Join us for the July Sustainability Spotlight on Electrification. Our speaker, Gordon Nuttall, a coach with GoElectricAZ, will share an overview of the opportunities for electrifying our homes and the benefits of doing so. He will explore the following issues:
Learn how you can make your home more energy efficient!
Find practical ways to save energy without spending much.
Explore installing a heat pump for efficient heating and cooling, or one for efficient water heating.
Learn about backup battery systems in case the power goes out.
Learn about technologies and available programs to help with costs.
There will be ample time for Q&A, and you can leave with an action plan
Decisions made long ago structure the contemporary debates among the Colorado Basin states today. This presentation explores early politics internal to Arizona to explain some of our current situation. Despite benefiting from early federal investments in dam building and “reclamation,” between 1923 and 1944, business interests in the state of Arizona opposed approval of the 1922 Colorado Compact governing use of the Colorado River and saw California as their enemy.
Concerns about the adequacy of flows began even before the Compact, but became a most unwelcome discussion in the 1940s when the state’s leaders acquiesced to the federal government’s terms in order to fund plans for the Central Arizona Project.
Knowing early history helps explain why our state took so long to receive and utilize its full share of Colorado River water, and why users of the Central Arizona Project are so vulnerable to shortages on the river. This presentation will conclude with some information about Arizona’s recent strategies for dealing with shortages.
SPEAKER
Julia Fonseca is a hydrologist, now consulting as Madrean Resources. While at Pima County Regional Flood Control District, she was the project manager for various recharge feasibility studies in the Tucson area, which culminated in the Lower Santa Cruz Replenishment
Project for CAP recharge and the Marana High Plains effluent recharge project. Later, she helped to develop County programs for riparian protection and restoration, and compliance with the Clean Water Act and Endangered Species Act. She is currently writing a book about George Edson Philip Smith, Tucson’s first home-grown hydrologist.
It would be hard to identify an issue more pressing than the preservation of our precious planet. To complicate things, there is a gnawing sense that we are running out of time and the task is now impossible. The First Amendment gives us wide berth to advocate for the survival of life on Earth. But is anger-fueled or sensational speech skillful and effective? What do our spiritual traditions, including Buddhism, have to say about “right speech”? And how might its tenets be employed to help us protect the planet — and keep our sanity? This talk by David Bodney aims to shed some light on these issues.
Our Speaker: David J. Bodney serves as Senior Counsel at Ballard Spahr LLP, where he practices media and constitutional law, and teaches media law as a Professor of Practice at the College of Law
at UA. A graduate of Yale College (B.A., ’76) and the University of Virginia (J.D./M.A., Foreign Affairs, ’79), he served as a legislative aide to Sen. John V. Tunney (D – CA) and began his legal practice at Brown & Bain (now Perkins Coie) in Phoenix.
He served as editor and general counsel to New Times (1990-92), spent 22 years developing an international media law practice at Steptoe & Johnson LLP, and founded the Media and Entertainment Law Group at Ballard Spahr in 2014. David was drawn to Arizona in substantial part to practice Indian law, and he has represented one tribe on a wide array of issues, including natural resources and water law, for over 30 years, a relationship that began through his partnership at Steptoe with Bruce Babbitt. His professional bio can be found at www.ballardspahr.com. In 2020, David moved to Tucson, where he continues to practice and teach—a move that has allowed him to deepen his 50-year practice of Zen Buddhism through Upaya Tucson, an affiliate of the Upaya Zen Center of Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Many of the solutions for climate and habitat resilience are hiding in plain sight. Come to this month’s Sustainability Spotlight to learn about building design principles that help urban and rural communities to weather extreme temperatures and dryness more effectively and, ultimately, at lower cost than “building as usual.”
Our speaker, Bob Vint, has a decades-long career in architecture and is an active teacher in the classroom and in the field (vintarchitects.net). His latest field project involved an ‘Alternative Spring Break’ with his U of A architecture students to Agua Prieta, Sonora, where they helped to build a home for a local family, in partnership with the Rancho Feliz Charitable Organization (ranchofeliz.com). Working alongside local builders and community members, students completed the rough framing for a ‘Highly-Johansen House,’ an economical, insulated shelter named in honor of two key Rancho Feliz volunteers & supporters. Students and faculty volunteers stayed at ‘La Hacienda Feliz’ volunteer dormitory, for which Vint donated the design in 2020-2021. This community-engaged learning model connects design education with real-world impact and is a model that may have real-world applications in a variety of endeavors.
BOB VINT is a native Tucsonan who has practiced as a licensed architect in Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Massachusetts. He has served as preservation architect for the Mission San Xavier del Bac in Pima County, the most significant historic building in Arizona, as well as for the pre-historic Native American Cliff Dwellings of the
Sierra Ancha in the Tonto National Forest (dating to 1290, built of stone with mud mortar – a preservation study carried out for the U.S. Forest Service.) Additional projects of note include Linda Ronstadt’s Tucson residence, the main entrance of the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum, and more recently, the expansion of The Loft Cinema.
Tuesday, March 10 6:00-7:15 pm I am the bread of kindness and the flower of beauty. Ye who pass by, listen to my prayer: Harm me not. – Ancient prayer, in Portuguese forest preservations
On a hot summer’s day, trees can cool the air, and the ground beneath them, as much as 9-13 degrees. Trees give many more such gifts to us every day. Join us for a conversation with Adam Farrell-Wortman, Horticultural Director at the Tucson Botanical Gardens, and arborist Nazareth Taraz, who will paint a picture of the amazing gifts of trees to humans and to habitat, and describe how we can best serve the trees in our desert community.
