The green movement has too few visionary leaders and too few women leaders and too few leaders under the age of 40. Tragically, this week it lost one leader who stood out in all three categories.
On Dec. 26, Rebecca Tarbotton, executive director of the Rainforest Action Network, died while vacationing along the west coast of Mexico, north of Puerto Vallarta. In a freak accident at the beach, she got tossed around in rough surf, took too much water into her lungs, and asphyxiated. She was 39 years old.
Tarbotton had been at the helm of RAN since August 2010, and had worked with the organization for almost six years. Under her leadership, RAN has focused on the intersections between forests, fossil fuels, and climate change, and run aggressive campaigns pushing corporations to change the way they do business. Most recently, Tarbotton helped convince entertainment giant Disney to adopt a major new policy that will eliminate the use of paper connected to the destruction of endangered forests.
“Becky reshaped Rainforest Action Network, and was a force against deforestation and corporate greed,” said Michael Brune, former executive director of RAN and now executive director of the Sierra Club. “She was a rising star. We need more women to be leading environmental organizations, and losing a leader and friend like Becky is especially painful.”
Bill McKibben of 350.org (and a Grist board member) also had the highest praise for Tarbotton: “She was, among other things, one of the most spirited of environmentalists — no long-faced doomsayer, and no too-careful D.C. tactician, but a fighter with a spring in her step and a bit of fire in her eye. A true heir to giants like David Brower.”
Tarbotton teamed up with leaders of other environmental groups to call for direct action and “big, brash, nonviolent climate protests.” In a 2010 opinion piece in Grist, she joined with McKibben and Philip Radford of Greenpeace USA to make this argument: “We’re making progress, but not as fast as the physical situation is deteriorating. Time is not on our side, so we’ve concluded that going forward mass direct action must play a bigger role in this movement, as it eventually did in the suffrage movement, the civil-rights movement, and the fight against corporate globalization.”
She put her money where her mouth is, getting arrested at the big Keystone XL protests in front of the White House last year. She also took part in direct action to fight mountaintop removal, according to Nell Greenberg, RAN’s communications director: “She participated in several protests at Bank of America’s headquarters as well as during their shareholder meeting in 2010. That work led to BofA and several other top banks passing policies to cut funding for companies that practice mountaintop-removal coal mining, a critical first step in curbing the practice and moving banks to direct funding away from coal.”
Tarbotton leaves behind Mateo Williford, her longtime partner and husband of five months, who works at solar company Sungevity.
Public memorial services will be held in San Francisco, Calif., and in Vancouver, B.C.; dates have not yet been announced.
RAN posted this quote from Tarbotton on its Facebook page: “The project of our time is bigger even than climate change. We need to be setting our sights higher and deeper. What we’re really talking about, if we’re honest with ourselves, is transforming everything about the way we live on this planet.”
Norfolk, Va., offers a hint of what’s to come for many coastal communities as climate change pushes tides higher and storms continue to worsen. Norfolk sits at the southeast corner of Virginia, where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Chesapeake Bay. Surrounded by water on three sides, the city of 243,000 will experience more sea-level rise than other locales, scientists say. Some areas of the picturesque old city — home to a major Navy base and full of old houses and cobblestone streets — already flood regularly.
Denise Thompson.
Agencies, residents, and businesses, have already banded together to weather the rising waters, says Norfolk’s manager of Environmental Protection Programs, Denise Thompson. “We all speak the same language,” she says. “Everyone tends to help each other out. People might say to their new neighbors ‘You need to move your car up the street’ or ‘The city’s getting ready to open up the garages. You’ll be able to move your car there for free so that you won’t have to worry about flooding your vehicle.’”
Thompson, an environmental health scientist by training, has been looking at the way humans and the environment interact since the 1970s. The issue first piqued her interest in high school, when her debate team was discussing whether the federal government should regulate pollution. In her research, she came across DDT and pesticides and closed beaches. “The light bulb went off for me,” she says.
