How Small Acts and Groups Can Create Big Change An evening of stories and conversation With Trathen Heckman, founder and executive director, Daily Acts
In getting overwhelmed and disheartened, we lose sight of the enriching, transformative impact we each can have. Come spend an hour with Trathen Heckman, author of the just-released book, Take Heart, Take Action, as he shares:
Tools and practices to find and live your inspiration and create a personal compass
How small groups can become catalysts for wide-scale change
Trathen Heckman is the founder and Director of Daily Acts Organization. He serves on the Board of Transition U.S. and the California Water Efficiency Partnership and is an Advisory Board member of the Norcal Community Resilience Network. Trathen helps people and groups reclaim the power of their actions to regenerate self, nature, and community. Trathen lives in the Petaluma River Watershed, where he grows food, medicine, and wonder while working to compost apathy and lack.
There are many tools that can help us think about the world we want to see. One such tool is “The Thing from the Future,” a game designed by the Situation Lab. The designers describe it this way: “The Thing from The Future is an award-winning imagination game that challenges players to collaboratively and competitively describe objects from a range of alternative futures.” Our presenter, Nic Richmond, the Chief Strategy Officer for Pima Community College and a certified foresight practitioner, has extended the game to include climate action and sustainability topics, creating a collaborative activity that generates thoughtful discussion and true creativity.
Within the game, participants will be presented with a scenario comprised of:
A type of future (e.g., a future resulting from ongoing steady progress or a future impacted by a profound historical change)
The climate setting (e.g., the temperature increase was successfully limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius or we cross a climate change tipping point)
The context or location where the future object may be found
The type of object that is the focus of the round — a specific artifact that reveals something about how the future is different from today
The mood that a person may feel while using the object
After the presenter shares an introduction to futures work and presents an example of a possible future object, participants will divide into teams (via break-out rooms) and be assigned a set of cards. They will be charged with developing the specifics of the object and what it means in the specified climate future. After 10 minutes of discussion, each team will present their object and a winner will be selected for the round. We’ll play several rounds, to explore a range of possible futures.
Nic Richmond, Ph.D., is a geophysicist, data scientist, and education leader. Nic has earned a B.Sc. and Ph.D. in geophysics from institutions in the United Kingdom and gained over 25 years of research experience. Her research interests include the analysis and interpretation of orbital magnetometer data of the Moon and Mars, the application of quantum mechanics and solid-state physics to deep Earth materials, and the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning methods in higher education. Since 2008, she has worked full time in higher education research, and she currently leads the Strategy, Analytics, and Research team at Pima Community College, where she serves as Chief Strategy Officer. In that role, she is responsible for the College’s sustainability program, and she led the development of the College’s first Climate Action and Sustainability Plan.
Join us Tuesday, November 8 at 6:00 PM, as we welcome our speaker, Joy Holdread, a local artist who specializes in desert
composting and water conservation. Joy will share techniques andtips on how to compost easily in the desert with a fewmodifications to traditional methods and commercial bins, to accommodate the desert’s dryness as well as conserve water. Turn your yard, kitchen, and office waste into great growing soil without using extra potable water.
Our speaker: Joy L. Holdread grew up in a small town in Western Arizona next to an Indian reservation. Much of her art is inspired from visual memories of this unspoiled area which she explored during long hikes and family cookouts with a border collie, prospectors, and rock hounds. Joy received an A.F.A. degree from Arizona Western College, then studied fine and commercial art at Pima Community College and the University of Arizona. She lives in Tucson, where her activities have included coordinating art exhibits, teaching a business class for visual artists, artist in the schools, workshops, and private consultations. Currently Joy focuses her energies on sustainable projects in the desert, specializing in desert composting techniques and water conservation.
Join us on Tuesday, October 11 at 6:00pm, as we welcome our speaker, Nina Sevilla, from National Resources Defense Council (NRDC). She will share the findings of NRDC’s ground-breaking report, “Wasted: How America is Losing up to 40 Percent of its Food from Farm to Fork to Landfill” and will look at how we can address this problem at the city and community level. Nina will share examples of how other cities across the U.S. are taking the lead to reduce food waste and suggest what can be done in Tucson.
Food, whether purchased from a local farmer’s market, a giant supermarket chain, or a corner bodega, whether eaten at a curbside truck or a 3-star restaurant, is something most Americans take for granted. Little consideration is given to where the food comes from, the circumstances under which it is grown, what is involved in processing it and getting it to market, or what the substantial environmental impacts are at each and every step of the way.
Across the U.S., as many of us enjoy the bountiful supply, it is estimated that some 40 million Americans are food insecure—that is lacking access to adequate and nutritious food. At the same time, over one third or approximately 35% of the food produced in the U.S. goes unsold or uneaten, wasting the resources used to produce it and creating a myriad of environmental impacts.
