Exclusive: A Karen Bass climate blunder
Los Angeles fired its chief heat officer. And its climate emergency office has been hollowed out.
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This time last year, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass called for eliminating the city’s climate emergency office. Even for Bass — who had never prioritized climate action — the money-saving proposal was stunning, coming not long after the climate-fueled devastation of the Palisades fire.
Fortunately, City Council said “no” amid a public outcry. Crisis averted.
Or so it seemed.
Several sources tell me that Marta Segura — who led the climate emergency office since its inception in 2021 and also served as L.A.’s chief heat officer — was quietly fired by the Bass administration last month, with no replacement.
Meanwhile, the city hasn’t been hiring to fill a growing list of vacancies at the climate office. With Segura gone, there’s just one staffer left, down from six.
The mayor’s office didn’t announce Segura’s firing. Word trickled out among activists and City Council members over the last couple of weeks.
For Maro Kakoussian, director of climate and health programs at Physicians for Social Responsibility Los Angeles, Bass has been a frustrating mayor — quick to waive clean energy rules, slow to end neighborhood oil drilling. Dumping the city’s first-ever chief heat officer was merely the latest disappointment.
“There’s no transparency with how these decisions are being made,” Kakoussian said. “As we’re getting ready for another extreme heat season — and these mega-events like the World Cup — none of it makes sense.”
Indeed, I’ve long struggled to understand Bass. The first time I spoke with her, when she was running for mayor in 2022, she downplayed the risks of heat, saying that older folks dying in their homes has “historically been a problem in Chicago” but not in Los Angeles. Fact check: Extremely false!
Hopefully Bass has learned better; she’s certainly spent the last four years saying all the right things about heat and climate. When I asked last year why she was trying to eliminate the climate emergency office, for instance, a spokesperson assured me that climate “will continue as a core responsibility of every department.”
In other words, who needs a dedicated climate office when City Planning and Public Works can prioritize climate initiatives internally?
Problem is, climate tends to get lost when it’s not your main job. Hence the Climate Emergency Mobilization Office, which is charged by City Council with coordinating between agencies and marshaling resources in advance of heat waves, with a special eye toward protecting the most vulnerable. That includes the elderly, folks who can’t afford air conditioning and homeless individuals.
The climate office has also worked on longer-term efforts to cool the city, including tree-planting and adding shade structures at bus stops.
Bass is “effectively ensuring that Los Angeles remains a city that only reacts to catastrophes rather than one that actively prevents them,” said Andy Shrader, who served as an environmental adviser to Paul Koretz, the former City Councilmember responsible for creating the climate emergency office.
“Mayor Bass is committing a strategic blunder of historic proportions,” he added.
Will Bass replace Segura, or replenish the staff of the climate emergency office? I have no idea. The mayor’s office didn’t respond to my request for comment.
I did get a chance to talk with City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who’s challenging Bass in a fiercely contested mayoral primary. We were chatting for a different story — check your inboxes tomorrow! — but I made sure to ask her about Segura’s firing.
Raman told me she was disappointed by the news, and by what she described as Bass underutilizing the chief heat officer.
“It’s an important role, and [it] had the potential to be much more than just a symbolic nod to one of the most challenging issues related to climate,” she said.
If she were mayor, she added, she would think about the role “much more expansively.”
Meaning what?
“Thinking about that person as someone who could lead and anchor a strategy around shade across the entire city, who could plan before the Olympics to push that agenda forward, who could really engage with the Public Works department to ensure that shade and structures and shelters and trees could be built, and were being built,” she said. “That’s the kind of ambitious work that someone in that role could be doing.”
Ballots have already been mailed to Angelenos. If you care about climate, should you vote for Raman over Bass?
That’s a great question. Check back for another email from me tomorrow!
Another endorsement for Steyer
Remember last week, when I made the case that Tom Steyer is the obvious choice for California governor, at least if you’re a climate voter?
A quick update: Since then, the Sierra Club endorsed Steyer, adding to the long list of environmental organizations supporting the billionaire activist.
Meanwhile, environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben wrote an opinion piece calling out gubernatorial candidate Xavier Becerra for declining to investigate Exxon Mobil — despite public pressure to do so — when he was California attorney general.
In other news
The energy transition:
California’s first solar-over-canal project is a success. It’s small, though, totaling less than one-third of a mile. (John Holland, Fresno Bee)
California regulators won’t let SoCalGas charge ratepayers $266 million to plan a sprawling hydrogen pipeline network, which likely would have cost billions more to build. (Jeff St. John, Canary Media)
Colorado just became the third state to legalize balcony solar. Virginia will almost certainly be next. (Sam Brasch, CPR News)
Public lands and wildlife:
San Diego Gas & Electric wants to build a sprawling transmission line through Anza-Borrego Desert State Park. (Tammy Murga, KPBS)
The Trump administration is evicting hundreds of bison from federal grasslands in Montana to benefit cattle ranchers. (Jack Healy, New York Times)
AI deepfake scammers are coming for cute animal videos. The stupidity is — well, it’s deeply stupid. (Lila Seidman, L.A. Times)
Various villains:
Ahead of the World Cup, Saudi Aramco — the world’s biggest climate polluter — is spending an estimated $400 million to sponsor FIFA. (Hayley Smith, L.A. Times)
The conservative intelligentsia is running seminars to try to convince judges not to believe climate science. (Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica)
California is investigating an energy company that agreed to take a payout from the Trump administration to cancel an offshore wind farm. (Jennifer McDermott, Associated Press)
Climate infrastructure:
Los Angeles finally opened a subway line beneath Wilshire Boulevard. Here’s why it took 65 years. (Jenny Jarvie, L.A. Times)
Californians will vote in November on whether to limit environmental reviews for renewable energy projects. (Paul Rogers, Bay Area News Group)
Please join me in booing the Democrats in various states who want to cut energy efficiency funding to reduce electric bills. It would save a little money in the short term but cost everyone more in the long run. (Sarah Shemkus, Canary Media)
Last but not least, happy 100th birthday to David Attenborough! Legend.
Until tomorrow
Remember when I wrote about Jackie Robinson Day, environmental injustice, fossil fuel barons and the lasting legacy of segregation?