LA mayor to chair US Conference of Mayors homeless task force
LA County board creates commission for LGBTQ+ rights, welfare
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Climate crisis is on track to push one-third of humanity out of its most livable environment By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica This story was originally published by ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prizewinning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox. limate change is remapping where humans can exist on the planet. As optimum conditions shift away from the equator and toward the poles, more than 600 million people have already been stranded outside of a crucial environmental niche that scientists say best supports life. By late this century, according to a study published last month in the journal Nature Sustainability, 3 to 6 billion people, or between a third and a half of humanity, could be trapped outside of that zone, facing extreme heat, food scarcity and higher death rates, unless emissions are sharply curtailed or mass migration is accommodated. The research, which adds novel detail about who will be most affected and where, suggests that
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Palm Springs home. | Photo by Cody Board on Unsplash
climate-driven migration could easily eclipse even the largest estimates as enormous segments of the earth’s population seek safe havens. It also makes a moral case for immediate and aggressive policies to prevent such a change from occurring, in part
by showing how unequal the distribution of pain will be and how great the improvements could be with even small achievements in slowing the pace of warming. “There are clear, profound ethical consequences in the numbers,”
Timothy Lenton, one of the study’s lead authors and the director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter in the U.K., said in an interview. “If we can’t level with that injustice and be honest about it, then we’ll never progress the international
action on this issue.” The notion of a climate niche is based on work the researchers first published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2020, which established that for the past 6,000 years humans have gravitated toward a
narrow range of temperatures and precipitation levels that supported agriculture and, later, economic growth. That study warned that warming would make those conditions elusive for growing segments of humankind and found that while just 1% of the earth’s surface is now intolerably hot, nearly 20% could by 2070. The new study reconsiders population growth and policy options and explores scenarios that dramatically increase earlier estimates, demonstrating that the world’s environment has already changed significantly. It focuses more heavily on temperature than precipitation, finding that most people have thrived in mean annual temperatures of 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Should the world continue on its present pathway — making gestures toward moderate reductions in emissions but not meaningfully reducing global carbon levels (a See Climate crisis Page 36
Thousands gather for annual West Hollywood Pride Parade By City News Service
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housands of people filled the streets of West Hollywood Sunday for the annual WeHo Pride Parade on the final day of Pride weekend, with an ongoing street festival and an evening concert by Carly Rae Jepsen
also on tap. A presentation of honors for Pride icons and allies was also scheduled. The honorees were model/ activist Laith Ashley, who will receive the Breakthrough Icon Award; actress Niecy Nash-Betts
and wife Jessica Betts, who will receive the Trailblazer Icon honor; and actress Melissa McCarthy, who was named WeHo Pride's 2023 Ally Icon. "RuPaul's Drag Race" was celebrated as this year's Drag Icon, with show host/judge Michelle
Visage expected to accept the honor on behalf of the program. "Our WeHo Pride Parade Icons embody queer joy and fierce allyship by creating spaces where our community can be celebrated, whether that's on the red
carpet or directly through their art and advocacy," West Hollywood Mayor Sepi Shyne said in a statement. "We're thrilled to celebrate the impact our Icons have in creating a more evolved and accepting world." The WeHo Pride Street
Fair ran from noon to 10 p.m. Sunday at Santa Monica and San Vicente boulevards, featuring an array of LGBTQ+ community groups and allied organizations. See Pride Page 35