April was Earth Month - and it was a busy one! We kicked it off with a great conversation as usual at our monthly meetup, on the topic of Local Food & Agriculture. Just in time for the beginning of outdoor farmers market season!

We talked about everything from efforts to protect local farmland via the Missoula Area Mapping project, to the many environmental benefits of mushrooms, to saving seeds and supporting our local farmers. Here's a few links to some of the people, organizations and ideas that were part of the conversation:

• Community Food & Agriculture Coalition 
• Missoula Area Land Use Mapping Project 
• Front Street Fungi - William Gregg
• Red Hen Farm & CSA - Julie Peters
• Oxbow Cattle Company - Bart Morris
• Five Valleys Seed Library - Anne Little
• UM Dining Sustainability - Trevor Lowell and Stasia Orkwiszewski
• Grain by Grain - new book about Montana agriculture

We're grateful to be part of a community of locavores who understand and value agriculture and local food as important tools in Missoula's climate resilience toolbox!

We hope you also had a chance to take part in some of the great community festivities around Earth Month. From the International Wildlife Film Festival, to MUD's Annual Earth Day Celebration, to celebrating trees and their climate benefits, we had fun out and about in April. 

Next Monthly Meetup is Health & Climate - hope you'll join us on Thursday, May 9!

One truly rewarding thing about Missoula is the active and engaged community our city fosters. At Climate Smart Missoula’s Monthly meetup focused on sustainable transportation and smart growth it was clear much of our community is engaged and ready to make our communal transportation system more sustainable! In a jammed packed room at Imagine Nation Brewery, community members put their active minds and bodies together in hopes of formulating ideas and initiatives which help people reduce their transportation footprint. Transportation is an exciting and essential sector to discuss as it accounts for nearly 37 percent of our communities total emission output.

Many community experts in the transportation sector attended the meetup, including Bill Pfeiffer, the community outreach coordinator at Mountain Line, Bob Giordano, director of Free Cycles and Chase Jones, Missoula’s Energy Efficiency and Conservation Coordinator. Transportation and smart growth is multi-dimensional, involving aspects of personal contribution, education, funding and urban planning. These transportation experts helped lead the conversation through the different dimensions by engaging in a dialogue regarding upcoming initiatives that promote sustainable transportation and allow community members to make a personal impact.
Here’s some exciting opportunities and ways to get involved:

In addition to education and personal contribution, a transportation plan needs “smart growth” in order to meet long term GHG reduction goals. So what does smart growth mean? “Smart growth” refers to planning that promotes multiple route options and multiple transportation systems to increase efficiency and reduce congestion in a transportation system. A few exciting “smart growth” city planning projects were discussed at the meet up.
 First, Missoulians have an opportunity to become directly involved in city planning through a project called Missoula Design Excellence. Essentially, the project seeks to define and “implement a system that will promote high quality commercial building development in terms of design, materials, construction and character.”

  The design of new buildings in our community have implications on accessibility for bikers and users of public transit. In order to achieve a holistic plan, which meets the needs and wants of Missoula, the project needs community engagement. The public comment period is currently open, so make your voices heard! If you feel inclined, please Review the Draft Strategy Report and submit comments to  by Friday, October 13th.

Another important aspect of “smart growth” was mentioned by Bill Pfeiffer, Mountain Line’s community outreach coordinator. Bill spoke about the ability to reduce single occupancy car dependence through increased accessibility to the public transportation system. Bill shared our community’s Long Range Transportation Goals .  MPOs Long Range Transportation Plan Ambitious Mode Shift includes goals of 20,000 fewer drive along commute trips, reduction of drive along to 34 %, triple biking, walking and transit shares and provide a carpooling increase by 2045.

​Here in Missoula, this winter sure seemed long, wet and cold – good news for mountain snowpack. But as a new homeowner, this winter was rough on my budget. There’s nothing like getting a $200 energy bill in the mail to get you thinking seriously about saving energy! When we moved in to our house last fall, we had tried a few basic tricks to reduce energy use: replacing old incandescent light bulbs with LEDs; installing programmable thermostats so our heat was only on when we needed it; putting on storm windows to reduce heat loss. Even so, this winter was a wakeup call. I know I’m not alone: many of us want to shrink our carbon footprint - and our bills! But we don't always know how to take the next step.

