Summer internship with Ready for 100 Columbus

ENR 7191 is the required internship course for the Master’s in Environment and Natural Resources. Students can fulfill this requirement through their jobs in an environmental field, through a formal full-time internship, or through part-time volunteer opportunities.  I chose the third way to do this by working on the Sierra Club’s Ready for 100 campaign in Columbus.

Although I have been working on the Ready for 100 Columbus campaign for the past 1.5 years, I had not made it the center of my activities due to work and other courses. This summer I had the chance to spend my coursework time on the campaign. It was a great experience, and I learned that I love doing this kind of work.

Tom Foley, sustainability manager for Cuyahoga County, speaks at the Clean Energy for All Ohio Training on June 2, 2018.

Mike Foley, director of sustainability for Cuyahoga County, speaks at the Clean Energy for All Ohio Training on June 2, 2018.

The objectives I had for the summer were:

  • Hold a successful 100% Clean Energy for All Ohio training on June 2. We achieved that goal, training about 50 people who heard from energy leaders in Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Oberlin, as well as Tom Foley, sustainability manager for Cuyahoga County. As a result, five new Ready for 100 campaigns got started around the state.
  • Restart the grasstops part of the campaign by doing power mapping of the mayor and members of city council, and community mapping in neighborhoods of Columbus. We got this done with the help of two other interns for the campaign.
  • Identify and start a new communications chair. We promoted Brittany Converse, a longtime volunteer who works for the city.
  • Speak about Ready for 100 at community and neighborhood events. I spoke at the Clean Energy for All Ohio training, a projection art event at Flowers and Bread in Clintonville, and led the panel discussion following a showing of Reinventing Power. I was also invited to be part of the city’s application for the Bloomberg Climate Challenge Grant, pulling together information about tax abatements for sustainability.
  • Hold tours of several renewable energy facilities in Columbus and Ohio. I was not able to do this. But I did make it to the Growing Local Solar workshop on August 1 at Denison University, where I learned about aggregation in Ohio, the carbon tax in Athens, how to overcome barriers to solar, and toured the Denison solar array.
We held a showing of Reinventing Power with a panel discussion on August 9, 2019. About 45 people attended.

About 45 people attended our showing of Reinventing Power with a panel discussion on August 9, 2018.

One of the best things about the summer was getting to work with two other interns for the campaign, one from the Glenn College and one from School of Environment and Natural Resources. Suddenly work that we had been wanting to do for months, like power mapping and community mapping, got done. We couldn’t pay these interns – we could only offer course credit – but it was amazing to have them on board. I wanted to get more interns in the fall, but national Sierra Club changed its policy and now requires paying interns $15 an hour. We don’t have money for that.

It is not an exaggeration to say this summer was pivotal to the direction of the Ready for 100 Columbus campaign. When we started, we were trying to get sign-on letters from local businesses in Clintonville and the Short North. It was a disaster. Employees couldn’t sign, managers were never there or too busy, and most were hesitant about signing. Quickly we realized that approach was not working and switched to gathering signatures on our AddUp petition to the city. We got 300 signatures at Comfest alone, about 1600 during the summer.

We also did some serious campaign planning work, identifying our theory of change, targets, tactics, partnerships, and budget. This laid the groundwork for our campaign moving forward.

Costa Rica – Day 7 – End of home stay, ecolodge, hot springs

Our group with the Laureles farm family.  From left to right: Becca, Leesha, Fernando, Lidia, Carla, me, and the Laureles grandson in sunglasses in front.

Our group with the Laureles farm family. From left to right: Becca, Leesha, Fernando, Lidia, Carla, me, and the Laureles grandson in sunglasses in front.

My preparations the night before paid off, as I slept really soundly and not worrying about bugs. The whole thing with the dogs must have bothered me more than I thought because I dreamed that I was walking by a busy street in back of the UNC campus (where I did my undergrad) and found two dogs in different places who had been hit by cars and were lying by the road with broken legs. In the dream I scooped them up and was taking them to get medical care when I woke up.

