Catching Up

Well, it's been awhile since my first post! I ended up getting two colds in January, the second of which lingered well into February. While I wish I had kept up my activism and blogging goals, I'm also reminding myself that I'm not a machine, and taking time to rest and recover is important for the long term. And what matters is starting again, even when it feels like it's been too long since the last time I posted.

Writing Letters

One of the things I'm doing is writing letters and getting involved on a city level. It's way more likely that a city councilor or mayor will respond and react to a letter than a state or national official, and there is a lot at the city level that's possible in terms of setting climate policy. I've begun reading Planning for Climate Change: A Reader in Green Infrastructure and Sustainable Design for Resilient Cities, and am taking notes on what I want to communicate to my city's leadership. That has been time consuming, so I also wrote a letter to my mayor expressing my immediate concerns about climate change, and urging her to take any opportunity possible to make a difference.

Letter Exceprt:

I am writing to share the most pressing issue I see facing us: the climate crisis. In the last year, we've been touched personally and acutely by it, with the smoke and fires so close to us that made our air toxic for over a week, and Oregonians all over the state lost their homes. I am heartened that the Biden administration is taking the threat seriously. However, gridlock in Washington and the vastness of the crisis ahead of us requires all levels of government to treat the climate crisis as a serious, existential problem that we all contribute to, and must all take swift action to address. I believe it will require difficult choices and hard work, but our future selves and future generations will either bless or curse us based on what we do now and in the next years.

I am including a picture of my son. He's just about to turn two years old. He's the reason I'm writing this letter to you today. By the time he's able to vote, our climate fate will either be on the path to hope and possibility, or despair and suffering. You will be undoubtedly faced with hard choices as Mayor. It will be easier to do things that fit the status quo, or work to make things better on the fringes, rather than drive transformational change. But, a lot of kids won't survive incrementalism, and those that do will live in a world much more frightening than the one we have now with droughts, food insecurity, and a world with unpredictable climate disasters. When you have a hard, possibly unpopular choice to make to take climate action, please take a look at his picture. He couldn't vote, but he is depending on the decisions we all make.

I don't have specific policies that I'm advocating for in this letter. For now, I'm asking that as you serve as Mayor, you center climate in your policies and challenge yourself and the city council to make transformational change that our futures are depending on. I have begun researching climate change policies that cities can undertake to both mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and adapt to a new climate, and I will write to you soon about what I've learned.

Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.

What's Next?

As I mentioned before, I've been reading about city policies that make a difference in climate change. I plan to write to my mayor and city council about what I find out, and where I think my city can make changes. I'll also post those notes and letter here too. I'm also getting involved with city boards related to climate; one of them is as a community member giving input on making a section of downtown more pleasant for bikers and pedestrians. Sometimes it feels like, "is this really making a difference?", but it beats not doing anything at all. I'm looking forward to blogging more frequently and sharing what I've been up to.