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Karen Peterson, Climate Tucson Organizer

As a journalist, I have covered the climate change industry and its technologies; I published a community-focused climate and environment magazine in the San Francisco Bay Area; and I currently write climate-related articles for publications including the Washington Post and National Geographic.

I grew up in Tucson and graduated from the University of Arizona with a degree in journalism. I moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where I worked at newspapers including the San Francisco Chronicle. Then I moved back to Tucson! It was great being in the desert again after too many years of fog and rain.

I started Climate Tucson in 2019 as an educational group to help all of us better understand the impacts of a changing climate on our city and the magnificent Sonoran Desert that we call home. The idea behind Climate Tucson is simple: to raise awareness and inspire action.

Climate Tucson's Guest Speakers

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The Biden Administration's Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) offers consumers the biggest break ever for buying electric appliances, solar panels, high-efficiency windows and doors, insulation, even the opportunity to schedule an energy audit to see exactly what you need to make your home a safer, cleaner environment. Climate Tucson welcomed Serena Campos, Policy Advisor for Rewiring America, who gave us an inside look at what the IRA offers, how and when we can benefit from this sweeping clean-energy opportunity for consumers of all income levels.

Is it really worth seeking enlightenment by disrupting, even killing innocent animals? That's what folks are doing when they rush down to the Sonoran Desert during the summer monsoon season to capture and "milk" the glands on the Sonoran Desert toad for the psychedelic substance, 5-MeO-DMT. The threats to the toad and its habitat by these "toad tourists" are discussed here by Tucson herpetologist Robert Anthony Villa, president of the Tucson Herpetological Society.

What if Tucson had an alternative to Tucson Electric Power? A utility that delivered only clean electricity from renewables like solar and wind. A community-based green energy provider that would attack the climate crisis head on. Not eventually freeing itself from dependence on coal and natural gas, but flipping the switch now. Shelly Gordon, state director of Arizonans for Community Choice, describes the solution in this video from our June 29, 2022, meeting.

How do Arizona’s beloved wild creatures get the water they need in a time of drought? With on-location deliveries from the good people at the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Hear Mark Hart, public information officer for AGFD, describe the efforts, the challenges, and the rewards of the agency's "Send Water" campaign.

Easy access to healthy food is out of reach to 18 percent of Tucson’s population, or 94,000 of our fellow residents, because of where they live: in low-income neighborhoods without grocery stores located within a mile of their homes, what the U.S. Department of Agriculture calls “food deserts.” But there is promising news, as Courtney Crosson, architecture professor at the University of Arizona, explained at the May 5, 2021 meeting of Climate Tucson.

Author Tom Bowman joined Climate Tucson for an optimistic and informative discussion on the work ahead as the U.S. regains its climate footing internationally and at home: to inspire not fear about the future but joyful action. “The time has come to lift the dreary veil on the climate crisis and celebrate the power people actually have to reinvent their own lives, their communities, and the world,” writes Bowman in his latest book, “Resetting Our Future: What If Solving the Climate Crisis Is Simple?”
“Creating a culture of climate empowerment can be an inspiring, upbeat and joyous experience,” promises Bowman.

Frank Niepold, Climate Education Coordinator at NOAA's Climate Program Office, joined Climate Tucson Dec. 4, 2020 for a wide-ranging conversation on topics including what's ahead for the Biden Administration and, importantly, how community climate education is key to the future of our planet. This meeting was cosponsored by the Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions and the Arizona Institute of Resilience on the University of Arizona campus.

Tucson ecologist Dr. Theresa Crimmins is on the cutting-edge of the science that tracks natural life cycles, called phenology, as director of the USA National Phenological Network. In her presentation, Crimmins fills us in on her research and what’s being learned about the impacts of climate change on our region’s vegetation — and she explains how we can participate as citizen scientists in the needed work of continuing to observe and monitor these changing natural life cycles.

