In wake of George Floyd’s murder and its reverberations across the country, those of us in the climate movement must speak out against racial injustice. 

We haven’t spoken loudly enough - or done enough to center voices of the marginalized - in the past. We have feared going out of our “lane” and too often compartmentalize climate action as its own issue. But our silence is wrong - and is part of the problem. Black, Indigenous and other communities of color are disproportionately impacted by the coronavirus pandemic and the climate crisis. The fight for racial justice must be central to the fight for climate justice. 

Every day, we work to help our community cope with the impacts of the climate crisis, and to help build a safer future. In this work, we make choices about who to protect: the powerful and privileged, or the vulnerable and oppressed? We cannot stay silent about the racism and inequity that impacts these choices. 
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Now is the time to listen to and lift up Black voices who are calling for justice, and stand in solidarity with people of color to demand an end to racial violence. At Climate Smart Missoula, we recommit to working towards a just transition that prioritizes frontline communities, centering equity in our work, and to joining with our colleagues and community partners to do the same. Climate change and structural racism are inextricably linked, and we can’t address one without the other.

Abby, Caroline and Amy

NOTE: We don't have all the answers. We hope you're with us. We need you and everyone to build this world. Be in touch. Please consider supporting these Montana groups doing good work: 

The Montana Racial Equity Project,  Indian People's Action, Montana Human Rights Network

Recommendations from our friends from Soft Landing Missoula: 

University of Montana African-American Studies Department- specifically consider donating to the Dianna Riley Fund to support the annual Black Solidarity Summit at UM. University of Montana Black Student Union- website and Facebook
Empower MT and YWCA Missoula- specifically donating to support the new joint position of their Racial Justice Engagement Specialist, Alex Kim.  Again, The Montana Racial Equity Project

Additionally, many people from the BIPOC community around the nation have created incredible resources that they have painstakingly developed for the education of white people in this space. Figure out how you can financially support and donate to the work that you are finding value in. Resources for white people in this conversation have never been more easy to access. You can start here.

We, like so many of you, are settling in to a new rhythm at work. The "office" is now our kitchen table or old puzzle table, and our typical office banter has been replaced with phone calls and e-mail chains. There are so many things to hold in our heads and hearts right now, and I've struggled with the uncertainty of what the next few weeks will look like in our country, state, and city. It's critical for all of us to be responsible citizens and socially distance ourselves from one another - and it's scary and hard. But it's also an opportunity to move closer to nature, think deeply about the things we care about but don't have time for in a typical day, and reconnect with the ordinary wonders that surround us every day in Missoula. It's a time to both reflect and look forward, to take stock of and give thanks for what we have and prepare for the future.  In that spirit, we'll be sharing more of what we're reading, listening to, and thinking about with all of you regularly on our blog, as well as offering some things you can do so you can turn off the news notifications for a bit and take a moment to breathe. 

In the meantime, we'd like to offer a social isolation bingo card (it's climate and action related!) for you to enjoy while you're maintaining a respectful 6-foot space. We'll be featuring various squares on our social media channels and in our newsletter, so please tag us or e-mail us if you have photos or stories you'd like to share while doing the activity.  Everyone who successfully completes B - I - N - G - O (up, down, or diagonal) and e-mails us a picture of their bingo, will be entered to win a raffle. 

More soon - Caroline and the Climate Smart Team

On February 19, Dr. Rob Davies, spoke to a packed audience (700+!) at the Wilma Theater about the scale of the planetary crisis and the urgent action needed to address it. Suffice to say, we were blown away by his presentation - and we’ve seen our share of climate talks. 

If you weren’t at the Big Event, we highly recommend watching the video of Rob’s presentation HERE (thanks, MCAT!). And, check out our post-event page with a whole slew of ideas for how to ACT, ADVOCATE, and ASSIST others. 
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We’ve been thinking about the presentation A LOT since we’ve seen it, and thought we’d share some of our big takeaways in the form of a conversation between Caroline and Abby. And we’d love to hear your takeaways, too! 

