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Turner on Shade Equity Master Plan for Rural California Desert Region

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An Associated Press article on efforts to increase shade equity in a rural desert community in Riverside County cited V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI), whose work focuses on cities adapting to hotter conditions. The master plan inaugurated in the Eastern Coachella Valley, where summer temperatures regularly exceed 100 degrees, is among other efforts in the United States to increase climate resilience in Latino and other marginalized communities disproportionately exposed to extreme heat. The project, a collaboration of partners including LCI, is funded by a grant from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research in California. “What was sort of being left off the table was how heat is affecting rural communities,” said Turner, associate professor of urban planning and geography at UCLA. Community members, part of a collaborative workshop with Luskin urban planning students on social justice issues, are also supporting the project.

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Turner on Schools’ Potential to Provide an Oasis From Heat

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An LAist article on efforts to increase green spaces on Los Angeles school campuses to provide cool relief in a warming world cited V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. By 2050, parts of L.A. that are prone to extreme heat could see at least 30 additional days with temperatures above 90 degrees. Turner said it’s important to think about schools as community resources, especially for kids who come from historically disinvested and disadvantaged communities. “If kids live in a home without air conditioning or a cool place to go on hot days, then come to school, which also lacks cooling inside and shade outside, their core body temperatures are never getting down to safe levels,” said Turner, an associate professor of urban planning. “That’s going to cause them to have difficulty concentrating … and it’s going to be very, very hard for a child to learn in that context.”

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Turner on Cities’ Strategies for Staying Cool

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V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to Spectrum News about the importance of shade in providing relief from rising temperatures. “Shade is the most effective way we have to keep people cool outside,” said Turner, an associate professor of urban planning. “All else equal, someone standing in shade can be 20 to 40 degrees Celsius cooler than somebody standing in the full sun. And so we need to think of ways that include trees and non-tree shade structures to keep people cool.” Turner also spoke to CalMatters about artificial turf as a replacement for lawns, noting that the synthetic material can trap heat, at times making it hotter than asphalt. And she spoke to Grist about one downside of the use of cool-pavement technology: When the sun is at its highest, heat reflected off its surface can actually be absorbed by the people and structures nearby.

Watch the Spectrum News interview
Read the CalMatters article
Read the Grist article

 

Mullin on the Contradictions of Central California’s Climate Emergency

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Megan Mullin, faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the San Joaquin Valley, where flagging resilience to drought, floods and heat have made it one of the front lines of climate change in America. The region is also the center of oil and gas production in California and skews conservative, creating many internal contradictions, said Mullin, co-author of a recent paper that found that climate change is projected to disproportionately affect Republican voters. The valley’s residents are “getting messages that action on climate is jeopardizing their well-being, jeopardizing their livelihoods,” she said, yet at the same time they face dried-up wells, dreadful air quality, huge flood risks and other perils. Mullin did point to Fresno as one area that is making climate gains through the state’s Transformative Climate Communities program, which funds hyper-local projects in places that have been disproportionately affected by legacy pollution and other environmental hazards.

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On Palm Trees and Climate Resiliency

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A Los Angeles Times article on cities reconsidering the value of Southern California’s iconic palm trees checked in with V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. Planting trees is a key element of many climate resiliency plans, but the towering palms don’t provide much shade or sequester carbon well. “A pole on the side of the street isn’t providing much shade. And a palm tree is kind of similar,” said Turner, whose work focuses on how cities adapt to hotter conditions. The article pointed to Center for Innovation research showing that shade can reduce heat stress in the human body from 25% to 30% throughout the day. Turner also spoke to Resources Radio about how heat impacts U.S. schools. The conversation touched on architectural and landscape design choices that can mitigate hot temperatures, funding sources for improving infrastructure and issues of equity in allocating such resources to schools. 

Read the L.A. Times article
Listen to the Resources Radio podcast

 

Mullin on ‘Glimmers of Possibility’ on Climate Action

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News outlets including Ethnic Media Services, The Hill, La Opinión and Peninsula 360 Press covered research by UCLA Luskin’s Megan Mullin about the entrenched political divide that has impeded action on climate change — as well as signals that the logjam is starting to break. “I am seeing glimmers of possibility that climate action may yet be underway even as American climate politics remains firmly in the grip of polarization,” said Mullin, professor of public policy and faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, at a briefing hosted by Ethnic Media Services. Not only are Republican-led states seeing growing levels of clean-energy production, she said, but many heavily Republican areas of the country are at high risk for the worst effects of climate change. Mullin also cited the climate change literacy of younger generations, which is “leaps and bounds beyond the literacy of older generations, and that translates into smaller divides, even among young Republicans.” 

