LOS ANGELES — When the winds shifted last January and smoke from wildfires settled into South LA, the city’s low-lying neighborhoods, residents there didn’t need another study to tell them the air was unsafe. They could feel it.
For Iretha Warmsley, the soot raining down was another reminder of what decades of fossil fuel extraction have done to her community.
On paper, South LA’s neighborhoods look like any other stretch of the city: blocks of small houses, churches, playgrounds, and busy corner stores…