The fallacy is believing that climate change is specific only to the weather and the environment. Climate change is all-encompassing. We live it, we breathe it. We need to believe in it more.
Taking Climate Change Public
In 2007, inspired by Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and my interest in energy technologies, I launched Terra Marin, a professionally designed and written quarterly publication. Terra Marin covered the news about climate and environmental actions and issues in the progressive communities of Marin County across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, including embedding sustainability managers at the city and county level and, in general, adhering to concerns then about our expanding “carbon footprint.”
Terra Marin was a full-color, 18-to-24-page publication with advertising. The advertising model was a generous 50–50 percent ad-to-editorial share. The idea, realized, was that we would focus on the growing number of businesses in the area already committed to the UN SDG targets. Marin County sponsored a Green Business program that publicized local merchants and service providers who complied with the program’s goals.
I wore many hats as editor and publisher. I planned the issues, wrote stories, worked on layout, edited freelancers, and hired part-time ad salesperson, copy editor, photographer, freelance writers and design professionals.
Terra Marin was available at bookstores and other frequently trafficked and like-minded shops. A portion of the magazines were mailed by zip code. By the fourth edition, we had already met our 50-50 goal. Unfortunately, the Great Recession made the advertising model a tough sell as businesses began to shut down.
Participating in Local Solutions
Celebrating Tucson's Commitment to Climate Action
The City of Tucson declared a climate emergency in August 2020, one of the first cities to do so. Under the threat of global warming by its very location in the vast Sonoran Desert, Tucson’s new mayor, Regina Romero, ran on a climate change platform to tackle heat as a health and safety priority.
A year after the City made its historic commitment, the YWCA of Southern Arizona completed an energy and water-usage audit of their building through the efforts of the Tucson 2030 District, a chapter with the national group founded by architects and builders to encourage energy efficiency in our built environment.
In 2021, the City and the YWCA came together to celebrate their combined climate actions in a public Zoom event (Covid-19 was raging) that featured a panel discussion on climate and a “live” tree-planting event to encourage residents to do the same. The goal was to get the community on board with climate sustainability.
A member of the planning team, I managed production of a 24-page resource publication that included my interviews with the mayor and her staff and the YWCA team who participated in the audits. The publication was available in PDF for downloading.
Justice40 Energy Audits
As chairperson of the Tucson 2030 District, which I joined in late 2020, I worked with our team on ways to expand our energy audits from commercial buildings to those owned by government and nonprofits, the latter including the YWCA as noted above. Although Covid-19 limited our ability to work “face-to-face” with building owners and staff, we were able to complete two notable audits by the pandemic’s end.
Both were in the City of South Tucson, a low-income square-mile incorporated community surrounded by the freeways and urban heat island of downtown Tucson. The groundbreaking bu short-lived IRA funding from the Biden Administration had specifically targeted Justice40 projects, and South Tucson was a prime example of the negative climate and air quality impacts to those living in “frontline” communities.
Our team audited the City of South Tucson’s administration building, which needed upgrades to equipment and the building itself (leaky windows). Perhaps more important to the cash-strapped government operations was the number of rogue electric meters connected to nothing and, in some cases, still listed with service charges on the utility bill.
The audit work also included the House of Neighborly Service, a sprawl of older buildings used as a community center and operated by the YWCA. The multi-building audit proved valuable not just in energy savings but as a guide for the building manager when she budgeted upgrades in kitchen equipment and roofing.