Local Environmental Solutions Yield Economic and Ecological Benefits

Key Quotes

"I was having a personal struggle and I just really didn't understand how people were coping with it and I thought well what can we do what can I do and so I thought maybe I can report this out but in a way that focused on all these efforts that people were doing to try and reverse climate change you know things that were having an impact because a lot of things can have an impact."

Cara Buckley explains that her personal difficulty processing negative climate news led her to seek out and report on efforts aimed at reversing climate change. Buckley's approach focuses on actions that are demonstrably having a positive impact, shifting the journalistic focus from problems to solutions.

"So in 2021 I joined the climate desk and my focus from the start was on people that were doing things in their communities that were working which is kind of unusual in the sense that we normally think of journalism as writing about problems not about solutions right so this kind of beat is kind of looking at you know not the plane crashes but the planes that are not only successfully landing but doing it really well."

Buckley further elaborates on her journalistic approach, emphasizing a focus on successful community-level initiatives rather than solely reporting on crises. She uses the analogy of focusing on planes that land successfully rather than just crashes to illustrate this solution-oriented perspective.

"So it's not just resilience it's not just adaptation it's doing things that are reducing greenhouse gas emissions that are making ecosystems healthier that are helping restore imperiled species so we want to but at the same time helping human health and saving people money right in a way basically you're showing the interconnectedness of our climate to our economy to our health with this series it sounds like precisely so."

Catrin Einhorn describes the series' mandate as seeking "multiple wins," which includes not only resilience and adaptation but also tangible benefits like reduced emissions, healthier ecosystems, restored species, improved human health, and cost savings. Einhorn highlights how this approach demonstrates the interconnectedness of climate, economy, and health.

"He ended up setting in motion this wind energy project he convinced local farmers to put wind turbines in their fields at first there were just four and eric told me he distinctly remembers flipping on the switch in 2008 and watching the town's electricity meter running backwards rockport announced it was the first community in the country to be producing more electricity from wind energy than what it needed and this ended up accruing more places in the county started putting up wind turbines today there's more than 340 throughout the county it supplies 50 permanent jobs and really crucially the town has a tax revenue base from these wind turbines 6 million a year it's more than half of the real estate tax revenue for the county and supplying extra revenue for farmers who have wind turbines too it fundamentally changed the economy of this county and it all started with one guy."

Cara Buckley recounts the story of Eric Chamberlain, a funeral director in Missouri, who initiated a wind energy project that transformed his rural community. Buckley details how this project led to the town producing more electricity than it needed, created jobs, and generated significant tax revenue, fundamentally altering the county's economy.

"And so these farmers they never had bears raiding their orchards now all of a sudden there's bears stealing their apples and raiding their grain bins and they're scared to go outside certainly to let their children play outside and in montana there's a man named wesley sarmiento who at the time was the bear manager for the state wildlife department so he's getting all these calls from these farmers who are just desperate because these bears keep showing up on their property and wesley's trying everything to get them to go away including trapping them but that's dangerous he tried having everyone clean up the grain very well but it was impossible because they're on a working farm he tried electrifying the grain bins which did work but it was really bad and add for the farm workers because it was just really awkward and made working a lot harder and so then he heard about a local farmer whose son found a stray livestock guardian dog like a pyrenean type dog you know they often put out like with sheep to protect them from coyotes or whatever and to everyone's surprise this dog was chasing bears away including like mother bears with cubs grizzlies and so wesley gets with this professor who studies livestock guardian dogs and they decide to try this study where the dogs were not guarding livestock they were basically guarding people they were guarding the farms."

Catrin Einhorn describes the challenge faced by Montana farmers dealing with the return of grizzly bears to their properties, impacting crops and creating safety concerns. Einhorn explains how Wesley Sarmiento, a bear manager, explored various solutions before discovering the effectiveness of livestock guardian dogs in deterring bears and protecting both people and farms.

"I do think it's worth pointing out that sometimes people didn't want to talk about climate change like they almost felt sometimes i'd be interviewing people and they'd be scared to even use the term climate change and you know farmers and ranchers often are experiencing climate change but they either don't want to use that word or they definitely don't want to talk about it as human caused why because it's been politicized because they didn't want blowback in their communities or because they didn't believe it or like a combo i think yeah okay and there were people who didn't want to talk to us we had one storyline up that we really loved we really wanted to tell it and then they talked amongst themselves and they said we're really scared of you know talking about it because we don't want the federal government to come after us because we're talking about climate and because we did get some funding from the federal government and we don't want to imperil it so you know it was it was nuanced it was complicated often times on the ground."

The reporters discuss the challenges of discussing climate change directly with some individuals, particularly farmers and ranchers, who may avoid the term due to its politicization or fear of community blowback. The text highlights instances where potential sources were hesitant to speak about climate due to concerns about federal government repercussions or the potential imperilment of funding.