Government type: City | Topic: Green New Deal
Photo: Los Angeles Times
OVERVIEW
The city of Los Angeles released its "Sustainable City pLAn" in 2015. This plan included strong environmental standards and an agreement to update the plan every four years. Since it entered public discourse, the climate crisis has quickly reached emergency levels. In response, city leadership revised its plan to include ambitious but necessary goals to secure clean air and water, a stable climate, community resilience, access to healthy food and open space, and directives that are based in transformative justice.
The 2019 Sustainable City pLAn incorporates four principles:
A commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement and to urgent action with a scientifically-driven strategy for achieving a zero carbon grid, zero-carbon transportation, zero carbon buildings, zero waste, and zero wasted water.
A responsibility to deliver environmental justice and equity through an inclusive economy, producing results at the community level, guided by communities themselves.
A duty to ensure that every Angeleno has the ability to join the green economy, creating pipelines to good-paying, green jobs, and a just transition in a changing work environment.
A resolve to demonstrate the “art of the possible” and to lead the way, walking the walk and using the City’s resources—our people and our budget—to drive change.
A key component of this plan is the creation of good, green jobs, and a city that operates on 100% renewable energy. This includes:
Building the country’s largest, cleanest, and most reliable urban eclectic grid, with additions to expand the transportation system and build clean buildings
Educating, training, and reaching Angelenos on how to participate in the new economy
Hold city officials accountable to prioritizing economic opportunity for disadvantaged communities
According to the world’s leading scientists, the global community has until 2030—only 11 years—to radically roll back the emissions we have come to depend on in a carbon-based economy. The plan includes ambitious goals and timeline, and in order to ensure these are both met, the city introduced a Jobs Cabinet to serve as an advisory board on job creation; a Climate Emergency Commission to bring in key stakeholders such as unions, indigenous communities, and policy experts; and an Office of the Climate Emergency to engage and educate the community more proactively on implementing the plan. The city incorporated other accountability methods, including strict budget directives for all future budget processes to ensure they align with pLAn goals, and open data portals, regular community updates, and city briefings.
Collaborative Governance
The pLAn is a result of a long input process from stakeholders as well as local and global experts. Environmental groups, neighborhood associations, unions, and policy experts all contributed time and energy to put this final pLAn together. Many will continue to be part of the implementation process: some will help train workers and educate community members while others will participate in the city-managed Jobs Cabinet and Climate Emergency Commission.
The plan includes funding access and infrastructure to create neighborhood plans led by the voices of community members (laid out below), and collaboration with other trusted groups in LA. The plan was built on the idea that community members and groups need to be empowered and given the capacity to expand their work and roots across LA and will help to make this successful. All key components of this plan will be carried out in partnership with the organizers and unions that have fought for transformative change in the city for decades. For example, Sierra Club will mobilize its members to take 10,000 actions in three years to advance the goals and implementation of the pLAn. Others, like Heal the Bay and WeTap, will monitor and report on the progress made to reversing polluted waterways and increasing clean water access.
Emphasis on equity
The pLAn uses a targeted approach that brings opportunities and resources to disadvantaged communities that are often more exposed to harmful toxins and pollutants and face dire consequences to their health. This plan incorporates a direct planning process. It allows communities at the highest environmental risks to build their own neighborhood plans in partnership with the city, and with financial support from Transformative Climate Community (TCC). These partnerships will focus on improving air and water quality, reducing the energy burden on low-income neighborhoods, ridding communities of food deserts, providing training and job placement opportunities, and expanding parks and public spaces.
Some examples of these TCC funded plans are underway and include a $32M grant to Watts Rising to fund an affordable apartment community in Jordan Downs, 15 electric vehicles for car-sharing, electric public transportation, urban mini-farms, grocery stores, and more.
The Sustainable City pLAn has served as a framework for a number of specific policy proposals and has provided energy and momentum for grassroots efforts that have pushed (and continue to push) the city to be even more aggressive and ambitious. In 2019, at the urging of Councilmember Mike Bonin and organizers from Food & Water Watch and the Sunrise Movement, the municipally-owned Department of Water & Power dropped plans to repower three natural-gas power plants along the coast, and committed to investing in renewable energy. Mayor Garcetti and Bonin have joined with the Sierra Club and the Electric Bus Coalition to move LA County’s transit system to 100% electric by 2028, and a broad coalition of activists from front-line communities are pushing the City to ban fossil fuel operations in residential neighborhoods.
Analysis
The pLAn puts some teeth behind its ambitious goals by setting specific action plans, especially around transportation and a 10-year timeline
Focuses on all aspects of transportation, but some argue that the process will be to slow and there is not enough urgency in the language (the city will focus on improving transportation in one neighborhood a year)
While the city may have to rely on partnerships and collaborations to implement some of the plan, the plan emphasizes bold and aggressive goals to transform transportation infrastructure and building requirements —two areas the city has control and leverage to change. Transportation and buildings account for three-quarters of the city’s planet-warming emissions
OTHER POLICY EXAMPLES
New York City: New York City Council recently passed a building-focused bill that aims to reconstruct inefficient buildings. The new policy will require about 50,000 large buildings to meet ambitious targets for reducing climate pollution. To protect low-income residents, the policy includes preventing rent increases in rent-regulated buildings.
Maine: Maine recently enacted a new "Act To Establish a Green New Deal for Maine." The law will create a task force of labor, youth, climate science, and other representatives to craft a strategy for achieving 80% renewable energy in Maine by 2040, creating good jobs in renewable energy and manufacturing, and ensuring low-income households have access to affordable solar power.
New Mexico: New Mexico has enacted a historic law to transition to 100 percent carbon-free electricity by 2045.
Recommendations for building momentum against opposition
Secure needed buy-in from leaders in grassroots organizing
Strong leaders to build as broad a coalition as possible. Not everyone will get what they want, and be prepared for those conversations
Assess the opposition and get out in front of the questions and challenges they will raise
Center frontline communities and workers, goals and plan should reflect undoing the harm and expanding access to black and brown communities
Last updated: January 19, 2021
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