How and when will we move to 100% clean, renewable energy?

Click on the top photo to open the slide show and captions.

The Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance joined in partnership with the USC Institute for GeneticMedicine Art Gallery to keep the CLIMATE FORWARD ball rolling across our 15 Los Angeles Council Districts.  On April 4, 2019, USC hosted Climate Forward: The Politics of Climate Change. With former Secretary of State John Kerry as the keynote speaker, the conference brought together experts from both sides of the political aisle to identify how to break the political gridlock preventing action against the growing threat of climate change.

USC Dornsife Wrigley Institute for Environmental Studies and the Center for the Political Future partnered with the USC Price Schwarzenegger Institute to bring together academics, scientists, political leaders and operatives to explore local, state, national and global strategies and respond to a changing climate. Also considered were the roles of the private sector and the economic implications of action and hesitation in addressing global climate change.

Since Mayor Garcetti’s announcement in February that the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP) will not be repowering three gas-fired power plants, the question has arisen—what will we use instead to power our homes and businesses? How quickly can we move to 100%?

Garcetti’s launch of a “Green New Deal” includes a target of 80% renewable energy by 2036. Will that be in time? Can we (must we) do more?

This forum, organized by the NCSA and IGMAG, provided an opportunity to talk with some of the leading thinkers in the city.  Discussion included the challenges and opportunities we face and where our neighborhoods can go from here.  Topics discussed were: How can we work in collaboration with public, private, nonprofit, faith-based, academic and media leaders across LA County?  What are the roles and the process of neighborhood councils in the transition? How can groups like this generate inclusion and balance, innovation and management to create a model of innovation and sustainability able to be replicated across all our neighborhoods?

Everyone agreed we are truly on a new frontier and we must inform, engage and empower ourselves and others to be stewards of the planet.

This stimulating conversation was framed by the music of Armare de l’Aabba & 5D TAGG Brigade, featuring Yair Agu-San. This group of music educators at LA High School for Recording Arts whose students are about to release their single, SMASHIN’ OUT, created an atmosphere of harmony and spiritual sharing to the event.  Art by Elizabeth Stone, Linda Alterwitz, Steven M. Dilley, Larisa Pilinsky and Reza Jamalpour addressed the fragility and beauty of Nature as well as its Force and capacity for Destruction.  The artists’ work also made visible the often invisible systemic process of our molecular, genomic process and and its complex interplay with our social systems.  Prominent in the discussions was the recognition of all for collaboration and stewardship to prevent and heal physical, mental, spiritual and Social dis-ease, before eruption into costly diseases.

Speakers included:

  Louis Ting, LADWP Director of Power Planning, Development & Engineering

Nathan Wyeth, Director, Grid Services, Sunrun 

Jasmine Vargas, Senior Organizer, Food & Water Watch

Aura Vasquez, former LADWP Commissioner, currently City Council candidate 

Event Organizer and Moderator- Lisa Hart, Organizational Development Consultant in community and organizational capacity-building and Neighborhood Council Sustainability Alliance Steering Board Member