IoES in the News

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Bad air can mislead birds, causing them to fly into the flames instead of to safety. “Carbon monoxide poisoning, if it doesn’t result in fatality, can also cause confusion. It…

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More detailed data collection and analysis will be important in this effort and others, and it will be led by the California Center for Sustainable Communities — specifically leveraging its Energy Atlas, which can show city officials where resources are being consumed and at what level, down to the individual building or unit. “Anything that has a spatial characteristic, we can examine and provide an analysis for it,” said Stephanie Pincetl, founding director of the center. “Our motivation is to work at consumption through the lens of equity. How much are they using? Where? And to do what, and under what conditions?”

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“Climate change is making extreme and unprecedented heat events both more intense and more common, pretty much universally throughout the world,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA. “Heat…

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For Travis Longcore, president of the Los Angeles Audubon Society and professor at UCLA’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainability, the very act of paying attention to your natural environment and the wildlife…

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Air conditioning saves lives. But as the planet warms, more AC use stresses the grid and drives up emissions, accelerating climate change. “​​AC is really critical—it’s absolutely life-saving,” says University…

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This week’s brutal European heat wave? Yep, dust played a part, said Thomas Painter, a senior research scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who specializes in snow hydrology…

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The second group of five candidates for the 2022 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award includes a wildlife conservationist, a health and climate advocate, the founder of a carbon emission tracking company, a solar inventor, and a remote sensing specialist.

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The first group of five candidates for the 2022 Pritzker Emerging Environmental Genius Award includes a solar energy entrepreneur, a biotech innovator, a behavioral scientist, a physician, and the CEO of EnviroVoters.

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We extend our heartfelt condolences to the friends and family of environmental activist, Chicago 7 defendant, and UCLA IoES emeritus professor John Froines, who passed away last week. Some of…

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The decision in West Virginia v. EPA limits the Environmental Protection Agency’s jurisdiction to control greenhouse emissions from power plants while also limiting the power of federal agencies. The Supreme…

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Program wins for Best Individual Writing and Best Environmental Reporting

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UCLA Ecology & Evolutionary Biology Professor Emeritus Philip Rundel’s new book explores traits and strategies that allow plants to survive in some of the world’s harshest environments: California deserts.  “More…

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Meteorologists said the West’s megadrought won’t go away until La Nina does. “It’s much less likely that the Southwest will see at least even a partial recovery from the megadrought…

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Investors, legislators, and the general public remain in the dark about the sources of carbon-equivalent emissions that are heating up the planet without greater transparency standards like those proposed by…

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UCLA cogeneration plant. “You’re basically operating a large jet engine that has been strapped to the ground,” explained Eric Fournier, research director at the California Center for Sustainable Communities within the UCLA Institute of the Environment & Sustainability. An impressive number and diversity of pipes – a description also courtesy of Fournier – line the inside of the facility, as do support structures for seismic stability.

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Daniel Swain, a UCLA climate scientist, said while California’s coastal areas may not face extreme heat this summer, places like the Central Valley foothills & Sierra Nevada may experience record…

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The world could be facing the worst food crisis since the Second World War. Rising food prices, the global food structure, and food being too expensive for people to buy…

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“Lawns do well with about 30 inches of rain a year. Do we get 30 inches of rain a year? I don’t think so,” Pincetl said. Los Angeles receives about half that amount in a typical year. “So if you want to have water to drink, water to do all the stuff you do inside, bathe your children, do your laundry, using water on a lawn just seems foolish,” Pincetl said.

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While Southern California prepares for severe drought restrictions, the summer forecasts predict a summer marked by record-breaking temperatures, harsh landscapes, and above-average risk for large wildfires, particularly in the northern…

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One downside to the understandable focus on greenhouse-gas mitigation is that more place-specific environmental considerations, including the destruction of traditional landscapes, can get lost. “I think this approach to carbon-dioxide mitigation is a new regime of trying to justify the same kind of development,” Stephanie Pincetl, a professor at U.C.L.A. whose research focusses on land use and the environment, told me. “It’s very clever and extremely insidious because it doesn’t change anything: it doesn’t address structural racism, it doesn’t address affordability, it doesn’t address the climate, it doesn’t address resource impacts, it doesn’t address anything except on paper.”

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Eleven UCLA faculty members were elected today to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s most prestigious honorary societies including Bradley Shaffer, Distinguished professor of ecology…

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“We’re in a very different place now from where we were even just a couple decades ago,” said atmospheric physicist Alex Hall, director of the UCLA Center of Climate Science.

Awards

Bradley Shaffer, the director of the UCLA La Kretz Center for California Conservation Science, was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

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New Southern California drought rules limit outdoor watering to once a week in some areas. “So if you want to have water to drink, water to do all the stuff…

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The California Attorney General’s office has sent a subpoena to Exxon Mobil Corp., seeking information about the company’s “historic and ongoing efforts” to reduce public awareness of plastic’s harmful effects.…