SAMMY ROTH |

For most of this year, people have been asking me: When are you going to write about rooftop solar? Specifically, when are you going to write about monopoly utilities trying to slash California’s wildly successful solar incentive program?

SAMMY ROTH |

Parakeets and lovebirds were chirping in Marta Patricia Martinez’s front yard as a crew of solar installers climbed onto her roof.

It was a warm summer afternoon in Watts, a predominantly Latino and Black neighborhood in South Los Angeles. Low-income families faced the specter of punishingly high energy bills if they cranked up the air conditioning.

For Martinez, solar panels offered an almost-too-good-to-be-true solution.

TONY BARBOZA, RUBEN VIVES |

It was a typical summer day in Los Angeles, but a satellite orbiting hundreds of miles above Earth could detect that it was getting much hotter in some neighborhoods than others.

In a majority-white area of Silver Lake — where median household income is more than $98,000 a year and mature trees dapple the hilly streets with shade — the surface temperature was 96.4 degrees.

Less than a mile away, in a corner of East Hollywood, it was 102.7 degrees. The predominantly Latino and Asian area, where median household income is less than $27,000 a year, is packed with older, two- and three-story apartment buildings. It has few trees big enough to provide shade, and less than one-third the canopy of Silver Lake, ranking it among the lowest-coverage areas in the city.

Check out our partners at LADOT telling Channel 34 News all about our Electric Dash Bus Fleet coming soon to Watts!

LEE HALE, JONAKI MEHTA |

Heat is the number on weather-related killer in the U.S., yet our infrastructure was not built with it in mind. As that heat gets more extreme, cities are rethinking how to adapt.

JADA MONTEMARANO |

LOS ANGELES — Creating more green space in underserved city streets is more important than ever as climate change is making temperatures hotter and causing a severe drought. Watts Rising, a collaboration of residents and local organizations, received some green to plant more green in the community.

ALEJANDRA BORUNDA |

A lack of tree cover in low-income areas has left many residents especially vulnerable to rising heat. It’s a legacy of the city’s design- and its history of racist policies.

ROBERT LEE HOTZ |

With record global temperatures stoking droughts and deadly heat waves, some scientists are eyeing audacious schemes to counteract global warming—from erecting enormous air filters to suck carbon dioxide from the air to launching millions of sunlight-defecting space mirrors into orbit around the planet.

Other scientists see the value of simpler tools: shovels and paintbrushes.

Watts Rising partner TreePeople teamed up with the LA Galaxy soccer team to plant trees in Watts! Check out pictures and some more insight from our partners on their Instagram!