Learn More About Plans to Address Climate Change in Your County

In many counties in the US, state and federal funding is available for addressing climate change. What’s needed to address climate change in a given locality is obviously going to vary. In my county, for example, there’s a dire need for more public charging stations for electric vehicles. Electric vehicles are relatively popular here due in part of people wanting to do something about air quality issues.

But it’s also a county where many people drive in from other places. This puts a strain on the charging capacity of their vehicles. People need public or subsidized charging stations to make the investment in an electric vehicle worthwhile.

When state and federal funds are allocated to address climate change issues, people in my area want charging stations to be prioritized. Not everyone has the time or inclination to get involved with how their tax dollars are spent locally. But for those who do, or for those for whom climate change is an important issue, finding out what your community plans to do is key. Because what your county does or doesn’t do is going to directly affect your daily life in the near future.

Projects that address climate change issues can also have a big impact on other quality of life issues in a community.

For example, some communities are in dire need of more public walkways and bike paths. For some people, getting the recommended 10,000 steps is a pipe dream. They have to drive anywhere and everywhere they need to go, and that driving takes time and energy. It’s no wonder there is a public health crisis of diabetes and heart disease. So many people are forced to live in unhealthy areas where they don’t have access to nature, clean air, or simple low or no cost exercise opportunities.

The efforts of just a few people getting involved to improve things can make a big difference. I know of a medium-sized city that had almost no public walking areas. A local woman decided to change that and make use of a strip of unused land. There was resistance. People who lived near the proposed walkway didn’t want anything in their neighborhood to change. But she persisted.

She persisted and she prevailed. That strip of formerly unused land is now one of the most popular spots in the city. People of all ages gather and walk and meet and enjoy the greenery and the scenery.

It turns out people actually enjoy nature and walking and biking and healthy activities when they’re accessible!

In other areas, aging infrastructure is a major problem. In some places, for example, combined sewer systems were built, i.e., sewer systems that mixed storm water with wastewater. That mixed water, containing untreated sewage, then flows into oceans or rivers. This makes beaches, lakes, or rivers unfit for humans to use and enjoy. Climate change that increases the intensity of storms only aggravates such issues. So seemingly simple things like a more efficient sewer system can both address climate change AND make the area better to live in.

In your county, other measures might be more appropriate. Parts of the country with significant forestry resources might make reforestation a prime form of climate resilience. For other counties, a simple program to plant a specified number of trees could be more practical. Creating more green spaces could be more important in areas where urban heat islands pose particular dangers. Yet other areas may have the population and scale to look into less common and more ambitious measures like carbon sequestration.

The key to all this is to get your city or county or other local jurisdiction apply for the funds that are available.

There are a lot of areas in the country that are simply not good at applying for the money that could be available to them. In some cases, this is because conservative ideology seemingly dictates against accepting funding from the federal government or anyone else for that matter.

That reluctance to apply for and accept funding to address climate change is poverty thinking!

The wealthy, the successful, the entrepreneurs, and private businesses that conservative ideology claims to admire NEVER turn down free money. They don’t turn down money with strings attached either. They actively seek investment and concessions from local government. They get public funding and tax breaks and anything else you can imagine to get extra dollars in their hands. That’s how they grow their businesses and make them successful.

Moving money around is what makes an economy dynamic. If your local area isn’t actively trying to get funding for climate change resilience, it’s screwing you and everyone else over. Demand your share of funding!

It’s About the Future

Fiscal and financial policies regarding renewable energy can keep your locality firmly fixed on the future and how to thrive in it, economically and environmentally. Cities such as Minneapolis have had good success by changing their energy mix from the dirty (coal) to the clean (solar). Many other cities also have renewable energy targets, including not just city operations but county or citywide operations by private industry and citizens. These measures can benefit GDP as well as the environment.

Making a commitment to become carbon neutral or use 100% renewable energy by a specific date can be another way to keep your area focused on the future. Making commitments like this show an area’s confidence in its own future and its ability to achieve large-scale goals.

For a long time, there’s been a pull in this country (and elsewhere) to look at the past. Some people seem to long for the past or to try to regress toward it. Some want to restore it, to idealize it, or draw inspiration from it. All of these things can be appropriate in small doses, but it’s fairly obvious that this has all gone to a negative extreme. The past was not as great as we might like to believe.

All this focus on the past fights with humanity’s natural urge to look toward the future. The truth is looking backward will not stop the future from arriving. Why not make the future great instead?

It’s long past time to get pretty fed up with a focus on the past and its fossils and to lean into a brighter, better future.