Watch the Ethnic Media Services briefing
Read the Hill article
Read the La Opinión article

 

On the Chronic, Day-to-Day Toll of Rising Temperatures

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V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, joined the podcast America Adapts for an expansive conversation on the effects of rising temperatures on public health. While record-setting heat has received widespread media coverage over the summer, Turner stressed that governments must develop not just climate emergency plans, but long-term resiliency strategies that protect people from the chronic day-to-day experience of elevated temperatures. “We talk a lot about extreme heat and we talk a lot about mortality and we talk about heat sickness, but what we don’t really talk about is the myriad ways that heat affects well-being in our daily lives. It affects your cognitive abilities, your emotional state. You’re more likely to be angry, unable to concentrate,” Turner said. “I think these are ways that the lived experience for many Americans is going to be degraded because they don’t have access to cool communities or cool infrastructure.”

Listen to the podcast

 

Advancing Climate Policy in an Era of Deeply Partisan Politics

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In a deeply polarized political environment, Americans are more divided on climate change than ever before. Yet three recent developments could advance climate policy, despite partisan politics, according to a new article in the journal Political Science & Politics co-authored by UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation faculty director Megan Mullin and Patrick J. Egan of New York University:

  • Partisan cohesion and Democratic initiative. The Republican and Democratic parties have become more unified internally. While Republicans are less concerned about climate change than ever before, growing cohesion among Democrats, both among elected officials and members of the public, has elevated climate change as a party priority and increased their willingness to take electoral risks to address it.
  • Clean-energy expansion in Republican states. Even though decision-makers in Republican-led states have backpedaled on support for clean energy, those states are leaders in clean-energy production. Nearly 40% of U.S. renewable energy is situated in the Republican-led states of Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, suggesting that markets can overcome politics in the transition to a clean-energy economy.
  • Partisan distribution of climate impacts. Heavily Republican areas may suffer disproportionately from the worst effects of climate change. Mullin and Egan bring together maps of climate risk with county voting records to show that Republican counties have higher percentages of properties at severe or extreme risk from flooding and fire over the next 30 years. This may inspire partisan voters to demand political action by their elected officials.

Read the full story, and find related research on the Center for Innovation’s Climate Adaptation and Resilience webpage.

 

Uncovering Climate Hazards in California’s Prisons

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A San Francisco Chronicle article highlighted research by UCLA Luskin master of public policy students who found that California’s prison system is not prepared to respond to climate emergencies that threaten the well-being of the state’s incarcerated population. Their report, produced on behalf of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, used a mixed methods approach that included interviews with experts, a spatial analysis and a survey of nearly 600 currently incarcerated people in all 34 of California’s prison facilities. The study found evidence of power outages and generator failures, a lack of shade in outdoor spaces, and a lack of access to air-conditioned spaces or heated facilities during extreme weather events. Sixty-one percent of survey respondents said they experienced heat exhaustion while incarcerated. The researchers, MPP ’23 graduates Aishah Abdala, Abhilasha Bhola, Guadalupe Gutierrez, Eric Henderson and Maura O’Neill, offered a series of policy recommendations aimed at keeping incarcerated people safe, protecting taxpayer interests and ensuring that government institutions are held accountable.

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Managing Extreme Heat as a New School Year Begins

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NBC News spoke to V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation (LCI), about the impact of soaring temperatures on students as the new school year begins. “Children’s bodies are not the same as adults. They are more vulnerable to extreme heat,” Turner said. “If kids don’t feel well or are angry or can’t concentrate, then of course they won’t test well.” She added, “Extreme heat is our new reality. Hot seasons will be longer and more intense, and for many children, school is the only place with air conditioning.” In a separate interview with the Los Angeles affiliate NBC4, Turner said that California lacks a statewide reporting system to track how K-12 schools experience heat, including which campuses have functioning cooling systems. The recent LCI policy brief Protecting Californians With Heat-Resilient Schools offers guidance on how to prioritize heat management on campuses, including through the establishment of a statewide indoor temperature limit.

Read the NBC News article
Watch the NBC4 interview