KLA Perspectives

Listen to our latest SAS Talk with Kim podcast: Sustainable ROI

There’s nothing like hopping on to social media to see an empowering headline like “Climate change is happening now -- here’s eight things we can do to adapt to it” and then noticing the byline is one of your most esteemed colleagues. That was my much-needed jolt yesterday when I read the Guardian headline in my Facebook feed posted by the article’s author Missy Stults.

I’ve just posted the most recent SAS Talk podcast and during our conversation my guest Erin Deady of Erin Deady Law, who helped get Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) financing off the ground in Florida, says she expects 2017 to be “The Year of PACE.” We explore that and more as we kick off a Financing Solutions series, shining the spotlight first on PACE as one of many tools local governments have at their disposal to support clean energy, climate protection and sustainability projects in their communities.

We do not really know what to expect from incoming President Trump as it relates to... well almost anything. But one thing we do know is that he has repeatedly professed not to believe in manmade climate change -- despite the clear science and the potentially dire consequences to his sprawling Mar-a-Lago property in Palm Beach from sea-level rise (my hometown paper The Boston Globe just did a great dive into that issue).

His Cabinet is shaping up to reflect those views, or worse. If confirmed, his head of the Department of Energy once famously forgot the name of the department and said he wanted to abolish it; his Secretary of State will have just stepped down after 4 decades at climate-change-denier ExxonMobil; and at the helm of the Environmental Protection Agency would be a man who, in his capacity as Oklahoma’s Attorney General, has sued that very agency more than a dozen times.

I like to talk, and I have a lot to say. And that’s particularly true when it comes to sustainability and climate issues and how local governments are leading the way with solutions. That niche has been my passion and career for nearly two decades. During that time I’ve spoken to and been inspired by so many people who are fighting the good fight at (or in support of) the local government level -- with amazing results, overcoming significant challenges, employing innovative approaches, and willing and eager to learn from and help others. Ultimately, I wanted to share those conversations in an accessible way.

Who lives in your city and what do they think about going “green”?

Welcome to October....It's Energy Awareness Month! 

The American Public Works Association (APWA) just wrapped its annual conference -- recently rebranded as PWX (Public Works Expo) -- with all the cool and technologically advanced components you would see at a tech conference. As someone who has frequented Dreamforce (Salesforce.com’s annual conference), which is the ultimate in conference innovation, I was certainly impressed with the steps that APWA has taken to advance this conference. What I found even more impressive, however, were the very visible signs of how this conference was clearly also the most sustainable one that APWA has hosted.

"For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline.

I've been on the road a ton recently, including a recent jaunt from my home in Boston over to Long Beach, California for the California Adaptation Forum. There were some really impressive and engaging presentations, and you can access most of them here.