At our April Monthly Meetup last Thursday, the conversation was all about energy efficiency and conservation – and the particular challenges and opportunities around energy use in our community. To put things in context, we were excited to share the results of our first community-wide greenhouse gas emissions inventory, hot off the press last week! The inventory is a complete account of all the emissions sources within the Missoula urban development boundary – and gives us a baseline from which to measure progress towards long- and short-term climate mitigation goals. (Check out the full report here and an article about it in the Missoula Current here!)

As the pie chart shows, residential energy use makes up nearly a quarter of our community’s emissions. Not only is this a big slice of the pie, but it’s an area where everyone can get involved. Our individual efforts make a real impact when they are part of a collective movement. That’s why we’re challenging Missoula to be Energy Smart and reduce our use 10% by 2018!

Quick survey: which of the following reasons would be most likely to persuade you to make a change, large or small, in your life: a) it would save you money; b) it’s the right thing to do; or c) it will improve your health?

If you chose C, you’re in good company. Health is a big motivator for many people – and health professionals are some of the most trusted messengers. Combine this with the fact that research has demonstrated the effectiveness of emphasizing positive benefits in motivating people to act, and you get some interesting insights into how to communicate about climate change, especially with those who may not yet be completely convinced of its seriousness.

Climate communication and health was the topic of our March monthly meetup last week – and it was a popular one! The community room at Imagine Nation was packed with folks who came to learn, meet others, and contribute to a great conversation about, well, how to have conversations about climate change.
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Many thanks to Beth Schenk, nurse scientist and Sustainability Director at St. Patrick Hospital, who facilitated the discussion. Beth started out by sharing some interesting statistics on perceptions about health and climate change among Americans. A recent groundbreaking study by Yale and George Mason Universities identified “6 Americas”: six different attitudes toward climate change that fall along a spectrum, from “Alarmed” on one end to “Dismissive” on the other. It’s a totally fascinating study – I highly recommend checking it out.

One surprising insight from this study: the “Alarmed” segment was the only group in which the majority of participants could list a specific health impact of climate change. In other words, those who are aware of the health challenges posed by climate change are alarmed.

In our current era of political polarization, it’s tempting to look at the above spectrum and wonder how we could ever bridge the gap. And yet, evidence suggests that changing the conversation around climate change can help move folks further along this spectrum. By emphasizing the co-benefits – those activities, processes, policies, and impacts – of taking action to mitigate climate change, especially in terms of both personal and community health, we can find messages that resonate with all 6 Americas.

Wondering what I mean? At our meetup, we came up with some great examples of co-benefits – things that reduce our carbon footprint, while improving health – and then brainstormed some messages that could help convey the value of these efforts. Take a look:

I hope these examples give you some inspiration for new ways to frame the climate conversation. While we cannot avoid talking about the urgent and serious negative implications of climate change, it is also critical to discuss climate solutions in a way that offers hope and inspires action.

Optimism: Maintaining our Mental Health and Hope
We ended the evening with a powerful discussion about hope and optimism when it comes to working on climate change. I know personally there are some days when I feel overwhelmed and sad – I’d guess that you do too. And that’s only natural. Solastalgia is a word coined in 2003 by philosopher Glenn Albrecht, to describe the feeling of distress we feel when we see the natural world around us changing. Solastalgia is a normal response to the reality of climate change. So how do we maintain optimism?

This question reminded me of an essay I read a few years ago by the environmental writer David Orr, in which he described the difference between optimism and hope.  Orr says, “Optimism leans back, putting its feet up, and wears a confident look, knowing that the deck is stacked. Hope is a verb with its sleeves rolled up. Hopeful people are actively engaged in defying or changing the odds.”