In particular, food loss and waste undeniably exacerbates climate change. In 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that annual U.S. food loss and waste embodied 170 million metric tons of CO2 equivalent greenhouse gas emissions. For perspective, that is equal to the annual emissions of 42 coal-fired power plants. And, this estimate does not take into consider the fact that food rotting in landfills further emits greenhouse gases in the form of climate-damaging methane.
By decreasing food waste, we can lessen the need for new food production; reduce projected deforestation, biodiversity loss, water pollution, and scarcity; and lower greenhouse gases. Additionally, reducing food waste can go a long way in eliminating or reducing food insecurity.
As we’ll learn from our speaker, legislatures in cities and states throughout the U.S. have implemented laws that address this critical issue of food loss and waste. Alongside these governmental initiatives, nationally-recognized non-profits like the NRDC and ReFED and numerous community-based organizations are tackling the issue in innovative ways that can serve as models for a more comprehensive national approach.
Nina Sevilla works to ensure we have a sustainable, healthy, and equitable food system for all. She helps lead NRDC’s federal policy advocacy and facilitates learnings across cities by sharing successes and lessons learned from NRDC’s Food Matters project to a network of partners across the nation. She also works with those partners to run a consumer education campaign, Save The Food, to reduce household food waste. Prior to joining NRDC, Nina worked to increase food access through child nutrition programs at the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona in Tucson. She holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental studies from Bates College and is based in NRDC’s San Francisco office.
Join us as we mark National Preparedness Month with a look at ways that Tucson and Pima County are preparing against the prospects of extreme heat, wildfires, flooding, and power outages — and what more we can do in the face of increasingly dangerous climate conditions.
This online conversation will feature local experts on heat resilience, climate adaptation, and emergency response. Panelists include Matt McGlone, outreach manager for Pima County’s Office of Emergency Management, and Joe Tabor, lead environmental epidemiologist at Pima County Health Department and member of their Heat Relief team.
Presented in cooperation with Building a Resilient Neighborhood, a working group of Tucson neighbors.
Waste incineration (including pyrolysis, gasification, and plasma arc) is making a comeback across the country, driven by misguided waste management and energy policies. Here in Tucson the Environmental and General Services Department is evaluating the feasibility of hosting a waste incinerator at the Los Reales Sustainability Campus.
Incineration is the most expensive and polluting way to make energy or manage waste. It is more polluting than coal (even for the climate) and undermines zero waste approaches like source reduction, reuse, recycling, and composting.
Join us at our August monthly meeting to learn about the life-cycle impacts of incineration technologies and how they affect people and our environment.
Our speaker will be Mike Ewall, founder and director of Energy Justice Network. EJN is a national support network for grassroots community groups fighting dirty energy and waste industry facilities, such as coal power plants, ethanol plants, natural gas facilities, landfills, and incinerators of every sort.
Mike has been actively involved in student and community environmental justice organizing since high school in 1990. He’s taught hundreds of workshops at college campuses and activist conferences throughout the U.S. His grassroots support work has helped many communities achieve victories against power plants, landfills, incinerators, medical waste facilities and other polluting industries.
The July Sustainable Tucson meeting is taking a different approach than our usual meetings. We are invited to join an information session that Councilmember Steve Kozachik is holding on PFAS pollution, a topical issue of great import to us all. The announcement that follows is from Councilmember Kozachik. Please join us on Zoom on Thursday, July 14, at 6:00 pm.
Since the 1970’s the industry has known PFAS is toxic. It’s a family of chemicals that’s used to create non-stick surfaces, water proofing on clothing, and most importantly it is used as a fire-fighting foam the military used for decades at virtually every military base in the country. It’s called Aqueous Film Forming Foam (AFFF), and Davis Monthan and the training done by the Air National Guard at Tucson International used it. We know their chosen method of disposal was to hose it into the soil when training took place on runways, and to dilute it and dump it down the sewer system when the training took place in hangars.
The city regularly tests our groundwater wells for a variety of pollutants. In the case of PFAS the EPA had until last week established health advisory limits for PFAS at 70 parts per trillion. We detected contamination levels outside of DM in excess of 1,000ppt, and outside of TIA at over 10,000ppt. Tucson water has a policy by which we shut down wells when we see levels of 18ppt. So far there are over 25 Tucson Water wells shut down as a result.
I’ve been hosting informational meetings for the public to hear from DOD, the ADEQ, Tucson Water, and the city attorney’s office on updates related to the PFAS contamination we’re experiencing in Tucson. Last week the EPA lowered their health advisory level to .0004ppt for PFAS. Their own credentialed testing method will only detect down to 2ppt. The health advisory is just that – advisory. It is not a legally binding maximum contamination limit. The result is confusion within the military, environmental quality agencies, and utilities.
Join us on July 14 at 6pm by Zoom for the next presentation from representatives of DM, ADEQ, and city representatives. We’ll discuss the levels of contamination we know of in the Tucson region, and we’ll hear how the various players in this are responding to the new EPA standards.