Thompson says there were times in the 1980s when she wondered “if the environment was a good place for a career,” but today, “sustainability really has become the lens in which businesses and governments are starting to view the world.”
Norfolk, for its part, opened Virginia’s first light rail system (called The Tide) a little over a year ago, and daily ridership is already up to 5,000. And the Navy has turned out to be a swell partner in going green — it just launched Virginia’s largest solar farm and the base has a green roof and LEED-certified aircraft hangars.
Of course, it all comes too late to stop the waters from rising — even with drastic cuts to our emissions (cuts that seem improbable, even impossible) sea level will continue to rise for the foreseeable future. What is Norfolk doing about that? I talked to Thompson for Knope and change, our series on the woman working to green city governments. Here’s our edited conversation about coping with the current and coming floods, cleaning up the Chesapeake Bay, and why she feels optimistic about nature’s ability to recover from all the damage we’ve wrought.
Q.Are you ever disheartened that we moved forward on so many issues yet now are stuck again? It seems like the climate movement is going through many of the same motions that you saw in the ’70s.
A. I’m heartened that everyone is talking to each other and working on it. We have a bit of a different perspective in Norfolk. We’ve had a long history of flooding and we’ve had major floods. In 1933, we flooded during the hurricane and in 1960, there was the Ash Wednesday storm. In the late 1960s, the Army Corps of Engineers built a downtown flood wall and flood gates and pump stations to protect the downtown. The idea that we’ve got rainwater and seawater to deal with — that’s not new to us. But I’ll tell you what is new to us: Four of the seven most significant tidal events in the past 80 years happened in the last 10 years. Put another way, more than half of the major tidal events since 1933 all occurred since 2003. [A NOAA tide gage shows] the relative means sea level at Sewells Point has risen 14.5 inches. That’s a lot of water.
Q.How are you planning for more flooding and sea-level rise?
A. We realized we could fit everything we’re doing into four parts: plan, prepare, mitigate, and communicate. As it turns out, they’re all just about as important. The planning part includes civil engineering and structural approaches. Floodwalls, installing pumping equipment. We have elevated roads and likely will do more of that. We’re working with a Netherlands company called FURGO Atlantic as well as local engineers to plan. The other part I’m really excited about, having started life as a biologist, is we’re looking at the blue-green infrastructure of trees and rain gardens and even our parks and wetlands. We’re doing a lot of wetlands restoration because those are really the buffers that protect the coastline. It’s pretty exciting because there are so many benefits [to soft infrastructure] — aesthetic, habitat, water quality, livability benefits.
We’re looking at what do we do about development and redevelopment. Does it make sense to build what we’ve been building in areas that flood? The obvious and well-research answer is “No.” And so we’re making changes to our long-range plan as well as to our zoning regulations. In terms of rebuilding or adding on, the elevations of the finished homes need to be higher. Otherwise, you’re building a problem for yourself.
The communicate piece has turned out to be hugely important. Very early on, we set up two committees. One is a citizen and residents committee. The other is an experts advisory committee [with representatives from NOAA, NASA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Navy, etc.]. Those groups meet regularly and it’s provided a way for us to get out the science, the studies, and the information we have out into the community.
Q.How much sea-level rise are you looking at? How far out are you planning?
A. The numbers we are hearing at this point are two to four inches [of sea-level rise] every decade. Generally our long-term planning is 30 years but some infrastructure lasts longer than that. If it’s something that potentially would last longer than that, we’re look beyond that. Most people tend to be looking at 30-50 years out. But they’re not neglecting the 100 years out either because, especially for us, we can walk around and see buildings that were here 100 years ago. It’s not unimaginable that people will be here in 100 years looking at the buildings we built now as well as the ones from 100 years ago.
Q.The Chesapeake Bay has been greatly affected by agricultural runoff and other pollutants. In 2010, it contained the nation’s third-largest dead zone. In 2011, one-third of the bay was a dead zone. What is Norfolk doing to improve the health of the bay?