So what is the secret? What are some characteristics of these hopeful people? We noticed that they:

• Celebrate successes, wins, and positive things, no matter how small
• Are persistent – as Ethel says, “hope keeps activism alive, and activism keeps hope alive”
• Are openminded – able to recognize when opportunities come along
• Have something to fight FOR – a positive vision
• Live with integrity, according to their values
• Have a sense of humor!
• Don’t bite off more than they can chew – they focus on what they can do
• Are part of a community
• LOVE the world

A Few Resources
Some suggested reading and viewing ideas that came up in our conversation:

• Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations, by Thomas Friedman. The last couple of chapters, about how sustainable communities improve people’s lives, is especially relevant to the health and climate conversation.
• Watch the entire Climate and Health Meeting organized in February by Al Gore and other groups to fill the gap after the cancellation of the CDC’s Health and Climate conference. Beth says – it’s well worth the watch!

-​Abby

This may sound strange, but I have many childhood memories about waste. I remember picking up trash at campsites and on walks along the beach; my dad methodically separating recyclables in the bins under the kitchen sink; my grandma rinsing out plastic ziplock bags to be reused until they fell apart; my mom bringing her reusable grocery bags to the store before it was cool. We didn’t have a lot of money, so things were used and reused. Leftovers were a hot commodity. The underlying message was: nothing goes to waste. When I moved to Montana a few years ago, it was the first place I’d ever lived where there my recycling wasn’t automatically picked up along with my trash each week. Paying extra for recycling?! That seemed crazy – no wonder it wasn’t common.

It’s true, we’ve got our work cut out for us here. Montanans make more waste than the national average, at 7 lbs per person, per day, compared with 4.3 lbs. Another dubious distinction: Missoula’s recycling rate of 22% is well below the national average of 35%. I often talk to people who share my frustration about the lack of recycling options here in Missoula. But I’ve also come to learn that the problems with waste are much bigger than what happens to stuff when we dispose of it, either in the landfill or the recycling bin.  ​

Every pound of waste we recycle or throw away represents a shocking 71 pounds of waste that was created upstream (through raw materials extraction, manufacturing, transportation, and everything that happens before stuff gets to us)​

• Every year, Missoulians throw away recyclables valued at $5 Million!
• Construction and demolition materials and wasted food make up more than half of what ends up in the landfill
• Aluminum cans can be infinitely recycled and can achieve up to 95 percent energy savings compared to the energy used to create the material in the first place; in contrast, glass only saves between 10-20%.   
• The Missoula landfill only has 15 years left of capacity at the current rate of disposal
• Diverting 75% of our city’s waste could create 800 jobs (Home Resource is proof – last year, they employed 30 people who diverted 700 tons of construction/demolition waste. Think of the possibilities of scaling up!)
• The climate connection is real: reaching 90% waste reduction = taking 100,000 cars off the road annually! (This doesn’t even include the reduced emissions resulting from all the avoided upstream waste!)  

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Ultimately, we can’t recycle our way to Zero Waste – there’s a reason Reduce and Reuse are the first two Rs! Zero Waste is a lofty aim, but Missoula is making progress. In fact, one big goal within Climate Smart Missoula’s Zero Waste Bucket has already been checked off the list: in February 2016, our city council passed a Zero Waste Resolution, which committed our community to creating a Zero Waste Plan, a blueprint for reaching the ultimate goal of a 90% reduction in waste by 2050.

Educating our community about the nexus between climate change and lots of important issues (like water, energy, local food and more) is a big part of our work. We’ve got a website and facebook page with resources which we’re updating constantly, but we need your help coming up with more creative ways to do education and outreach. Send your fun and artistic ideas our way!

Last night we also shared some very preliminary insights from our forthcoming first-ever community emissions inventory: basically a carbon footprint for Missoula which breaks down where our emissions come from. Spoiler alert: transportation and home energy use are big. (We’re working on the full report – stay tuned...) Armed with data from our inventory, we can work strategically to shrink our community’s carbon footprint in ways that have a big impact. So, you might be wondering…what might that look like?

At our Meetup, our friends from Missoula in Motion joined us to share what they’re doing to promote sustainable transportation. MiM is one of the movers and shakers behind great community events like Walk and Roll Week, Sunday Streets, and Commuter Challenges. Their Way to Go Club is another way to encourage Missoulians to choose an alternative mode of transportation than driving alone in our cars. (This program is making some big changes soon that will make it even more accessible – learn more here!) In fact, our city’s new Long Range Transportation Plan will include an ambitious “mode split” goal of increasing the number of sustainable trips. Check out more information about the planning process here.