A howler monkey brought her baby out to see us.

A howler monkey brought her baby out to see us.

I got up before dawn, and three of us (Carla, Leesha, and me) went to watch the sun rise over the farm. Just as at the beach at Tortuguero, the sun didn’t come up in a ball like we are used to seeing at home. It just got light. Fernando’s cattle were mostly sitting down (which cattle here seem to do a lot) or grazing peacefully. Leesha tried to make friends with one of their horses in the pasture, but he was shy and didn’t want to get too close. On the way back we stopped by the howler monkey trees again. The monkeys had been very active just before dawn howling to greet it. They were still active getting their breakfast when we stopped by the trees. We probably watched them for a half hour. At first they hid, but after a bit a few came out where we could see them, including a mom with a baby on her back. She sat watching us for a long time, and I got a ton of pics.

Fernando showed Carla how to milk a cow.

Fernando showed Carla how to milk a cow.

Then we went back to the farm where we got to help Fernando milk the cow. That was fun – Leesha was a natural, and I got the hang of it but am glad I don’t have to do it every morning. Fernando put the calf into a separate enclosure while we got a bucket full of milk. When we were done, he let out the calf, who made a beeline for his mom. I’m glad they let the calf stay with the mom.  The mother-offspring bond is the strongest in nature, and to talk the calf away so that we can take the milk does not seem right. It was enough to make me switch mainly to almond milk, though it’s hard to avoid dairy entirely. While we were milking the cow with Fernando, Lidia came out with a glass that we filled up straight from the cow. She then used that to make some of the very best pancakes I have ever eaten, which we had along with eggs, juice, and of course rice and beans.

<Optional thoughts about the book I was reading>

While the rest of the group walked for a swim at a river spot with difficult access, I got some reading done in This Changes Everything. Naomi Klein makes the case that climate change will require us to abandon unregulated free market capitalism to enact the collective solutions needed to address carbon emissions. She thinks it is a great opportunity to reshape human relations to be more just, equitable and fair, to enact protections for workers and poor people around the world.

It’s a compelling argument, but I’ve also read some interesting critiques. Basically the critiques say Klein was anti-capitalism before she started writing about climate change – she wrote about clothing factory workers in South America and about disaster opportunism, in which big companies use the opportunity of a disaster to make a windfall profit. The critiques think her current book is more of the same vein, and that she doesn’t give enough credit to some of the market solutions being proposed such as a price on carbon.

Klein says we need a mass social movement to force governments to take the steps needed to address climate change. I agree with that, but I think we need market solutions too. A carbon tax, preferably with the proceeds being returned equitably to everyone in the form of dividend checks or tax cuts as proposed by Citizens Climate Lobby, is a must. Klein thinks this idea is okay but not nearly enough. I think it’s just a start too, but it’s a vital one. We have to disincentivize fossil fuels and incentivize renewables if we want people to make the switch.

Klein seems to talk mostly about mass movements but decentralized control with communities taking charge of their own energy, transit and food systems. I would love to see that, and mass movements are important. That’s what stopped the Keystone pipeline, which is of huge symbolic value, and having participated with the Sierra Club in the People’s Climate March in New York City, I feel like the march helped provide immediacy and momentum to the UN talks that week.  It was shortly after that when Obama announced the first-ever agreement with China to lower emissions. Of course none of this is enough and the work is not done, but you have to start somewhere.

This year will be huge for climate agreements leading up to the talks in Paris in December where everyone is hoping for the first time to get a binding agreement across all nations. That will be a tall order. Klein is right that social movements will make a huge difference in the climate debates, and she is right that control needs to come down to the local level.