Abby: Well, that wasn’t your average climate talk. What were the things that stuck with you?

Caroline: So many things! Davies really made clear the need for both individual and systemic change, especially in the United States. My favorite statistic spoke to this - if we took the planet’s total carbon budget (how much we can emit and still get to zero by mid-century) and divided it by the world’s population, each of us would have 44 tons of carbon as our lifetime’s budget. The average American would use their budget in 2.5 years. 

Abby: Yikes. That’s crazy. 

Caroline: I know. I heard this and thought, ‘Well, we all need to shrink our footprints as close to zero as possible,” but then Davies hit us with another incredible fact. If the average American were to never turn on their heat, drive their car, or use fossil fuels in any way, each person would still burn through 6 tons of carbon per year. As Davies put it, even if we were to go into our basements tonight and decompose on some garden seeds, we only buy ourselves an extra 5 years. This is because of the systems around us and the infrastructure that has been built to support the way we live. We need individual change, but it only gets us so far. We desperately need structural change, too. 

Abby: Absolutely. Endless growth can’t be our global economic ideal anymore. That’s not politics, it’s just physics. Rob really nailed home that point - he actually called growth a “pathology” underlying the symptom of climate change. But he also gave us a hint as to what a more sustainable level of consumption could look like, which helped me put this in perspective. Global emissions would drop by a third if us wealthy high-emitters were to adopt a lifestyle more like that of the average European citizen. Or as Rob put it, for those of us in the top 20 percent of global material and energy consumption (virtually all Americans) that produce 80 percent of global carbon emissions, “there’s a lot of slush at the top” that can be cut without reducing our quality of life. If our goal is not growth but a society and planet that is sustainable, just, and vibrant, making the necessary changes will be hard but maybe not as scary as one might think.

Caroline: No, not as scary. But we certainly need to avoid the tipping points that he described. 

Abby: For sure. That was one of the truly astonishing things Rob communicated in his presentation: we’re approaching tipping points not just in our climate system, but in ALL systems that support life: air, water, soil. Crossing the threshhold of these tipping points would unleash global, catastrophic disruption. Rob pointed out that catastrophic means something very specific in the science community: unadaptable. And some people in some places are already experiencing such catastrophic, unadaptable changes, but there is still time to avoid tipping points that would lead to such disruption across the globe. It’s a difference between a planet that is livable and one that is unadaptable. 

Caroline: Yeah, it’s hard to hear that, but important to know the reality of the situation we’re in, so we can respond in a way that meets the moment.

Abby: Exactly. And I don’t know about you, but Rob’s description about how to respond to the climate emergency was maybe the most powerful piece of his whole talk, which is saying something.

Caroline: I totally agree. Davies talked about a shift from a mindset of hope/despair, to one of resolve and determination. So often I have wanted to ask climate scientists and activists, “Are you hopeful?” Maybe this is the wrong question. “Hope isn’t free,” said Davies. If we want hope, we have to act - not the other way around. We must be resolved to “take the next step,” even if we cannot see the entire path to the top of the mountain. This reframing has made it easier for me to take action even on the days when I am sad, scared, or anxious. 

Abby: Exactly. It is reasonable to feel daunted by the challenge in front of us. But knowing that we are in a climate emergency changes our mindset about our response, and can actually help us take action. It was so helpful to hear Davies put it this way: “When you’re in a burning building, you don’t waste time hoping or despairing, you just get out. You take the next step, then the next step, then the next. It’s about absolute, unwavering resolve and commitment.” 

Caroline: And I loved this idea: that in an emergency, what once may have been radical, is now rational. And what is necessary becomes what is viable. 

Abby: Yes! That was a revelation. Any other revelations?  