On the home energy side, we’ve got some big ideas – and we’d love your feedback! Our goal is to reduce residential energy use by 10%. That’s no small potatoes, but together we can do it, and we’re working on a program that’s designed to help you find ways to save energy. The idea is a community energy-saving challenge, where households sign up and commit to cutting their utility bills as much as possible, then compete with one another to earn rewards along the way and see who can make the biggest dent. There would also be an option to join a group (like your workplace, church, neighborhood, or favorite brewery) and compete against other groups for prizes. So…what do you think? Are you in? What incentives would entice you to participate, beyond saving money on your power bills? Let us know!

There’s so much more on the radar for 2017. Stay tuned, and keep in touch!

Autumn might just be my favorite season. The air outside is cool and crisp, the slanting light brings the golden mountains and trees into gorgeous contrast, cozying up inside with a steaming mug of tea seems ideal…are you a fan of fall too? Fall is also the time of year when I become hyper-sensitive to the indoor spaces I spend time in, turning on more lights and bumping the thermostat up a few degrees. After months of warm summer weather, it’s almost easy to forget that we live in a place that is cold and dark a lot of the year!  

In the policy realm, an exciting effort, led by Northern Plains Resource Council, is also championing the passage of PACE legislation in the upcoming 2017 state legislative session. What the heck is PACE, you ask? It stands for Property Assessed Clean Energy, and in a nutshell, it’s a funding mechanism that expands opportunities for renewable energy and energy efficiency measures for homes and businesses. 

Policies like PACE are super important, but they're only part of the energy sandwich. Forgive the silly lunch-hour metaphor, but if energy policy is the peanut butter, then the jelly is all the energy saving actions we can take as individuals and as a community. And the more jelly, the more delicious the sandwich! Replacing an old water heater or putting your lights on a timer may not be as sexy as installing shiny solar panels on your roof, but energy efficiency and conservation measures like these are pretty darn effective at shrinking carbon footprints, not to mention good for the wallet. (Wondering what’s the difference between efficiency and conservation? Good question. Check this out.)

At our meetup, we asked those gathered for some feedback and brainstorming about how to get our community jazzed to save energy together. Maybe all we need is a little friendly competition with our friends, neighbors, and co-workers. We are interested in gathering ideas and we want your help! We’d love it if you would take a minute to get in touch and tell us:

• What resources or information would you need to reduce your home energy use?
• Would your household participate in a competition to reduce your home energy use?
• Would you join a team to play an energy saving game involving actions that earn points, special challenges, or other fun ways to get involved?
• What incentives would motivate you to participate in an energy saving game or competition?

​As the weather gets cooler and winter marches ever closer, throw on an extra sweater, put your thinking cap on and share your creative ideas for saving energy with those around you, and with us, of course!

At our Climate Smart Missoula monthly meetups, we love teasing out the connections between climate change and a wide variety of issues that affect our community. Sometimes, those connections may not be obvious until we dig below the surface – like in the case of local food and agriculture.  

Not so this month. What’s the first image that comes to mind when you think of climate change solutions? A wind turbine? A solar panel? You’re probably not alone – developing renewable energy is a key focus of climate change mitigation strategies, and for good reason. Burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, and natural gas) for energy contributes by far the biggest share of greenhouse gas emissions here in the U.S., so we know that shifting to clean, renewable energy sources like wind, solar, and hydro power is the way of the future. Thankfully, that future is closer every day.
One of the goals laid out in our community climate action plan is to move Missoula towards renewable energy. There’s a lot more we can do – but we’re well on our way. Last night, a few good folks were on hand to share a little more about what renewable energy looks like here in Missoula.

