Inside the Bodega Marine Laboratory at UC Davis, Tessa M. Hill, a marine geochemist and oceanographer, studies how climate change affects California. Surrounded by pH testing bottles designed for reading the oceans acidification levels, Hill is hopeful that her work is helping the future of the climate in California.

“This feels to me on a personal level. We have to think about the data in front of us and what we can do to stop the problem of climate change. But while we are trying to stop the problem of climate change, we also have to adapt to it,” says Hill.

The impact of climate change is far reaching on California’s Landscapes.

Rising sea levels are depleting our sands and threatening parts of the Pacific Coast Highway, and many of the Southland’s palm trees are approaching the end of their life spans.

Los Angeles-Long Beach, California currently have the worst air quality in the country and air pollution often reaches dangerous levels. Ultrafine particles are in the air and can be harmful to one's health.

These factors not only harm the people of Los Angeles and California who breathe this air– but also the environment.

California beaches are predicted to lose about half of their sand by 2040. Our oceans are being polluted with trash from single-use plastics.

The Hollywood Hills and the iconic Malibu views are too often covered in flames that continue to spread rapidly during drought seasons.

Atmospheric rivers and pineapple express storms contribute to continued rainfall, which scientists only predict will get worse.

Not only do these factors harm the state of California's environment, but it also places underprivileged communities at an even greater risk. Concerning harmful climate factors, many underprivileged communities are located next to highways and busy streets, that continue to be polluted by the flow of traffic.

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Perry Vasquez poses in front of his artwork. (Photo Credit: Lile Kvantaliani)

“Instead of actively working towards a solution, we will just continue to sleepwalk towards an inevitable wasteland which will arrive, not with a bang, but with a whimper,” says Perry Vasquez, an artist who paints palm trees on fire as a symbol of climate change.

In the scope of climate change, Hill believes that there are many local and community-level things that people can do.

“If we can begin improving mass transit, putting in bike lanes, making sure that cities are pedestrian-friendly, not just car friendly, thinking about how we handle our waste, our food waste, our plastic waste. All these things are connected to our climate change problem,” she said.

California plans to end the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035. The LA Metro saw the largest ridership increase for mass transportation with almost 285 million boardings on its buses and trains in 2023, over a 10 percent increase since last year.

As for Angelenos, these challenges will only continue to impact the iconic images of the Sunshine State if we do nothing about it.

Vasquez has been painting palm trees on fire since 2017. He uses his artistic skills to acknowledge his emotions about the worsening effects of climate change.

“Painting helps me escape a certain feeling of anxiety that I think people are feeling, whether you are acknowledging it or not. So, in that sense, I'm just like everybody else, and just trying to cope with anxiety in the best way I can,” he said.

Vasquez also understands how the threat of climate change is ruining California's iconography over time.

“Over the years, California’s reputation as a place where healthy, alternative, even whacky, lifestyles could take hold and grow. So, the fact that our climate is becoming more extreme strikes at the heart of our identity,” he said.

“It is a potentially tragic denouement for a state that presented itself as an ecological paradise for so long.”

‘Our beaches are deteriorating’

The iconic sandy shores of California are renowned and cherished much like the famous landmarks of Hollywood and Disney in Southern California. However, the beloved beaches we enjoy today face the risk of disappearing from coastal areas in Los Angeles County.

According to a study from the U.S Geological Survey and U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, efforts are underway in Oceanside, California, to preserve sand on beaches.

However the United States Geological Survey from the Coastal and Marine Hazards and Resources Program study predicts that “24 to 75 percent of California's beaches could become completely eroded by the end of the century with no interventions and climate change.”

However, sand loss isn't new to California.

Every five to seven years 1.3 million cubic yards of sand is added to Orange County beaches. However, as sea levels rise and more sand is washed away into the ocean, this hinders the future vitality of our beaches. California requires a greater supply of sand to combat this issue.

California's oceans continue to be polluted with trash and plastics.

Tessa M. Hill, a marine geochemist and oceanographer, says that despite beach cleanups, it’s not enough to solve the problem.

