In this exciting talk based on his most recent book, Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream (2016), environmental historian Char Miller will lead us into the subtleties of Los Angeles' peculiar relationship with water.
"For millennia, the Southland has been wracked by intense dry spells that have been swept away by furious floods. Hoping to control these climatological realities, over the last century regional boosters, real estate developers, engineers, and public officials have poured millions of dollars into the creation of systems to import water into Los Angeles and flush storm water out to sea. Not everyone agreed with the decision to construct this extensive and expensive network of aqueducts and channels, and the current mega drought wracking Southern California suggests we ought to reconsider the local solutions these earlier critics proposed; theirs may have been the road not taken, but that path may be our way forward in a climate-changed era."
Monday, February 27, 2017 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm in the East Classroom at Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden
$10.00 for students with ID and RSABG Members, and $15.00 for the public.
Refreshments will be offered!
Registration is required.
Please register early online as we have limited seats and this will be an evening not to miss!
Copies of Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream will be available for sale (cash or check only) and signing!
Note: The East Classroom is wheel chair accessible.
Char Miller is the W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis at Pomona College. Author most recently of Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream (2016) and America’s Great National Forests, Wilderness, and Grasslands (2016), he has also written the award-winning Gifford Pinchot and the Making of Modern Environmentalism (2004) and Public Lands, Public Debates: A Century of Controversy (2012). Other books include On the Edge: Water, Immigration, and Politics in the Southwest (2013) and Seeking the Greatest Good: The Conservation Legacy of Gifford Pinchot (2013). Co-author of Death Valley National Park: A History (2013) and co-editor of Forest Conservation in the Anthropocene: Science, Policy, and Practice (2016), Miller is a Senior Fellow at the Pinchot Institute for Conservation and a Fellow of the Forest History Society.
For additional information or to ask a question please contact Education Assistant, Diana Nightingale at (909)-625-8767 ext. 251 or dnightingale@rsabg.org