Where mayoral hopefuls stand on climate
Four high-profile candidates say they back Mayor Garcetti’s energy goal for 2035.
Los Angeles is getting hotter, drier and more fireprone. But despite what scientists describe as the existential threat posed by rising temperatures, the highestprofile candidates for L.A. mayor have barely discussed how they would tackle the climate crisis.
In interviews with The Times, Karen Bass, Joe Buscaino, Kevin de León and Mike Feuer discussed powering the city with 100% clean energy, expanding public transit, protecting Angelenos from heat waves and more. Billionaire developer Rick Caruso, one of the toppolling candidates, was not made available for an interview. Instead, his campaign sent a statement.
To help inform your vote in the June 7 primary, here’s what the candidates had to say. The top two finishers will meet in November.
Karen Bass
As did the other three candidates who agreed to interviews, Bass — a congressional Democrat who represents much of the Westside and South L.A. — said she supports Mayor Eric Garcetti’s goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035, 10 years ahead of state law.
Asked how she’d help the city reach that target, Bass pledged to “leverage public dollars” and create green jobs. She said she’d clean up air pollution by electrifying diesel-fueled trucks and equipment at the ports of L.A. and Long Beach, and continue her work to shut down urban oil extraction sites like Allenco.
“I would definitely focus efforts on the communities and the neighborhoods that are really disproportionately impacted,” she said.
Asked about transportation, Bass mentioned electric school buses and rebates to help lower-income families buy electric cars. She discussed several possible strategies for getting cars off the road, such as taking advantage of the workfrom-home boom and staggering in-person schedules for office workers, much as L.A. did to reduce freeway
congestion during the 1984 Olympics. She also called for better-protected bike lanes, saying, “It’s too dangerous to [bike] in traffic.”
On protecting Angelenos from heat waves, Bass cited the “promotores de salud” model of community health workers in Spanish-speaking communities, saying she would coordinate outreach with community clinics. But she also understated the dangers posed by extreme heat, saying that while elderly people dying in their homes “has historically been a problem in Chicago ... I don’t think L.A. is to that point.”
Although Chicago has experienced some horrible heat waves, a recent Times investigation found that heat killed an estimated 3,900 Californians during the decade ending in 2019 — with people over age 65 at especially high risk.
On transitioning homes from gas to electric appliances — a proposal for which is circulating at the City Council — Bass expressed support but said it’s important to keep electricity bills under control. On water and drought, she said she supports Garcetti’s goal of reducing imports from the Colorado River and the Owens Valley, and sourcing 70% of the city’s water locally by 2035.
Bass was endorsed by the Sierra Club, which called her “an early endorser of the Green New Deal.” She’s likely to make the November runoff; a recent poll puts her in a dead heat with Caruso.
Joe Buscaino
The L.A. City Council member — who has a reputation as a pro-business moderate — said climate would be one of his top priorities, along with homelessness and crime. His district includes neighborhoods surrounding the Port of Los Angeles, which have some of the nation’s worst pollution. He vowed to create a zeroemission port by 2035.
“I was born and raised in
San Pedro,” he said. “I’ll never forget as a kid growing up seeing plumes of black smoke coming out of the [oil] refineries to the north. I’ll never forget stories of my uncles and aunts and friends and cousins who worked the port and said after a shift they would come home with soot on them.”
Buscaino has touted his eight-plus years on the board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, saying he worked to reduce lung-damaging pollution through new regulations, investments in cleaner trucks and solar panels on warehouses.
But he faced constant criticism from community activists, who said he too often opposed aggressive clean-air rules and sided with weaker, industrybacked proposals. East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice once called him “pro-polluter.”
Asked about City Council member Nithya Raman’s proposal to phase out gas heating and cooking, Buscaino said he’s “open to it” but wants to make sure the transition to all-electric homes doesn’t increase housing costs.
Buscaino suggested offshore wind turbines could help L.A. replace its gasfired power plants. He also mentioned his role in securing $35 million for affordable housing, solar panels and other clean-energy programs in Watts.
To help people drive less, Buscaino called for a “free and safe public transportation system,” citing a recent Metro survey that found many riders want to see more police or other security. On the dangers of extreme heat, he mentioned cool pavement as a solution but mostly called for state and federal action on climate change, saying, “The city can only do so much.”
Buscaino endorsed Garcetti’s plan to reduce water imports by investing in local stormwater capture and wastewater recycling. He views seawater desalination, an environmentally controversial technology, as one possible drought solution.
Rick Caruso
In an emailed statement, Caruso said that if he’s elected mayor, the urgency of climate change “will be reflected in policies that meaningfully move us away from our overdependence on fossil fuels and prioritize the needs of communities that have suffered the most from environmental injustice.” He pledged to release a “comprehensive climate plan” soon.
He touted his tenure as president of the L.A. Department of Water and Power’s board of commissioners in the late 1990s, during which the agency launched the “Green Power for a Green L.A.” initiative to boost renewable energy, supplied efficient light bulbs to low-income households and approved millions of dollars in incentives for residents to install rooftop solar panels.
