‘Opportunity to rebuild’: Local community leaders unveil climate change alliance

0

Nashville, Bloomington and Columbus have joined forces to form an alliance that will address climate change in the tri-county area.

The public was invited to an event at Nashville Town Hall late last month where Mayor of Columbus Jim Lienhoop, Mayor of Bloomington John Hamilton and Nashville Town Council member Anna Hofstetter announced a partnership between the three communities focused on addressing climate change.

The alliance is called Project46, named after the highway that connects the communities.

The meeting took place March 24, where the leaders announced the partnership and highlighted the main strategies that the community leaders wish to use to mitigate the effects of climate change in the region.

“We’ve created a draft resolution that we are asking the county commissioners, county council, local city and town councils to adopt,” Hofstetter said at the event.

According to the resolution read by Hofstetter, a combination of carbon pollution, increasing floods and extreme heat is affecting the region, and “placing at risk the well-being of current and future residents, infrastructure and institutions.”

“An effective regional response to climate change can be delivered through collaboration between city, public, private, academic and non-profit constituencies to develop and implement long-term, effective solutions,” Hofstetter read.

“Therefore, be it resolved that together, as elected local leaders, we commit to a regional climate coalition with at least a three-year starting phase to identify and pursue solutions that effectively address our shared challenges.”

The resolution listed the primary goals of Project 46, which are to track and report greenhouse gas emissions for the three communities individually and for the region; to seek to coordinate local investments and to leverage available state and federal funding opportunities; and to engage in government, non-profit and private sector leadership to “advance initiatives, highlight successes and challenges, and promote best practice examples within and across sectors practically to respond to climate impact.”

An annual community report will also be provided to “demonstrate the activities and impact of the alliance’s efforts and progress toward shared goals,” according to the resolution.

“We’re going to do this, in part because its the right thing to do,” Lienhoop said.

He said another reason to move forward with Project46 is because it can be a “competitive advantage” for the communities.

“We know that people want this kind of effort to address climate … to occur in the communities that they live in. I believe that we all understand in this day and age that people get to choose, to a much greater extent than before, where they live, and so they would want to be in communities that have this kind of forethought,” Lienhoop said.

According to Lienhoop, the initial funding request the alliance has discussed is 50 cents per resident, which would total to about $25,000 for Columbus. The totals would reach roughly $42,500 for Bloomington and $7,500 for Brown County.

“That’s well worth the investment that we are talking about here,” Lienhoop said.

The alliance also hopes to make at least a three-year plan to secure the future of the alliance, even after Lienhoop and Hamilton leave office before the end of the year.

“Just this week, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change put out another report talking about the importance of acting quickly — that the earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade, and we must have immediate action — drastic improvements shifting away from the carbon impact of fossil fuels — and that even a few years of delay can have major, dramatic impacts on our earth,” Hamilton said.

“It is a red alert warning that we got this week.”

Hamilton also said moving forward with the project could open the door to changing and improving the efficiency of industrial production, which could produce jobs and increase investment opportunities, as well as lower energy costs for businesses and consumers,

“So, mostly, its just important to remember that, yes — this an existential climate emergency, (but), it is also an extraordinary opportunity to rebuild our future in ways that we want to, that will be better, more just, more efficient, more sustainable.”

“I believe the public sentiment we represent wants us to work on this. They want us to work together, to build momentum and trust,” Hamilton said.

“I hope Project46 — the name is obviously an homage to the link that we have, this old road that ties us together, but it’s really meant as a kind of symbolic link among us — is a first step on what I hope will a very long journey.”

No posts to display