Climate Change Conference Comes to Downtown LA

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The day-long conference in downtown la brought together more than 200 people, not just to “talk” about environmental problems, but to find ways to fix them.

Beth Jines, Director of Sustainability for the city of LA, said dealing with climate change is not just about new technology. It’s about working with what you’ve already got.

"We're looking at retrofitting municipal buildings, and we have a commercial building retrofit program that the city is funding, as well as a lot of work on residential retrofits."

Wade Crowfoot, deputy director for Governor Jerry Brown’s environmental planning office, says sometimes, it’s the accumulation of small steps that can help.

“Really paying attention to science telling us these impacts that are coming, but in fact are already here, and then taking smart steps to address them.”

Higher, sustained temperatures in urban areas can be addressed by planting more. As their shade cools the ground, water demands for surrounding plants are eased, along with lowering greenhouse gases.

“You know, the challenge of climate change can be overwhelming, because it's a global challenge, but there are a number of very concert short term steps communities can be taking, not only to address these impacts but improve their communities in the meantime.”

Because California gets the majority of its water from only one source, that being the delta, supply and distribution of the state’s water are also being addressed. Millions of federal dollars are now aimed towards California, fixing issues like air pollution and wildfire dangers.

Associate professor at UCLA, Alex Hall, agrees, and says locally, we’re headed in the right direction.

"L.A.'s made tremendous progress in the last 50 years. It's really a model globally for environmental regulation and successful environmental management. Now we have many more automobiles on the roads, but even better air quality, and so that's pretty astonishing."

Low emission vehicles and higher efficiency appliances are helping to improve air quality. But Jines says sometimes change comes from personal, day to day decisions.

"We're doing better, we still have a ways to go. Doing things like the upcoming CicLAvia, which will be this next Sunday, where we get usually over a 100,000 people that come out and ride their bikes and walk and skate on the 10 miles of city streets that we close to gasoline or motor-powered engines."

Despite dire warnings about climate change, most in attendance were optimistic..

"As a scientist I'm accustomed to interacting with other scientists, and this is an example of a new era. It's really astonishing the level of cooperation and collaboration that's going on towards this common goal. Gives me a lot of optimism about winning this battle."

Most agreed, it’s not “if” but “when” major climate change will come. But experts here say that many, many small steps can help soften the effect.