Obama’s Climate Change Task Force to meet in Los Angeles today

Gov. Jerry Brown, Mayor Eric Garcetti and other members of an Obama task force charged with taking on the effects of climate change will meet this morning at Los Angeles City Hall.

The Task Force on Climate Change and Resilience, formed by President Barack Obama in November, is charged with overhauling federal grant programs and identifying funding sources to better address climate change-related disasters such as droughts, wildfires, floods and storms.

The task force, which held its first meeting at the White House, was also directed to explore ways to manage water and land resources, such as creating natural barriers against storms; and to study “extreme weather” and recommend ways to “evaluate and address” the risks of climate change, according to a White House statement.

The task force comprises 24 other state, local and tribal officials appointed by the president, including Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson and Santa Barbara County Supervisor Salud Carbajal.

Garcetti and Brown will join White House officials for a news conference at 11:30 a.m. following the closed-door meeting.

The Los Angeles meeting, which is the second time the task force is gathering, is being held just weeks after Brown declared a statewide drought emergency and set a goal to reduce water use by 20 percent.

Garcetti will be accompanied at the meeting by his Chief Sustainability Officer, Matt Petersen, who wrote in an opinion piece this week that the “stakes” of climate change “cannot be overstated,” especially with a “historic drought” in California and other “extreme weather events” happening with increasing frequency.

“It is fitting that the second meeting of the president’s climate task force has moved from the White House to a city hall” as “cities are responsible for an estimated 70 percent of all green house gas emissions,” Garcetti said.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy and U.S. Department of Energy Deputy Secretary David Poneman are also scheduled to be at the meeting, as well as Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, and Director of Intergovernmental Affairs David Agnew.