Caroline: Lately I’ve been reflecting on Davies’ presentation in the context of a book I recently finished, We are the Weather by Jonathan Safran Foer. Foer references the Bible - go with me here - where there are several moments when God asks people where they are. Foer writes, “His questions are not about the location of a body in space but about the location of a self within a person,” and he points to our own modern day versions of this, when we ask people where they were at pivotal moments in our shared history: the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the fall of the Berlin Wall, or September 11th. “As with God in the Bible, we are not really trying to establish someone’s coordinates. We are asking something deeper about their connection to the moment, with the hope of situating our own...Future generations will almost certainly look back and wonder where we were in the biblical sense: Where was our selfhood? What decisions did the crisis inspire?” I hope one day we’ll ask: Where were you when you made your decision to take the next step to address the climate emergency?

Abby: I hope that, at least for some of those in the audience, they can mark February 19th at the Wilma as one of those decision points. I know I’ve had those moments that have given me the resolve to continue doing this work, and Rob’s presentation was definitely one of them. 

Caroline: Any last thoughts?

Abby: So many - but I’ll just mention one more! I read a quote the other day by the author Rebecca Solnit, from her book Hope in the Dark. It said, “Inside the word ‘emergency" is ‘emerge’; from an emergency new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.” That’s what Rob’s presentation was all about. Every day we are resolved to take the next step, we show that a livable future is possible. 
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A lively group came together at Imagine Nation on Thursday for our monthly meet-up on Green Building and Energy Efficiency. The group spanned the fields of architecture, real estate, finance, concerned citizens, and some Lord of the Rings aficionados that dropped some references (which this author didn’t fully understand).Green building can sometimes be seen as a daunting and overwhelming topic, especially considering its potential for emissions reductions. Residential and commercial buildings comprise 52% of our community carbon footprint; the opportunity is massive, but it can be difficult to understand which point of intervention will be the most impactful.  

Where are the “pinch points,” we asked? What changes can we make that will ripple outwards and push the built environment towards a net zero future? The conversation was wide ranging, but ultimately we coalesced around the following ideas because of their potential to drive change in the building industry: 

Labeling
    What if when every home was posted on the market, it included a transparent, easy-to-read label that told you about the home’s energy usage, the materials used to build the home, and what you would need to do if you wanted to make your new home more energy efficient? If you were selling a home, how would knowing your efficiency score change what you did before you listed your property? Conversely, if you were looking to buy a home, how would a label factor into your consideration of multiple properties? The group was very excited by the potential of this idea to create market-driven change, starting from a point of voluntary disclosure and possibly moving towards a requirement to include a label in every sale, as is the case in Portland, Oregon. 

Streamlining Retrofits
    The creation of a label program spoke to Thursday’s broader discussion of which sector of the building stock we should focus our efforts. While Missoula is certainly growing and new houses are being built, older structures (pre-1980) make up a much greater percentage of our energy usage, and they are also ripe for cost-effective, energy efficiency improvements that could make a big difference. As a community, we’re getting better at educating homeowners and renters so that they are aware of the potential for energy efficiency and motivated to take action, but we’re lacking a robust workforce to evaluate, advise, and implement the steps needed to move an older home away from “energy hog” status.  A few programs that we love from across the country include Oregon Energy Trust and Efficiency Vermont, both of which benefit from strong support from their state government and utility. 

Finally, we can’t forget that energy efficiency is also a social justice issue and that green buildings do not exist in a vacuum. Low-income renters and owners are more likely to find themselves in older, more affordable units (often considered naturally occurring affordable housing or NOAH). Older housing is abundant in Missoula, but it often brings cold drafts in the winter, hot air in the summer, and high utility bills throughout the year. These higher bills can lead to energy insecurity, a situation when a household has received a utility shut-off notice for failure to pay bills, foregone a basic necessity like food or medicine in order to pay utility bills, or opted to keep their home at an unhealthy temperature in order to reduce energy bills. 
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Reducing emissions in our building stock has major implications for human health, job creation, and creating a more equitable Missoula. If you want to join the conversation, email us at caroline@climatesmartmissoula.org for more information.

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