“The bottom line is that we are producing so much plastic globally and locally. So no amount of ocean cleanups and beach cleanups are going to help us because the amount of plastic being produced every day far exceeds what we can clean in a beach cleanup,” she said.

Hill says getting rid of single-use plastics would ultimately help solve ocean pollution.

“Frankly, none of us need plastic water bottles and we could get rid of them entirely and that would deal with a huge amount of the ocean's collusive pollution,” she says. “The bottom line problem is that we are producing so much plastic, particularly in the United States, but also globally, there is so much single-use plastic being produced every day.”

“If people would make a commitment to not purchase things that are made of single-use plastics and the consumer has a lot of control over this,” said Hill.

“So honestly the most powerful thing we can all do about plastic pollution is to stop using single-use plastics wherever we can."

Another factor affecting our oceans is ocean acidification, which is caused by our human emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere through our use of fossil fuels. When the ocean water absorbs that carbon dioxide (CO2), it fundamentally changes the chemistry of the water and it makes it more acidic or decreases the pH of the ocean.

Hill says that there are several different ways this affects our California Coasts, especially ocean animals and plants. For over 15 years, she has studied these effects.

Tessa M. Hill speaking on climate change in communities. (Photo Courtesy of Tessa M. Hill)

“We recognized very early on that this process of ocean acidification was going to have a very significant impact on the sustainable harvest of shellfish in California,” she said. “This problem of climate change, and ocean acidification is making that farming practice even more difficult.”

She says that if humans are putting an excessive amount of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, one of the things we need to do is move our economy away from a fossil fuel-dependent system.

Nonetheless, Hill emphasizes the personal toll of her studies.

“We put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves as pioneers to really prove that we belong there, and for many of us, myself included, that did mean working harder, working longer, working smarter, and always feeling like you had to do that in order to prove you belonged."

In addition to a large global change, Hill believes we have to take as many steps to naturally trap and store carbon from the atmosphere.

But even more importantly, like preserving the forests that we have, there are other places where carbon is getting taken out of the atmosphere. Despite the negative effect on the ocean due to climate change, Hill believes there is some hope in some coastal habitats that trap and store carbon.

There is a similar process in the ocean– Seagrass Meadows, which trap and store carbon similarly to how forests do on land. According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, meadows store large quantities of carbon. A single acre of seagrass meadow can absorb over 700 pounds of carbon per year.

‘The Worst Air Quality’

Photo of recent gas prices in Los Angeles, CA. (Photo by Piper Vaughn)

The Los Angeles Metropolitan area, home to millions, has among the worst air quality in the United States.

According to the American Lung Association State of the Air report, Los Angeles-Long Beach ranked the number 1 area with the "worst high ozone day" out of over 200 metropolitan areas.

The Los Angeles metropolitan area also ranked in the top 5 for the "worst annual particle pollutants" out of 200 other metropolitan areas.

With hour-long traffic jams, container ships, and having one of the largest airports in the country, Los Angeles County is continually effected from the impacts of pollution.

Despite the switch to more electric vehicles becoming more prevalent alongside the rise in gas prices, the call for better air quality is gaining strength.

Anthony Wexler, the director of the air quality research at the University of California Davis, says that the air quality of Los Angeles can cause serious health concerns.

“Both ozone and particulate particulates in the atmosphere are known to damage your health and actually cause people to die prematurely because there's more and more evidence that people are exposed to concentrations that we thought were safe and are not safe,” he said. “People are dying or having other health problems as a result of the air pollution.”

Wexler says the health concerns could range from asthma, lung damage and even autism.

Graphic of the 3 Main Greenhouse Gases.(Photo by Piper Vaughn)

According to the Los Angeles County Public Health’s website, their “Pinpoint Plan” suggests ways in which Angelenos can prepare themselves for the results of climate change in California.

It suggests that being informed, promoting local planning of plants and trees, providing guidance on health risks, building the capacity to monitor the health impacts and adopting management practices are among the “ways to reduce the health impacts of climate change.”

In terms of air pollution, Wexler says that there are things that people can start doing to combat the issue of climate change and its effects on air quality.

“Buy an electric car, when you have a choice of what to do, use less energy in what you do in your life. Because when you use energy, you're emitting greenhouse gasses,” he said.