I’m pleased to live in Columbus, which has a very ambitious green plan.  But this leads to my critique of Klein’s focus on social movements.  As important as they are, in the end it is governments, whether local state or national, that will decide if, when, and how we address climate change.  This is why I’m studying public policy. I’m not exactly sure where this course of study will lead, but climate change is the most important issue not just in my lifetime but maybe in of all human civilization, and I want to be in a place where I can help address it.

<End of thoughts about the book and back to the trip>

Becca made friends with a rescued deer fawn.

Becca made friends with a rescued deer fawn.

So most of Friday afternoon was spent on the bus driving to the Villa Finca Tina ecolodge in the mountains, then to the Baldi hot springs. I’m pretty sure this will get changed up next year, since we didn’t make it to the hot springs until after 9 p.m. so had less than an hour. They were absolutely amazing though, as was the lodge which had several rescued orphan deer and even planted special grasses for the deer to eat.

In Ohio it is against the law to rescue orphan deer. I understand about wildlife rehabilitation needing to be licensed, but we should allow people who care – and most people do – to help animals that need help. Even if those orphans go to a sanctuary to live out their lives, that’s better than being killed just because they were unlucky enough to lose their mother. In one case, a police officer and his wife rescued an orphan deer whose mother had been hit by a car.  When the authorities came and take it, the couple claimed the deer had escaped the day before and showed their torn screen door. In reality I’m thinking they probably found a sanctuary out of state to take the deer.

It’s a ways until retirement, but it liked the ecolodge area and hot springs so much, I would give serious consideration to retiring there. The community seemed to have a lot of natural healing practitioners, and as of now it’s affordable. I’ll have to come back with my husband and investigate this idea more thoroughly before making any decisions, but this is now a possibility on the list.

Setting program goals

In Chapter 8, Guy Peters discusses program evaluation and policy change.  Peters says program evaluation is difficult for a number of reasons: goals may not be measurable, the time frame for meaningful goals may be too short, measures may not include all outcomes, targets may be difficult to identify, measures may look more at procedure than performance, outcomes may be valued differently by different constituents, or evaluations may be rigged.

One way to be more transparent in what you are measuring and why is to state the goals and evaluation measures as part of creating the program.  An example of this is the EPA’s Clean Power Plan proposed on June 2.  In this plan the EPA sets the goal of lowering carbon emissions from power plants 30% by 2030.  Lowering carbon emissions from power plants is necessary because power plants are the largest contributor in the nation to carbon dioxide emissions that drive climate change. Lowering emissions will not only mitigate the worst effects of global warming which cost over $100 billion in 2012 alone, but the reduction in particulate matter and ozone also carries up to $93 billion in public health benefits through avoiding up to 6,600 premature deaths, 150,000 child asthma attacks, and 3,300 heart attacks.

Under the plan, each state is given a goal for emission reductions by 2030, with interim goals to meet by 2020.  However, states have broad flexibility in how they meet these goals.  Four building blocks are laid out: making fossil fuel plants more efficient, using more low-emitting power sources such as natural gas or nuclear, using more renewable energies such as solar and wind, or using electricity more efficiently.  States can also implement these building blocks in a variety of ways such as investing in energy efficiency programs, upgrading aging infrastructure, passing new regulations, setting policy to encourage more renewables, or working with other states to create a regional strategy.

The goals of the EPA Clean Power Plan are modest, common-sense, and highly achievable.  Although this plan is the most our government has ever proposed to address climate change, it’s the least we can possibly do, and only the beginning of what needs to be done to address this urgent issue.  Yet incredibly this plan is being challenged in court by 12 states, including Ohio, which have sued to stop it.  Although the Supreme Court has ruled three times, including most recently in June, that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon as a pollutant under the Clean Air Act, these states argue that the EPA does not have this authority because it is already using the Clean Air Act to regulate other emissions from power plants such as mercury.