We are fast approaching a special election to decide on RTA Next. People on all sides of the dual-proposition initiative have compelling points to make about our current transportation system in Tucson and Pima County.
The challenge is not so much about moving people faster, it’s about reducing the distance people must travel. Visionaries in and out of planning departments are reframing mobility around convenience, safety, and neighborhood-scale access rather than continued roadway expansion.
Consider: 84% of all trips in the Metro area are by car; Tucson drivers log over 8 billion miles annually. This is travel we cannot afford to maintain, given that most city and county roads are in poor condition with a $2–3 billion repair backlog.
Local plans (Move Tucson, RTA 2045, Pima County) share emerging themes: prioritize safety, equity, and multimodal options; design from the sidewalk inward; and recognize that widening roads cannot solve congestion. All seem to agree that ultimately our financial constraints and the urgency of carbon drawdown require a shift from auto-dependence to greener forms of mobility.
Join us for an animated discussion of how RTA Next might fit into, and/or postpone, the sustainable future of mobility in southern Arizona.
Our panel will include Logan Havens, board member of the Living Streets Alliance, leaders in the Complete Streets Initiative passed by Mayor & Council in February 2019 and advisors to the City’s climate action plan.
Join us on Zoom, Tuesday, January 6, at 6:00 pm for our Sustainability Spotlight, “The Environment in 2026: At the State Capital and Beyond.” We expect that the coming year will bring challenges to many important aspects of local and state life, especially looking at environment, health, and related concerns. The program will look ahead at what can be expected in coming months from state (and some national) legislative and administrative actions, with a focus on what will have particular impact on Tucson and Southern AZ – and what we can do.
Our panel now includes State Senator Priya Sundareshan (LD 18), Sandy Bahr, director of the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter, and Kirsten Engel, Chief, Environmental Protection Unit of the AZ Attorney General’s Office. They will preview the policies, places, and programs that Arizonans will need to protect and promote. Their complementary perspectives will give us a full picture of what we can and should do – as individuals and as an organization – to support an agenda of environmental protection and justice as we work for a sustainable future.
Following our guests’ comments, we expect a lively question & answer session, with a shared conversation on how to maintain and restore momentum on this work.
Join us at our December Sustainability Spotlight for a warm-up discussion on Sustainable Tucson’s emerging plans for a City-County “Infrastructure Investment Summit” in March 2026. Our guest is Dr. Edward Maibach, Distinguished Emeritus Professor at George Mason University (GMU) and the Founding Director of GMU’s Center for Climate Change Communication—a “think-and-do tank” focused on illuminating public engagement in climate change and strategies for enhancing it.
This evening is the first in a series of community conversations on investing in people and infrastructure – a creative initiative to rethink our economy by putting people and sustainability first. Ed’s opening comments will be followed by brief remarks from Matt McDonnell, Julie Hendricks, and Jessica Janecek, who will offer futher insights, leading into further discussion with each other and the audience as a whole.
Ed is a Member of the National Academy of Medicine, a Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, and serves on the Global Climate and Health Alliance board of directors. In 2024, he and his center were honored by the National Center for Science Education with a Friend of the Planet Award.
“There is nothing that physically and technologically limits us from doing it all with renewables. There are only cynical or specious arguments that say we can’t. The biggest barriers remaining have the same origin: inertia or the stubborn insistence on the current way of doing things.” Dr. Saul Griffith, Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future (October 2021)
Join us for our November Sustainability Spotlight: David Eisenberg, a native Tucsonan, will share stories and insights from over three decades of building, including his involvement in strawbale and earthen building, the US Green Building Council, and building codes and standards. The successes and challenges of the work provide useful lessons for working on meaningful things in the face of changing climates — not just the weather, but politics, economics, and resilience. Following David’s presentation, there will be time for questions and discussion.
David co-founded the Development Center for Appropriate Technology, co-authored the Straw Bale House book, and has been a leading figure in getting innovative, sustainable materials incorporated into building codes used across the country. He serves on the Sustainable Tucson board of directors, and is a founding member of the Investing in People & Infrastructure project. A photographer and poet as well, he is much sought-after as a speaker at professional conferences and visionary gatherings.
With the start of October, as the weather starts to cool a bit, our thoughts are likely to be turning to the coming Fall and Winter holidays, starting this month with Halloween, then Thanksgiving, and then the busy December holiday season.
These holidays are a time of joy, generous sharing and giving, and gatherings with family and friends. Unfortunately, they are also a time when we see a distressing increase in waste. Studies show that waste from packaging, gift giving, and holiday meals contributes as much as 25% more trash during the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day than any other time of year.
But we can reduce or avoid much of that typical waste, so we can honor the Earth as well as enjoy the holidays at our celebrations.
Join us for our next Sustainability Spotlight program, “Holidays Without Waste,” for an overview of why we are often extra wasteful in the holiday season, why it’s so important to change, and how we can reduce common holiday waste, from packaging and gift wrapping to food, technology, and clothing waste. Our presenter, Grace Vickers, from US PIRG, will share some of her tips, and then there will be time for you to share your or your family’s tips and traditions for holiday waste reduction.
Our presenter, Grace Vickers, is the Zero Waste Campaign Associate with US Public Interest Research Group (PIRG). As an associate with PIRG, Grace works nationally to eliminate plastic pollution and advocate for progress toward a zero-waste world. During her career, she has also worked on grassroots campaigns to protect our pollinators and end food waste. A North Carolinian now based in Portland, Grace enjoys hiking, mountain biking, and camping during her free time.