Local Control over Energy
Most of us don’t get to choose where our energy comes from. Our utility – here in the Missoula area, either Northwestern Energy or the Missoula Electric Co-op – buys power from a mixture of power sources, some renewable and others fossil fuel-based, and that mixture of electrons turns your lights on when you flip the switch. But there are some exciting new ways Missoulians can have more control over their energy. One is through community solar, a shared arrangement that allows community members to invest in part of a larger solar installation in exchange for clean energy. As a democratically-run cooperative, Mark Hayden, the general manager for the Missoula Electric Co-op (MEC), explained that MEC installed a 50 kilowatt community solar array in December 2015 in response to co-op members’ desire for more renewable energy. For $700, members essentially purchase one of the panels, guaranteeing them that panel’s energy output for 25 years. There was such demand that it sold out in just a couple months, so MEC has built a second community solar array, this time on the roof of Frenchtown High School. And you may be asking - what about those who can’t afford $700? In collaboration with a local bank and the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program they help make the benefits of the community solar project accessible to low-income members. Pretty cool stuff!

Solarize Missoula is another program that’s moving renewable energy forward in our community, by making the process of rooftop solar installation streamlined and easy for homeowners. Bryan von Lossberg, a key Solarize organizer, explained that through the program four local solar installers put up over 42 new rooftop systems on homes around Missoula last winter – supporting our local economy while shrinking our community carbon footprint. We’re pretty proud that we got to work with great partners like the Montana Renewable Energy Association and the Missoula Federal Credit Union to get Solarize off the ground last year – and it was such a resounding success that we’re doing it again! Keep on the lookout for more information soon and contact us if you would like to be on the list for Solarize Round 2.

The Big Picture
We’re thrilled to see more solar going up around town, and we love to see projects that save money and are good for the planet. But we know that there’s lots more progress to be made. Here at Climate Smart, we’ll continue to advocate for laws and regulations at the local and state level that are friendly towards renewable energy development, and support efforts that make renewable energy more accessible for all.  

But it’s important to remember that the cheapest (and most climate smart) energy is the energy we don’t consume! Anything we can do to be more energy-efficient (like trading out old incandescent light bulbs for LEDs) or simply use less energy goes a long way towards reducing our carbon footprint and boosting the impact of new renewable energy sources. We may not all be able to put solar panels on our roof or take part in a community solar project – but collectively, we can all use energy more wisely and use our votes and voices to advocate for clean energy solutions!

Agriculture is the major direct contributor to low flows along the Clark Fork, compounding snowmelt and peak runoff challenges. This is true elsewhere too: in Montana, agriculture accounts for 95% of water use. Greater understanding about the efficiency of flood irrigation versus overhead/sprinkler irrigation remains elusive, though much-discussed. It’s a much more complex issue than it seems on the surface: compared with sprinklers, with flood irrigation less water is absorbed by plants, but more water infiltrates through the soil and recharges the groundwater – and eventually returns to the river. Adding to the challenge of irrigation is the complexity of water rights and laws – currently, unlike the Blackfoot River, the upper Clark Fork doesn’t have a drought plan, which makes it nearly impossible to regulate water usage. 

Speaking of returning to the river, what about all the water that falls on our streets and flows through our pipes here in town? Travis Ross and Michelle Hutchins of the Missoula Valley Water Quality District gave us some insight into stormwater and wastewater issues. In Missoula, about 70% of our stormwater is returned to our aquifer, naturally treated through the process of infiltration on the way. This is great - less stormwater draining directly into the river means a cleaner river! On the wastewater treatment end, Missoula is also on the cutting edge: a large poplar plantation near the treatment plant receives nearly 1 million gallons a day of treated wastewater, feeding the trees (which are a great carbon sink!) and further filtering the water before it re-enters the river. Beth Schenk, the sustainability coordinator at St. Patrick Hospital, summarized the conversation well: “The lifecycle of water is important. We have a wonderful aquifer, but it matters what we put in it!”

Water is clearly connected to so many other issues: waste, agriculture, even energy. Energy is one connection we don’t often think about. Not only is water a precious resource in and of itself, but pumping water to our homes and cleaning it at the wastewater treatment plant uses a ton of energy – the plant is by far the biggest municipal energy consumer. As Missoulians, conserving water helps support better water quality and quantity and reduce our carbon footprint at the same time! ​
 
Water will continue to offer benefits as well as challenges in the years to come, especially as climate change impacts our region. That’s why we at Climate Smart are very excited about our City’s progress in the quest to own our water system. Local control over our water gives us the ability to talk about and deal with all the above issues and more, working for the good of our entire community!