A. The interesting thing about the bay, you’ve got the 200-mile-long estuary that goes from Maryland to Norfolk. The bay also includes 50 major rivers and streams that go across land, whether it’s farmland or city, and into the bay. We’re looking at the 100-percent solution. Half of [the pollution] is “point-source” which is the wastewater system and wastewater treatment plants. The other half is runoff and “non-point-source,” [the runoff from streets and parks and yards]. We have a couple ways we’re approaching that. One is from the city side — we’re building more swales and more rain gardens and catchment basins. We have a very aggressive street sweeping program. We sweep every street in the city at least once a month. There’s a voluntary program called River Star for homes and businesses. Runoff is a real lot-by-lot, house-by-house, block-by-block approach you need to take.
Q.That’s all very cool, but in the face of factory-style farming growing in the region … can it make enough of a difference? It seems like in recent years, the bay has been getting worse, not better.
A. The last Bay Foundation report showed the bay to be holding its own and becoming a little bit better. … You are absolutely right that you have to look at the whole watershed of 17 million people. We’re 50 square miles maybe, counting water. We have 140 miles of shoreline so of course we care deeply about our water and our shorelines and the water quality of the bay. In Norfolk, we don’t have poultry farms, although we do allow backyard chickens and beekeeping.
If you look at it big picture, possibly the agriculture folks could do more. If you look at the Elizabeth River, at one point, it was very difficult to find any kind of aquatic life. [A 2008] report showed 38 percent of small fish called mummichogs had cancerous lesions. When the Elizabeth River Project started restoration efforts [in 1993], some people thought it couldn’t be done. The Elizabeth River Project says there are now dozens of species of fish, small crabs, shrimp. Of course, there’s still lots to do but that water body is coming back. They even found a little sea horse. The day they found it was very exciting. It was in an area that was considered to be a biological dead zone.
There are so many things that are positive so if you get frustrated, you don’t stay frustrated very long. It turns out nature does respond to restoration efforts.
Nicole Woodman could have found an easier place to be a sustainability director — a place where left-leaning locals happily compost their kale stems and the mayor competes with other mayors to have the greenest city. A place like Minneapolis or Asheville, N.C. Instead, Woodman landed in Flagstaff, Ariz.
Her mountain boom town of 66,000, one of the gateways to Grand Canyon National Park, is facing water shortages so severe that officials are thinking of hauling water 40 miles uphill to supply the city during the dry season — that is, seven months out of the year. And while Flagstaff is home to a mosaic of different cultures, including college students, Native Americans, and second- or third-home owners, its roots in the conservative interior West are unmistakable.
“Some people say Flagstaff is so liberal and green,” Woodman says. “It is still Arizona.”
And the Flagstaff city council recently took a turn further right. One freshly elected councilmember notes in a blog that the city’s vision statement has been revised. “Sustainable” is no longer a word they use to describe their ideal Flagstaff. “You’ll notice some significant changes, a few significant words removed … I’m very pleased with the changes and Flagstaff’s new focus and direction,” he writes.
In the latest installment of Knope and change, our series about women leading the charge to make our cities more sustainable, I chatted with Woodman about Flagstaff’s water woes, a controversy surrounding a nearby ski area, and what it’s like to be in charge of sustainability planning in a place where the idea is, at times, not particularly popular.
Q.You started this job five years ago, before the national Tea Party movement took hold. How has your job changed since?
A. There have always been members on our city council that have taken the stance that the city shouldn’t be in “this business of sustainability.” It’s fortunate that we’re not general-funded, which tends to be quite common for sustainability programs. In 2006, the council passed the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection agreement. Staff at that time had the wherewithal to say, “If you’re going to do this, you need someone to lead the charge.” We have a very small budget and rely heavily on grants and a user fee on city water bills that funds a couple of programs, this one included. With the recent change in the council, we will sharpen our pencils a little bit more, but we’ve always had to be this way.
Q.Is your department safe under the new city leadership?
