How to decarbonize your city ASAP! (upcoming webinar)

Hi y'all,

A few quick things for you this week!

• Upcoming?Crowdsourcing Sustainability webinar?with two people leading the most ambitious local climate action plan in the US (decarbonizing Ithaca, NY by 2030 with a Green New Deal!)
• Fantastic video on the benefits and what it will take to electrify everything.
• Our first CS team podcast is now live.

Upcoming webinar: How to decarbonize your city ASAP

On?Tuesday, April 5th at 4 pm ET, we are going to be spending time with a couple of people who are truly leading the charge in this space.

Luis Aguirre-Torres is in charge of implementing Ithaca, New York's Green New Deal and decarbonizing the city by 2030.

This is the most ambitious target in the US. It's also the most ambitious that I'm aware of in the world (if you know of others please do let me know!)

I recently saw Luis write:

"I can say, with absolute confidence, that we can, and we will, decarbonize the City of Ithaca by 2030. We have the vision, commitment and the support of great people and organizations."

So, naturally, I invited Luis to join the CS community so we can learn from Ithaca's experiences - so people everywhere can start replicating Ithaca's successes to date and strategies going forward.

We're also lucky enough to be joined by Rebecca Evans who was part of the Sunrise Movement and instrumental in getting Ithaca's Green New Deal passed in the first place (she was naturally Luis's first hire!)

(I won't get into it here, but both Luis and Rebecca have extremely impressive backgrounds in this space.)

This?webinar?is for people who want to learn:

1. How to get your town to pass ambitious climate legislation.
2. How to actually decarbonize your town or city once ambitious targets are set.

Ithaca is taking a unique, innovative approach to getting this done, leveraging public and philanthropic funds to unlock?large?amounts of private capital at low or no cost to citizens. I hadn't heard of this model before and think it's definitely worth understanding any approaches we can take that may help us move faster at the local level.

Again, this webinar is happening on April 5th at 4 pm ET. We'd love for you to join if you're interested (make sure to register!).

We'll start with ~45 minutes of CS's typical interview format for Luis and Rebecca. And then we'll have 30 to 45 minutes of Q&A so everyone tuned in can ask their specific questions.

Rewiring America's Saul Griffith on electrifying everything

After reading and listening to Saul Griffith for some years now, I'm convinced he may know more about the US's energy system than anyone else in the world.

In the following?25-minute video, Saul breaks down the?"1 billion machines"?that we need to focus on. Essentially, to meet any reasonable climate goals, whenever a machine that runs on fossil fuels breaks down or is retired, we need to replace it with its electric, more efficient counterpart (think of it as upgrading everything in your day-to-day life that runs on gas or oil).

Electrifying everything will have massive, underappreciated benefits such as creating millions of jobs, saving the average US household $2,500 per year, and making everything far more efficient (it often requires just 1/3 the amount of primary energy to power something with electricity compared to powering it by burning dead plants and animals).

I highly recommend you watch Saul's section of the following video:

Crowdsourcing Sustainability Team Pod

Per the suggestion of our?podcast?and video editor, Diego Rentsch, I'm excited to share our first team podcast!

This is super informal, but we definitely had fun diving into some news stories as well as specific topics the team wanted to touch upon including the need to help and plan for climate migrants, the transition to clean energy, the lack of accountability from COP26 and politicians, and more.

Hope to see you at the webinar!

Best,

Ryan

P.S. Crowdsourcing Sustainability is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit run by myself and 3 wonderful volunteers.?If you believe this work is valuable, please consider?investing in our work?so we can keep increasing our climate impact. Large or small, your donation is deeply appreciated!

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(This article was originally published?on?Crowdsourcing Sustainability.)