Single-use plastic bags pose significant threats to the environment, wildlife, and human health. Despite regulatory efforts by many countries, plastic pollution remains a massive issue, with single-use plastic bags contributing significantly to that impact.
Can we reduce plastic bag pollution through effective communication strategies? Join us at our July monthly meeting to explore this question.
Our speakers will be Rain Wuyu Liu, UA Assistant Professor of Communication, and Taylor Foerster, PhD student in the Communication Department. They will report on research that they conducted on different approaches to affect consumer behavior.
Seeking a persuasive communication intervention, they tested the effectiveness of “normative messages” in reducing the usage of plastic bags:
1) “Social norm” messages indicated prevalence of the desired behavior and its perceived social approval; 2) “Personal norm” messages referred to a person’s moral obligation to engage in the behavior; 3) “Integrated” messages referred to both social and personal norms.
The team’s findings were very interesting, and could be helpful to advocates who wish to reduce pollution and litter in the community.
About our speakers:
Rain Wuyu Liu is an Assistant Professor of Communication. She was born and raised in China. After receiving her bachelor’s degree from Southwest University in her home country, she came to the United States in 2010, where she received her M.A. in Public Relations from the University of Miami in 2012, and Ph.D. in Communication from Michigan State University in 2017.
Rain’s research interests span the areas of persuasion, interpersonal communication, intercultural communication, and social influence
Specifically, her research focuses on the impacts of social norm messages on health and environment information processing, attitude change, and health and conservation behavior promotion. She is also interested in the interplay between cultural values and beliefs with the social normative influence in shaping individuals’ attitudes and behaviors.
Rain’s work on grant-funded research projects has included an interdisciplinary behavioral and social science (IBSS) research project conducted among Tibetan herders in Qinghai-Tibetan plateau, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), along with other funded projects. Her publications have appeared in notable academic journals, and she has won multiple awards for outstanding papers and research excellence. Currently she teaches courses in public relations, intercultural communication, interpersonal communication, persuasion, research methods, and communication campaign design and analysis.
Taylor Foerster is a PhD student in the communication department at the University of Arizona. Previously, she obtained her Bachelor of Science degree in natural resources with an emphasis in wildlife management + conservation and a Master of Science degree in Agricultural Education. Her research is multidisciplinary in nature and interests include environmental and science communication with particular interest in human dimensions of wildlife conservation and management topics.
We’re all looking for more sustainable ways to live, and that can include the materials we use to build our homes. Join us for a look at one of those possible materials at our May monthly meeting: “Strawbale Construction: Then, Now, Whenever.”
Tucson’s own strawbale pioneers Matts Myhrman and David Eisenberg will be joined by Tucson strawbale consultant Joe Silins in an in-depth presentation about strawbale construction. Matts will talk about the revival of strawbale use; David will cover its continuing evolution, along with some information about building codes and good resources; and Joe will share some of his recent work.
Climate change anxiety is a growing health concern among the broader, and in particular the younger, population. With regard to climate change, many have pinpointed denial as one of the prominent responses people exhibit when being exposed to the possibility of the death of the human species, themselves, or their offspring, which severely inhibits development of resilience or adaptation.
Why do people react to the threat of climate change differently? Why does it seem like many don’t really react at all, whereas others are scared and can’t think of anything else? Generally, climate change has been linked to mental health directly as climate-related hazards such as extreme heat, extreme weather events, and morbidity associated with vector-borne disease all may serve to increase mood and behavioral disorders amongst people with pre-existing conditions. Climate change can also be linked to mental health effects indirectly in that the perceived threat to well-being and survival is a source of distress, anxiety, and fear; however, this awareness may also trigger climate change mitigation and adaptation behaviors that support community, build psychosocial resilience, and encourage behavior change toward increased sustainability.
For our April monthly meeting, our speaker, Sabrina Helm, Associate Professor at UA’s School of Family and Consumer Sciences, will share her research into psychological effects of climate change, with insights into adaptive and maladaptive responses ranging from climate hope and activism to climate grief and denial.
In her research, she analyzes the psychological consequences of climate change as a pre-traumatic stressor; that means independent of people’s immediate exposure to environmental change or disaster. Just thinking about climate change or seeing news reports on climate change can affect some of us. Evolutionary biology may help explain some of our psychological reaction patterns. In the presentation, Prof. Helm explores how prominent climate anxiety is among people today, what it means, how typical human reactions to climate change may be explained, what other psychological responses to climate change exist, and how mental health specialists and we as individuals can cope with climate change anxiety.
For further background on these issues, you may want to watch a recent feature on “Arizona Illustrated” that aired on November 23, 2021, titled “Solastalgia – Grief and anxiety caused by the disconnection to the natural world.” It features Prof. Helm and some of her work. https://www.azpm.org/p/video/2021/11/23/203736-solastalgia/