A. In theory, no one’s safe. We’re in public works. It would take a significant amount of effort for our funding source to be removed. You might call me in six months and they’re going after it, I don’t know, but we just brought in a $2.5 million grant and we’re going after a $5 million grant next year. I would like to believe it wouldn’t be a smart political choice [to shutter the department] but if someone wants to hang their hat on that, we’re up for [the fight]. We have a lot of friends in the community.
Q.What have you been able to accomplish so far, in terms of making Flagstaff a more sustainable city?
A. We just received a $2.5 million grant from Arizona state parks to help us acquire open space. If everything goes as planned, on Oct. 31, we will be purchasing our first large-scale open space for an educational and open-space research center.
We’re installing a little over 200 kilowatts of parking canopies in our city hall parking lot. Beyond the energy this is going to create — which is about 38 percent of what this facility needs — I’m excited that it’s right in downtown Flagstaff. If you come through Flagstaff, you hit old Route 66. We’re on a really important corner when people come into town to get to the Grand Canyon. It’s a really good showcase that we are taking our commitment seriously.
And we just celebrated 50 miles of our Flagstaff urban trails system two years ago. When it’s completed, it will be over 100 miles.
Q.Some people might say that Flagstaff, or really any city in Arizona, is fundamentally unsustainable because of the changing climate and water issues.
A. Yeah, you have a very good point. The Southwest is a very fragile ecosystem. Water is going to be the largest issue we face. We need to be prepared. If you ask me, we are behind the ball. We need to be having more serious and large-scale dialogue about water. Our most recent well we dug in Flagstaff was over 2,000 feet deep.
Q.Why aren’t people panicking?
A. We haven’t had any disasters related to water just yet, so the reality of [water shortage] doesn’t seem practical. Before I came on board, the city bought a ranch about 40 miles outside of town. The city is prepared — and there are still a lot of legalities and money that has to go into this — to get water seven months of the year from there. Imagine the energy it’s going to take to transfer water almost 40 miles uphill, with five booster stations, to a water treatment facility. You’re talking millions of kilowatt-hours. It’s a very divisive conversation in our community right now.
Q.What’s your solution?
A. At some point, lifestyles will change because of the water situation. Will it be in 20 years? Fifty? It’s hard telling. The city has never completed a water adequacy study on just how big our bucket of water is. We need to have a long-term approach.
Q.There’s been a controversy over the nearby San Francisco Peaks, where a ski resort plans to make snow from treated sewage effluent. How do you balance this type of reuse with local tribes, who say the plans would violate sacred grounds?
A. My program has not been involved in this dialogue at all. My understanding is that this started in early 2000 when the contract was approved by the city to sell reclaimed water to the ski resort during the winter. In the summer, the reclaimed water goes to city parks, soccer fields, and golf courses. It’s used in the community for recreational purposes. But we have extra reclaimed water in the winter — and the city would say that water is going to be coming from an A++ processing facility.
We’ve got a lot of industry in this community that’s based around recreational sports specifically tailored to seasons. There’s a strong part of the community that says, “If we don’t have the snow up there, the economic health of our community will be completely destroyed.”
But then we start talking about cultural issues and that’s a whole different dialogue. One of the things that felt like an oversight — and again, I wasn’t around but just looking back through things — the decision by the former city council to move forward on this request was strictly based on numbers. It wasn’t based on community and culture. When you make a decision in a vacuum, you tend to not hear everyone’s voices. That’s the unfortunate situation of how we are where we are today.
WikipediaDowntown Flagstaff and the San Francisco Peaks.
Q.How will climate change affect Flagstaff?
A. Flagstaff in the last few years has been a case study for it. [In 2010], we had catastrophic wildfires. As a result, we had flooding and a loss of life. [Ed's note: The floods were caused by record-setting monsoon rains following the fires, which washed sediment from the scorched slopes and caused flash floods, one of which killed a 12-year-old girl.] And then we had extreme heat.
Government agencies are the first responders in those trying times. We need to prepare ourselves as government organizations to be able to better respond. It’s not something we can just check off a list. It will be years in the making. But we are having the dialogue.
Q.Best-case scenario, where do you see Flagstaff in 20 years?
