Depending on your perspective it is either tiresome or perpetually amusing — everything is a problem, and those problems are always due to inequities. It turns out the people who never grew up from kindergarten and still claim things are ”so unfair!” simply moved on to a career in journalism.
The New York Times has reached a new low in the never-ending quest to take things that usually were part of normal life and turn them into problems, and then blame those problems on others. If have access to shade in Los Angeles you are among the city’s elite, it seems.
Climate change and inequality converge in Los Angeles, where officials see the baking sun as a growing crisis and shade as a precious commodity https://t.co/H5AlUHyYqz
— The New York Times (@nytimes) December 2, 2019
“Maybe you haven’t thought about it this way, but shade is an equity issue,” Mayor Eric M. Garcetti said. I suppose we should give him credit — at least he stopped short of saying shade was a constitutional right.
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The article then goes forward to detail some of the shadow disparity that exists in the city.
Drive across the vast space of Los Angeles and the point becomes clear. In wealthy neighborhoods like Bel-Air or Beverly Hills, spot the hulking trees lining canopied streets. In poorer neighborhoods like South Los Angeles, watch as the people waiting for the bus strain for some sliver of escape from the intense heat.
It is with maybe only a fleeting sense of irony that the article mentions how there used to be a time when California actually touted its sun-enriched benefits. These days, because of global warming of course, that very same sunlight is a negative.
Led by the city’s chamber of commerce, which distributed pamphlets and books across the country portraying Southern California as a sun-dappled utopia, the marketing effort helped propel Los Angeles’s growth as a major metropolis.
And now it is a problem.
Peak 2019…”shade privelege”
— Matt (@Matt03595289) December 2, 2019
Now “Shade” will become a human right or “public good” as @AOC would define it.
— Freedom (@LibertySpeaks76) December 2, 2019
An extraordinary new reach, the tethering of climate change and the inequality of shade, in a very mild mediterranean climate.
— Kyle Hunter (@KyleHunter) December 2, 2019
There are a number of things not addressed in this piece. Nowhere in the article is the failure of the local governments mentioned in regards to the homeless. Most of the comparisons of ”wealthy” shaded areas concern neighborhoods — where people see to their own shade — as opposed to the examples of public areas or commercial locations, which lies at the government, again.
Fancy names for lack of basic municipality governance like policing homeless / trespassing, littering…..
— Ben (@thethriftygene) December 2, 2019
Isn't CA a very wealthy state? Shouldn't they be able to create shade? Shouldn't they address their homelessness and low income family needs? Why are they given a soapbox on the national stage when their policies clearly do not work for their people?!
— Carrie Wulfsberg (@CarrieWulfsberg) December 2, 2019
Quite the question right there. How is California the thought leaders of the nation when they are flummoxed by the concept of shade.
This is also the same state that has had horrifically poor forest management systems leading to wildfires that consume numerous trees, to say nothing of the rolling blackouts that cut off the means to power air conditioners, but sure — let’s toss the onus on the wealthy citizens because they have unfair access to shade.
Imagine living in a city where the residents brag about how it’s always sunny and then turn around and complain about how sunny it is and now shade is a privilege.
— Jonathon Boes (@BoesJonathon) December 2, 2019
We will have to imagine it — because no way we would move into that psych bin of a city.