He also provided a long list of sustainability efforts at the malls and other properties he’s developed, including Palisades Village, which he called “the first ground-up, mixed-used business district in California that was certified LEED Gold” (an energy efficiency metric).
Kevin de León
As leader of the California Senate, De León wrote and secured passage of legislation requiring the state to generate half its power from renewable sources by 2030. Two years later, he upped the ante to 100% climate-friendly electricity by 2045. He now serves on the L.A. City Council and supports 100% clean power by 2035.
In his interview with The Times, De León made a point of listing the nine freeways that run through his district, which covers parts of downtown and Northeast L.A.: the 2, 5, 10, 60, 101, 110, 134, 210 and 710.
Pollution “kills more people in neighborhoods like Boyle Heights, San Pedro, Wilmington, Pacoima and Watts than anywhere else,” he said. “What’s the point of having the best weather on planet Earth if we need an inhaler just to go outside and enjoy it?”
To clean up transportation, De León called for electrifying buses and Metrolink passenger trains. He set a goal of 3,000 electric-car fastcharging stations in the city — more than the 2,900 gas pumps he said L.A. has today. He said these types of investments would create green jobs, “disrupting altogether the school-to-prison pipeline.”
De León said he’d work toward safer public transit and eliminate fares for people 25 and younger. He expressed optimism that funding from voter-approved Measure M would help build a “ubiquitous” transit system that works for all Angelenos.
He also said he’d take great care in choosing appointees to the Metropolitan Transit Authority and DWP boards and “work very closely with our labor friends to make sure that we’re all on the same page” — a key point, since workers at DWP and the Southern California Gas Co. have at times fought the transition away from fossil gas. On the question of phasing out gas heating and cooking, de León said he generally favors moving toward all-electric homes.
On extreme heat, De León said he would “bust up the concrete, the cement and asphalt, particularly in poor neighborhoods.” He said he’d work to build more green spaces, citing his authorship of several bills that resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars for parks.
“We can move heaven and earth to build football stadiums,” he said. “We can do the same thing to greenify the city of L.A.”
Asked about drought, De León said he supports cutting back on water imports and would emphasize conservation — even when it starts to rain again. He also said L.A. should make sure incentives to tear out front lawns are distributed more equitably.
Mike Feuer
Feuer has served as L.A. city attorney since being elected in 2013. His website lists several environmental accomplishments, including suing SoCalGas over the Aliso Canyon methane leak and writing a bill when he served in the state Legislature requiring a 20% reduction in per-person urban water use. That target ultimately became law.
Feuer said he’d set “firm benchmarks” to ensure sufficient progress toward 100% clean energy by 2035. He said reaching that goal would require expanding rooftop solar power and making sure solar and battery storage are accessible to all communities.
As for gas heating and cooking, Feuer said he supports phasing them out of new housing, while listening closely to the concerns raised by SoCalGas workers. He also said he’d back a “subsidy-style program” to replace gas appliances in existing homes.
“The gas company’s business model is not my major concern. My major concern is having a survivable planet,” he said.
On public transit, Feuer articulated a big-picture vision similar to those of the other candidates — make streets safer and easier to navigate for bikes and buses, expand and electrify light rail — along with a bunch of nitty-gritty ideas, such as installing digital screens at bus stops that tell riders when the next bus is coming, and upgrading seat covers on trains as part of an effort to make transit cleaner, safer and more welcoming. He mentioned the ongoing construction of a Metro line between downtown and the Westside.
“If we build that and people are reluctant to come, it will be one of the hugest tragedies in the history of our city,” Feuer said.
As for electric vehicles, Feuer said he’d get more charging stations installed at the airport and in “every community in the city”; reduce emissions at the ports via electric trucks and solar power; and push for cleaner fuels for ships that dock at the ports, building on a partnership between L.A. and Shanghai. He also called for phasing out oil production in disadvantaged communities, although he acknowledged this could be expensive for the city.
Asked about extreme heat, Feuer pledged to plant trees, install cool pavement and make cooling centers more accessible. On drought, he said he’d work to get 75% of the city’s water from local sources such as groundwater and recycling by 2035, up from Garcetti’s goal of 70%.
Other candidates
Gina Viola — who recently polled at 2%, tied with Feuer and ahead of Buscaino — has embraced the Sunrise Movement’s Green New Deal and was endorsed by Youth Climate Strike Los Angeles. She also supports the “25x25” plan to repurpose 25% of the city’s land area dedicated to driving and parking by 2025, to create more bike lanes, parks and other climate-friendly spaces.
Viola is one of four candidates who weren’t invited to the last mayoral debate and are demanding to be part of the next one. Among the other three, Mel Wilson released a climate plan and said he’d like to highlight the issue at the next debate. Craig Greiwe discusses climate on his website, and Alex Gruenenfelder tweeted that he’s “running for Mayor to build a greener Los Angeles.”