A. I would like to see Flagstaff as not just an innovative community for Arizona but an innovative community in the West, on par with the cutting-edge things we see coming out of Portland or Boulder. I would love to see us pull together a strong identity and strong culture around resiliency, adaptation, and sustainability.
Q.I guess you probably don’t want to think about the worst-case scenario.
A. It will all be burnt to a crisp? No, I truly believe that there’s so much here and there’s so much potential that I can’t see us not tapping into it.
International Energy Agency/Paris, France, France (Europe)
This is an exciting opportunity for experienced professionals to foster the low-carbon energy technology revolution that will be essential for continued provision of secure, reasonably-priced supplies of energy to the global economy in coming decades.
Under the general supervision of the Director of Sustainable Energy Technology and Policy (SPT), the Head will lead the strategic design of the Agency’s work on energy technology as well as its engagement strategy to promote enhanced international collaboration. The selected candidate will possess broad knowledge and understanding of new energy technologies as well as policies and strategies to promote innovation.
The Division Head has line management responsibility for a team of some 30 enthusiastic professionals working at the cutting edge of energy technology analysis and policy making. S/he will develop the Division’s work programme and budget proposals in close collaboration with other senior colleagues across the Directorate and Agency.
We offer a stimulating and challenging workplace together with attractive remuneration and benefits packages.
The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an intergovernmental organisation committed to advancing security of energy supply, economic growth and environmental sustainability through energy policy co-operation. The IEA operates as an autonomous body within the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Closing date for applications: February 15, 2012.
Click here for more information and how to apply: http://bit.ly/vYZkxI
The International Energy Agency (IEA) is an intergovernmental organisation committed to advancing security of energy supply, economic growth and environmental sustainability through energy policy co-operation. The IEA operates as an autonomous body within the framework of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
We are currently recruiting the Head of the Energy Technology Policy Division who will be the IEA’s lead architect for fostering the low-carbon energy technology revolution that will be essential for continued provision of secure, reasonably-priced supplies of energy to the global economy in coming decades.
Under the general supervision of the Director of Sustainable Energy Technology and Policy (SPT), the Head will lead the strategic design of the Agency’s work on energy technology as well as its engagement strategy to promote enhanced international collaboration.
The selected candidate will possess broad knowledge and understanding of new energy technologies as well as policies and strategies to promote innovation.
The Division Head has line management responsibility for a team of some 30 enthusiastic professionals working at the cutting edge of energy technology analysis and policy making. S/he will develop the Division’s work programme and budget proposals in close collaboration with other senior colleagues across the Directorate and Agency.
We offer a stimulating and challenging workplace together with attractive remuneration and benefits packages.
Start-up seeks head of business development in the Washington DC area. This position will be responsible for launching the business in the DC Metro area. The role will require a flexible individual who seeks a high-responsibility role in which you are essentially your own boss. The position will require visiting restaurants and retail stores in an effort to recruit businesses to go Footprint Free. Hours will be flexible and dependent on the availability of potential clients.
Key Requirements/Areas of Responsibility and Accountability
Position will require candidate to lead all phases of business development from client leads to closing to order fulfillment and CRM
Candidates MUST be self-starters and work well independently. There will be minimal day-to-day oversight as the company founder resides in Charlottesville, VA
Develop a sales template to be used by incoming salesmen based upon successful techniques
Ideal candidates will have experience working and selling to restaurant/retail businesses
In the longer term, candidate may be required to recruit and train additional salespeople
This position is a great opportunity to join a company at its earliest stage
The position will involve meeting with clients at their store locations in the field, but clients will have use of the Bethesda Green Incubator and will interact with members of Bethesda Green Incubator to facilitate client leads
Other requirements for the position include: fulfilling client orders, and fielding issues as they arise — candidates should embrace the fact that every day will be different and this role is not cut and dry
Sense of humor highly encouraged. A strong working relationship will be key to long term success and having fun should be part of the approach to work
This is an exciting opportunity to take ownership over the launch of a business with nationwide potential.