“Become politically active. Because if you don't become politically active and force the politicians to do what needs to be done, they're gonna do it, they're gonna take the easy road.”

Despite the poor air quality, Nichole Quick, the Deputy Director for the Health Protection Bureau at LA County Public Health said that there can be hope.

“There is some good,” she says.

The Air Quality Management District conducts a study called the Multiple Air Toxics Exposure Study V (MATES V) which is essentially an inventory of the air toxics.

“Our air quality between the latest mate study and the one before has actually improved. So it's not all doom and gloom, there are things that can be done through regulation rulemaking that actually can move the needle on this and improve,” said Quick.

The California Air Resourses Board provides ways tohelp reduce air pollution.

According to LA County’s Community Forest Management Plan, a long-term strategy to help manage the planning of more trees in Los Angeles states that trees provide several benefits for the climate.

The benefits listed in the plan include: saving energy, cleaner air, shade and cooling, collecting rainwater and providing healthier communities.

‘‘Who does climate change cost?’

Ultimately, marginalized communities are most affected by harmful air quality levels. But LA County seems to be doing something about it.

The Community Air Protection Blueprint (CARB) aims to help vulnerable communities who are the most impacted by poor air quality levels due to climate change.

Nichole Quick says that climate health has a large impact on marginalized communities. Especially those living near the Ports of Los Angeles, highways, and airports.

“The communities that are historically overburdened with this do get a lot of those local effects where there's exposure to ports, maybe warehouses, maybe rail lines, the list goes on and on,” said Quick.

Although there are ways individuals can protect themselves against harmful pollutants, like particulate matter, Quick says that people in marginalized communities often lack the same access.

“When you're talking about communities that are lower socio-economic, they may not have the capacity to improve their indoor air quality the way others do,” says Quick. “They may be living in homes that have a higher incidence of things like lead, dust, and so forth. So those are all sort of the cumulative effects that we see in those communities.”

Quick believes that more should be done to help these communities.

“Everybody deserves access to clean air, water, and so forth. This is a critical thing for us to be sort of looking at as a health system and a public health system,” she said.

‘What is being done?’

Photo of the Coast in Malibu, CA. (Photo by Piper Vaughn)

Take The Jump is a project that movement program that allows people to help the climate by making a commitment to climate change in a 6 step challenge for 1, 3 or 6 months.

According to a Take The Jump report, people have the primary influence in over 25 percent of the savings needed by 2030 to avoid “ecological meltdown.” Taking part in key lifestyle changes and individual action is essential between now and 2030, “the most important decade for climate action.”

Nichole Quick is the Deputy Director for the Health Protection Bureau at LA County Public Health. She said that climate health is among Los Angeles's priorities.

“When we're looking at the hierarchy of needs, food, shelter, and water, all of those are affected by where we are right now with the dire situation with climate health. So you're talking about people's ability to live in habitable climates and so we really need to prioritize this now,” she says.

“The single most pressing public health issue right now is climate health.”

The climate health office is in the process of strategic planning. The prioritization will be for climate health going forward.

According to the LA County's Climate Change and Health Equity Strategies for Action report, the proposed strategies for climate health and equity include: “Informed, Empowered and Well-Resourced Residents, Healthy and Sustainable Communities, Prepared and Resilient LA County, Effective and Engaged Public Health Programs.”

“The county as a whole has a lot of activities surrounding various aspects of climate health, even the Department of Public Works at the county's involvement with looking for organizing activities to make sure communities are prepared for things like coastal flooding, inland flooding, wildland fires,” she said.

Hill continues to urges Angelenos to take action.

“I always just encourage people to think, from that local scale all the way up to the big scale, because it's going to take all those different types of actions to change the course that we're on,” says Hill.

“We have reshaped California in a lot of ways and our experience of living in California. But that's not a reason to give up. We're not throwing our hands up. We are actively in our communities trying to make this problem better,” she said.

Will humanity continue to wait for the wasteland to arrive, or will we collectively take action?

For more information as to how you can do your part, LA County suggests 10 ways in which you can help reduce climate change.