One Size Does Not Fit All: Individualizing Climate Action Plans in Southern California

Abstract

The City of Imperial Beach, a coastal Southern California city, is under severe threat from climate change. Sea level rise, flooding, extreme heat, and environmental pollution all pose risk to the city and especially its vulnerable residents. This thesis has taken an environmental justice lens and applied it in analyzing Imperial Beach’s climate action plan. Specifically, it analyzes the city’s plan for how it will protect marginalized community members from climate change while successfully reducing the city’s emissions by 2050. It also advocates for a more tailored climate plan that acknowledges different community needs based on identity (e.g., race, class, and language). After analyzing the city’s plan alone, the thesis then zooms out to compare it to neighboring cities’ plans to understand the regional context. Multiple policy recommendations across different scales are then made for the city itself, the state of California, the U.S. federal government, and the Mexican government. These recommendations include further community engagement, stronger top-down climate goals, increasing meeting accessibility, making funding more available for Imperial Beach from California, and more. Lastly, a roadmap to 2050 that includes these recommendations alongside emissions goals is presented for the city.