Compensation will be predominantly commission — in the short term, candidates will NOT be offered health insurance or salary. Successful performance will open the potential for equity options in the company.
Footprint Free is a company who is helping other businesses ‘go green’ through a transparent combination of carbon footprint assessment and offset
Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume to Matt O’Connor at matt@befootprintfree.com
International Labour Organization (ILO)/Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand
Great job with UN heading the ILO's green jobs programme in Asia. The position is located in the ILO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok. RO-Asia and the Pacific has overall political and management responsibilities for the promotion of ILO principles and policies in the region and provides strategic guidance and support to all country offices and Decent Work Teams (DWTs) in the region. The position will lead and coordinate the implementation of the "Green Jobs Initiative" in Asia and the Pacific. The position will report to Regional Director through the Deputy Regional Director for Policy and Programmes and receive technical guidance from the ILO Global Green Jobs Programme in the Job Creation and Enterprise Development Department in Headquarters. He/she is expected to closely collaborate with the technical specialists in the DWTs in the region.
The Head and the Heart are not only a Seattle band, they’re from the neighborhood where I used to live, Ballard. They self-released their eponymous debut album in 2009 and immediately started getting huge buzz. The album was the No. 1 seller of 2010 at beloved Ballard record store Sonic Boom. Since then they’ve toured with all sorts of hip bands that start with D, like The Decemberists, Death Cab for Cutie, and Dr. Dog.
The album was just remastered and rereleased by Sub Pop. The sound is pretty much iconic indie folk-pop: guitar strumming, piano and violin accents, snappy, rolling drums, world-weary singing, and tons of gorgeous harmonies. The songwriting isn’t exactly innovative, but it’s immediately likable and shows immense promise. I expect big things from their sophomore effort.
Here’s
the latest video from National Geographic‘s
year-long series on population (set to music that’s got me feeling all jittery
and peppy):
The
gist: The most typical person on the planet is a 28-year-old Han Chinese man;
there are more than 9 million such chaps living right now. Here’s what he
looks like:
Also as part of NatGeo‘s population series, this month’s print magazine has an article by Elizabeth
Kolbert on how “human beings have so altered the planet in
just the past century or two that we’ve ushered in a new epoch: the
Anthropocene.”
“The pattern of human population
growth in the twentieth century was more bacterial than primate,”
biologist E. O. Wilson has written. Wilson calculates that human biomass is
already a hundred times larger than that of any other large animal species that
has ever walked the Earth. …
Probably the most significant change [wrought by
humans on the planet], from a geologic perspective, is one that’s invisible to
us—the change in the composition of the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide emissions
are colorless, odorless, and in an immediate sense, harmless. But their warming
effects could easily push global temperatures to levels that have not been seen
for millions of years. Some plants and animals are already shifting their
ranges toward the Poles, and those shifts will leave traces in the fossil
record. Some species will not survive the warming at all. Meanwhile rising
temperatures could eventually raise sea levels 20 feet or more.
Long after our cars, cities, and factories have
turned to dust, the consequences of burning billions of tons’ worth of coal and
oil are likely to be clearly discernible. As carbon dioxide warms the planet,
it also seeps into the oceans and acidifies them. Sometime this century they
may become acidified to the point that corals can no longer construct reefs,
which would register in the geologic record as a “reef gap.” Reef
gaps have marked each of the past five major mass extinctions. The most recent
one, which is believed to have been caused by the impact of an asteroid, took
place 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period; it eliminated
not just the dinosaurs, but also the plesiosaurs, pterosaurs, and ammonites.
The scale of what’s happening now to the oceans is, by many accounts, unmatched
since then. To future geologists, [British stratigrapher Jan] Zalasiewicz says, our impact may look as
sudden and profound as that of an asteroid.
International Energy Agency/Paris, France, France (Europe)
International Energy Agency/Paris, France, France
Footprint Free/Washington, DC (Metro Area)
International Labour Organization (ILO)/Bangkok, Bangkok, Thailand