“By pushing the envelope, we hope to set a new standard for affordable housing across the country,” said Keith Gregory, director of housing for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe, who introduced Climate Tucson to Itom Pocho’Oria Kari’m (Our Desert Homes), a new neighborhood that combines sustainability, social equity and out-of-the-box thinking to create a showcase low- and moderate-income housing project for tribal members.

Climate Tucson welcomed University of Arizona epidemiologists Erika C. Austhof and Kacey C. Ernst, who discussed the lessons being learned from COVID-19 and how they may apply to two local public health concerns: the emergence of climate-related mosquito-borne viruses like dengue fever and the intersection of climate change, disease and our food supply.

Fire ecologist and University of Arizona professor Donald Falk provided an inside look at the scope and consequences of the Bighorn Fire earlier in the summer of 2020, the largest and most destructive fire in the recorded history of our iconic Santa Catalina Mountains.

Climate Tucson welcomed the University of Arizona’s Ladd Keith, whose primary area of research is the intersection between climate change and urban planning — and specifically, the double whammy impact of the urban heat island, in Tucson and globally.

As a member of Rural Metro’s search and rescue team, Battalion Chief John Walka experiences firsthand the effects of heat on the human body. Summer is the busiest season for rescuing Tucsonans who ignore the weather report and head outdoors, woefully unprepared. You don’t even have to be hiking to fall victim to our high temperatures and glaring sun.

Heat coupled with COVID-19 equals more suffering for Tucsonans who live in our city’s numerous trailer and mobile home communities, as Mark Kear, with the UA School of Geography & Development, revealed in his Climate Tucson presentation, “The Manufactured Housing Gap: Intersecting and Cascading Vulnerabilities.”

Another triple-digit spring heat wave was on its way before we heard the forecast for Summer 2020 with University of Arizona climatologist Michael A. Crimmins, whose research specialties are, appropriately, heat, drought and precipitation. In a world where very little is “normal” anymore, it turns out that predicting our monsoon’s arrival and strength remains as “normal” as ever: We won’t know until it’s here — or wasn’t, as it turned out.

Climate Tucson welcomed Dr. Barbara Warren, executive director of the Arizona chapter of Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR). Dr. Warren expanded on the work the group has done on “Building Resilient Neighborhoods” (in a time of global warming) to encompass what we are learning today as we confront not only rising summer temperatures but the coronavirus pandemic.

Climate Tucson welcomed Sabrina V. Helm, professor with the University of Arizona's Norton School of Family and Consumer Sciences, and a leading voice in the emerging and necessary conversation on the psychological impacts of climate change. How are we adapting to a planet in crisis? How does the knowledge of the crisis make us feel: stressed and depressed — or anxious but energized to act on solutions?

Are more trees a viable climate solution in Tucson? If so, how many and where? We heard the pros and cons and the unknowns about mass tree-planting in the desert from Irene Ogata, Urban Landscape manager for the City of Tucson, and Katie Gannon, executive director of Tucson Clean & Beautiful, which supports the Trees for Tucson initiative.

Tree rings have stories to tell about the climate, past and future. We heard some of what they had to say at a docent-led tour of the University of Arizona Laboratory of Tree Ring Research, where the science of dendrochronology began and out of it the science of dendroclimatology emerged. Tree rings, as it turns out, are the “Rosetta stone for climate.”

Climate Tucson welcomed Katharine Jacobs, director of the University of Arizona's Center for Climate Adaptation Science and Solutions and a professor in the department of Soil, Water and Environmental Science, and Jaimie Galayda, a lead planner with Tucson Water, for a panel discussion on one of the most important issues in our region's changing climate: Water. Where does it come from, how will it fare as the region heats up and the population continues to increase, what are some of the solutions under consideration now to ensure a sustainable future.

University of Arizona climate scientist Gregg Garfin, University Director of the Southwest Climate Science Center and lead participant in the Southwest chapter of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, shared his extensive knowledge and research on Tucson's climate, now and as projected for the future, at Climate Tucson's first meeting.