Local Fights, Global Wins: Tackling Climate Change from the Ground Up
By Aimee Dewing and Cynara Lilly
Culminating in last week’s move to make the US one of just three nations to opt-out of the Paris Climate Accord, the Trump administration has done everything from wiping the term “climate change” from whitehouse.gov, to eliminating federal programs devoted to clean air and water, to submitting a federal budget that slashes the Environmental Protection Agency by more than 30 percent. Yikes.
The administration’s approach is a grave threat to the life and health of millions of Americans — as well as billions more around the globe — and undermines the immediate economic opportunities of a clean energy future.
Governors, mayors, business leaders, and nonprofit organizations — including a number of RALLY clients — are stepping into the void in unprecedented ways. And rightly so. Climate change is a global threat, and the fact that our federal government is abdicating the United States’ leadership role in addressing it is abhorrent. But the change that’s needed — policy, economic, and cultural — has and will always come from the ground up, starting in local communities.
At RALLY, we’ve long been singing from the “Go Local” songbook, even before our president decided that addressing climate change is no longer a national priority. We’re firmly in the camp that a comprehensive approach to climate change will require fighting for frontline communities suffering from today’s outdated fossil fuel economy, building adaptive approaches to protect against harm that is no longer preventable, and speeding up the transition to a cleaner economy that creates jobs for our most vulnerable communities.
Going local and winning is possible. Here are just a couple examples of the path forward we see:
Resilient By Design — Building Community-based Approaches to Confronting the Impacts of Climate Change.
The day of Trump’s announcement, RALLY client Resilient By Design was standing on the Oakland waterfront, the San Francisco skyline shimmering in the background, surrounded by acres of land resting just at sea level — at serious risk for damage and deterioration. Mayors Libby Schaaf of Oakland and Ed Lee of San Francisco were joined by other Bay Area leaders to announce an innovative new project that will open the door for every Bay Area resident to participate in shaping our environmental future. The leaders expressed dismay about the Paris Accord, but they also made it clear that the Bay Area can and will move forward.
Home to millions of people, some of the world’s biggest companies (say nothing of their patrons), three major airports, critical industrial ports, and some of the country’s most beautiful landscapes — all of it existing within inches of severe flooding — the Bay Area cannot afford to wait for national leadership to change its mind.
Modeled on the Rebuild by Design Challenge that followed Hurricane Sandy and brought community based, long term solutions to New York and New Jersey, local leaders launched a year-long design challenge to create ten new innovative solutions to protect the Bay Area. In partnership with the Rockefeller Foundation, the Resilient By Design challenge flips the script, addressing a climate-related disaster before it hits — not after.
Schmidt Family Foundation / STAND-LA — Fighting for Frontline Communities
For several years, RALLY has worked with the Schmidt Family Foundation to support a local effort to address another big problem: Despite our reputation as a climate leader, California is the third largest oil producer in the nation. Every day, fossil fuel production is polluting our water and food with toxic chemicals, emitting carcinogenic pollutants into our neighborhoods’ air, and pumping our atmosphere with more climate-altering greenhouse gases.
Los Angeles is the only place on the planet where industrial oil operations occur in the middle of such highly populated residential areas — communities that include homes, parks, schools, and churches. Over a thousand active oil wells across LA — primarily in low-income communities and communities of color — emit known carcinogens and endocrine disruptors, contributing to health problems such as headaches, upper respiratory illness, nausea, nosebleeds, and a possible increase in cancer risk.
Stand Together Against Neighborhood Drilling–Los Angeles (STAND–LA) works with the frontline communities facing the direct health threats of neighborhood oil drilling in their communities, and leverages the star power of LA’s most iconic industry — the entertainment industry — to help shine a light on the personal stories of the Angelenos directly affected.
Seeing is believing, and the community members that make up STAND–LA have been hosting “Toxic Tours” of their neighborhoods to show elected officials, experts, and leaders in the entertainment industry what it’s like to have Big Oil as a neighbor. You can read about the Toxic Tour with Mark Ruffalo and Leonardo DiCaprio and other Oscar nominees in Vanity Fair and Good Magazine.
And STAND’s advocacy and awareness efforts have paid off. Last month, LA City Council President Herb Wesson introduced a motion to study the feasibility of creating a setback around LA’s oil drilling sites and the places that Angelenos live, work, pray, and play. ·
State and Local Leaders Taking the Reins — Leading for a Faster Transition
Yesterday, Hawaii’s governor signed legislation making it the first state to codify into law portions of the Paris Climate Agreement. At the signing ceremony, Governor Ige noted: “Climate change is real, regardless of what others may say. Hawaii is seeing the impacts first hand. Tides are getting higher, biodiversity is shrinking, coral is bleaching, coastlines are eroding, weather is becoming more extreme. We must acknowledge these realities at home.”
RALLY’s home state Governor Jerry Brown is in China, representing not just the Golden State, but dozens of governors, mayors, businesses and Americans from across the country in continuing to engage the world on climate change solutions.
Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney pledged his city’s ongoing commitment to the tenets of the Paris agreement, and back in RALLY HQ territory, Los Angeles Mayor Garcetti is looking to “tackle climate change on a local level.” In all, 248 Mayors pledged their commitment to the Paris agreement goals.
Beyond the Paris Accord, local leaders across the country — especially in some of the reddest states — are pushing the transition to a clean energy economy. States like Kansas, which scrapped its law requiring 20 percent of the state’s energy come from renewables only after more than 30 percent of its power came from wind. Indeed, the five states that count wind energy as their largest power generator all voted for Trump. On climate, at least, even the president’s conservative friends at the state and local levels are leading the transition away from yesterday’s fossil fuel economy. Progress is possible everywhere.
So What?
Regardless of who’s in the White House, resolving global issues must always start locally, focused on real impact, real opportunity, and real leadership.
The challenge for all of us, perhaps now more than ever: Drive local efforts rooted in people’s lives that ladder to the cultural, political, policy, and economic changes that — all together — will change the course of climate change.
At RALLY, we’re here for it.
Aimee Dewing and Cynara Lilly are Directors at RALLY, a communications firm that works to influence the way people think about and respond to political and social issues.
For more, read RALLY’s manifesto on The Way Forward for Environmentalists by Hillary Moglen.