To make this argument, which on the face of it sounds ridiculous, the states are relying on an anomaly in the law.  During the lawmaking process, the House and Senate each pass their own version of the bill, which is then reconciled in a joint committee before being sent to the president for a signature.  Unfortunately, part of the Clean Air Act pertaining to what the EPA can regulate as pollution did not get reconciled before signing, so it contains language from both the House, which is more restrictive, and the Senate, which grants broad authority.  When such failures of reconciliation have been challenged in court, the courts have generally given discretion for interpretation to the agency doing the regulating, as the Supreme Court did in ruling that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon pollution.

Moreover, the House version may not say what the states think.  Although one section of the Clean Air Act states the EPA can regulate specific emissions such as mercury, the section of the act that the states are suing under says the EPA can regulate any other source of pollution, to cover sources the first section might have missed.  The House language prevents the EPA from regulating states twice under this section, but that’s not what the EPA is doing.  It is regulating mercury under the first section of the Clean Air Act, and carbon under the second section.

Most observers expect the state’s challenge to the EPA Clean Power Plan to be thrown out of court.  So why are states pursuing this?  Two words: politics and money.  The lawsuit is led by West Virginia and joined mostly by states where coal and oil are big business.  Now that the Supreme Court has ruled that corporations are people and money is speech, these industries have the green light to pour more money than ever into elections, installing politicians who fight every possible regulation on fossil fuels tooth and nail.  It is a waste of taxpayer funds, and it burns precious time we need to address climate change, which threatens to tip the environment into something totally different than the one human civilization and most current species evolved in.

Scientists tell us that our window to mitigate climate change is closing fast – as in the next 10 to 15 years – and if the environment does reach a tipping point, it may not be something we can adapt to.  Humans are dependent on a healthy environment, and we cannot choose our economy at the environment’s expense.  On the contrary, moving toward a healthy environment would strengthen the economy with investments in clean energy, innovation, and public health.

Climate change is happening now, but we also have the tools to address it.  The EPA Clean Power Plan is a good first step.  We cannot allow the iron triangle of the fossil fuel industry, the politicians it puts into office, and the courts that allow them to do this, to put an entire civilization at risk.  People must make their voices heard, whether through votes or protests.  There is now a true social movement on climate, and it won’t stop until this problem is solved.

 

Getting on the agenda

This week’s reading looks at agenda setting and policy formulation.  Peters says a problem gets on the government’s agenda if 1) it affects a lot of people or has intense or visible effects; 2) it parallels or expands on previous issues; 3) it can be linked to a national symbol; 4) it is beyond the private sector and can only be solved by government; 5) there is a policy or technology to solve it.

Right now climate change is such a problem.  On September 21, along with 400,000 other Americans, I participated in the People’s Climate March.  The purpose of the march was to demonstrate popular support for putting climate change at the top of the agenda.  Climate change meets all of Peters’ requirements.  It affects large numbers of people, and the effects can be intense.  Carbon pollution is similar to previous environmental challenges such as DDT or the ozone hole.  For a long time climate change was symbolized by a polar bear, but the EPA is now using the symbol of a boy with asthma in a doctor’s office for its carbon pollution standards.  Carbon emissions are a prime example of an externality, as oil and coal companies pollute the air and water basically for free. And there are both engineering and policy technologies to solve it: renewable energy such as solar and wind, and a carbon tax.

Right now the country is in the policy formulation stage of putting climate change on the agenda. There are four major approaches to lowering carbon emissions: cap and trade; regulation; subsidizing alternative energy; and a carbon tax.  Of these, cap and trade has already been defeated in Congress, and alternative energy subsidies don’t seem viable despite the fact the oil industry is heavily subsidized.  The EPA has proposed regulations for power plant emissions, because this is something the Obama administration can do without going through Congress.  The fourth proposal is a carbon tax to correct the externalities. Some groups are proposing a tax and dividend, in which oil and coal companies would pay the tax, with proceeds refunded to taxpayers. That would be popular, but whether it could pass Congress is another question.