LA County names its first-ever 'sustainability czar'

Los Angeles County has doubled down on its green initiatives by creating a new position: Chief Sustainability Officer. Gary Gero started last week as the county's "sustainability czar."

It’s a move the county hopes will dramatically decrease its huge carbon footprint.

It’s a big job. Los Angeles County has the largest population of any county in the country and a budget that would make it the eighth largest state in the nation.

So even making minor tweaks can add up to big changes in energy or water usage, said Gero.

"We’re going to look at energy systems, water systems, transportation systems, garbage systems and find ways to bring efficiencies to those systems," Gero said, "to reduce the environmental impacts and hopefully make a healthier and more livable county."

That means coordinating a sustainability effort among 88 cities and the unincorporated areas in the county.

"I really see the job of Sustainability Officer as one that engages the community, that engages the other cities," Gero said.  "There hasn't been a place where sustainability has really been looked at in a comprehensive way on a regional scale, and particularly in a region of this size."

Gero was most recently president of the L.A.-based Climate Action Reserve, a nonprofit that supports market-based climate change initiatives.

"My lens on this is a climate change lens, given my past work," Gero said. "We know that L.A. County is going to face more heat waves, possibly longer and more severe periods of drought as a result of climate change. So all of the work we want to do at the county is going to be focused on how we reduce our climate change impacts, and beyond that, how we make our communities more resilient to the changes from climate change."

Creating the sustainability czar position "is a good move for the county," said Stephanie Pincetl, director of UCLA’s California Center for Sustainable Communities.

"Better late than never," she said. 

The city of L.A. launched its own sustainability program about three years ago, led by its own sustainability czar. Gero said that effort can help steer the county’s effort in the right direction.