Newsletter: Rancho Palos Verdes landslide is a warning of what’s to come

Good morning. It is Wednesday, Sept. 11. Here’s what’s happening in Opinion.

Watching a slow landslide wreck multimillion-dollar ocean-view homes in Rancho Palos Verdes is fascinating and frightening for a couple reasons. First, it was a predictable disaster. Since the 1950s hundreds of houses have been destroyed by the shifting hillside. The constantly cracking roads and increasingly uneven terrain was so well known that the peninsula became a tourist attraction for people driving to the coast and was studied in geology classes, according to letter writers who grew up in the region.

Which raises the question: Why were people allowed to keep building there?

And that’s the second reason this saga is important. The city of Rancho Palos Verdes was sued more than two decades ago for not allowing home construction in the landslide area, wrote June Ailin, an attorney who represented the city. The court of appeals sided with the property owners, ruling that the city either had to give land owners permits to build or pay them for their land. The city ended up letting people develop in the landslide area.

Now hundreds of houses on the peninsula have had gas and electrical service turned off because of the risk of explosion or fire as the land continues moving. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently declared a state of emergency. And the city and property owners are scrambling to figure out what to do next.

Cities have a responsibility to make room for housing today; California has a housing shortage that is driving up home prices and rents to unaffordable levels, particularly in coastal urban areas. Cities also have to plan responsibly for the future, which is getting harder to do with the effects of climate change. Sea level rise, coastal erosion, flooding, wildfires are all likely to become more common and extreme, even in areas that once seemed low risk.

The upheaval in Rancho Palos Verdes is a preview of what’s to come, and so far it doesn’t seem like California or its cities have figured out how to deal with the legal, financial and social fallout when a community becomes uninhabitable.

The teen arrested in Georgia school shooting is not an adult, and shouldn’t be treated like one. “Fear, anger and the horror of mass killings lead us to throw out modern thinking and practices, and respond to an adolescent’s cruelty with more of the same,� The Times’ editorial board writes. “Anything to direct blame away from the instruments of mass murder.�

Do you remember what politics were like without Donald Trump? My students don’t. Most of today’s college students were between 9 and 13 when Trump announced his campaign in 2015, writes Susan McWilliams Barndt, a politics professor at Pomona College. “For young voters, the idea of a different kind of Republican Party might as well be historical fiction. It feels as distant from them as the Whigs or the Federalists — a story that took place a long time ago in an America far, far away.�

From ‘fridgescaping’ to egg parties, we’ve become social-media-driven parodies of ourselves. Columnist Robin Abcarian shares her untidy fridge and her observations on made-for-clicks pop culture trends she’s increasingly seeing. “Does it sometimes seem as if social media has turned American popular culture into a perfectionist parody of itself?�

This is the problem with former Republican Rep. Liz Cheney’s endorsement of Kamala Harris. Columnist Jonah Goldberg is, like Cheney, a Never-Trump conservative, but he takes issue with the way she is backing Harris. “Many conservatives might be persuaded by the honesty of the argument that saving the GOP, conservatism and the country warrants voting for a Democrat — and then concentrating on rebuilding the Republican Party and the conservative movement after election day.�

L.A. Times electoral endorsements for 2024 November election. It’s that time of year again. The Times’ editorial board started rolling out its ballot recommendations this week for the Nov. 5 election. Bookmark this page and check back regularly to find new endorsements through early Oct.

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