Kate L. Harrison

We spend a lot of time talking about how to cover climate change, but the fact is it's here. Instead of projections, local news orgs are deep into trials by fire, innovating as they go to keep their communities safe, informed and connected. It's ironic and wildly impressive that In the midst of AI hand-wringing and viral disinformation campaigns, innovation right now means going back to the basics in areas completely cut off by Helene's devastation. How are they doing it? Here's an initial short list, via an American Press Institute round-up, and other posts trickling in. If you have more, please feel free to add them in the comments -- I know I'm not the only person thinking a huge focus for support is equipping media for this new normal. -From CNN's Brian Stelter: Local radio stations have been a lifeline for residents, sharing updates on road closures, providing verified information on relief efforts and opening up the phone lines to answer questions and help connect people. -Daniel Williams and the folks at NC Local News Workshop helped developed a text-only, lite version of Blue Ridge Public Radio (BPR) built on Newspack that was rapidly deployed to get critical information into the hands of folks in Western North Carolina struggling with weak cell service. There are no ads or images so it loads fast. It also includes resources with links for services and other critical community resources. https://text.bpr.org/ -From Jeremy Markovich on North Carolina Rabbit Hole: In Black Mountain, town leaders gathered in person in the Town Square to share information about the status of the utilities and other necessities. Residents learned about the meeting from posters, and outlets have used whiteboards placed around town.   -The Asheville Citizen-Times launched a text message service to help to answer questions directly about news and local services. (This is part of a larger trend towards text messaging as an audience tool, Charlotte Tobitt wrote in Press Gazette, noting that SubText will send roughly five billion text messages this year.)  🙏 to the journalists out there doing the work.

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Climate posturing vs Climate Action: 1. Earth Matter NY has been operating a successful compost site on Governor's Island for 15 years - but The New York Climate Exchange , a "collaborative site" for "accelerating climate change solutions", is going to force Earth Matter to move. The irony --- "Reduce Food Waste" is already #1 on Project Drawdown list of solutions, but NYC is displacing a successful compost operation so they can make a big building for people to talk about climate solutions 🤮 2. Big Reuse has been running a composting operation under the Queensboro bridge - but now the NYC Department of Parks & Recreation is evicting them. Why? PARKING SPOTS. Really? Yes. Really. The volume of NYC's food waste is staggering, and we KNOW that reducing food waste is critical to avoiding climate catastrophe. But here we are, watching multiple NYC government departments gut city compost funding and displace community composting operations. We don't need more magic solutions. We need government to stop harming and disrupting those who are working so hard to DO the climate work that's needed! https://lnkd.in/gkUVdw5W

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Check out NOAA Research's work on next generation wildfire detection and warning tools. Improved climate science, forecasting, and modeling capabilities boost climate resilience. In 2018, Federal Budget IQ identified climate resilience as an emerging, bipartisan 10-year multi-billion-dollar federal policy and funding priority. We've seen that and more with billions in investments in the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, and annual appropriations. Chauncey Goss Maureen Holohan Becky Leggieri Cameron Leuthy Charles Kieffer Austin Smythe #climateresilience #climatescience #federalbudget #apppropriations #publicsectorforecast https://lnkd.in/gicJ7Yds

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Here's some ideas on how to "institutionalize" National Adaptation Plans within countries' broader climate agendas 👇

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Join me for Sustainability Creatives #OpenDoorClimate Office Hours! 📅 When: Tuesday at 2PM CT 💼 Focus: Interviewing & Pitching Tips until the end of the year This session is all about #TransferrableSkills! Transferrable skills are so important because they are your anchor in storytelling. They create a thread that ties your past experience to the present job you are seeking. They also help you craft a vision of how you can shape the organization when you join. This is a topic I am really passionate about. Throughout my career, I've interviewed >120 sustainability professionals and have also been a job seeker myself. Let me tell you, as a creative person in climate, talking about your transferrable skills is not only essential, but they can be your superpower. I am a musician, a songwriter, a teacher, a mountain biker. All of these things make me who I am and show up in my every day work in climate (even though it might not seem obvious to an onlooker). But in music, I bring people together to create something beautiful, to collaborate, and fail fast and often as we improvise together. In songwriting, I turn lyrical concepts into fully fledged songs (bringing my ideas to reality) and figure out creative ways to market and release them. As a teacher, I meet my students where they're at and embrace active listening, experiential learning, and multiple intelligences. As a mountain biker, I embrace my connection to the outdoors and remember what I am fighting for as a climate professional. I use every single one of these transferrable skills in my day to day work. I hope you join our session tomorrow and I can't wait to hear from our community about your transferrable skills! Register here:

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The SBTi just published an evidence review that pretty comprehensively trashes carbon credits: "[V]arious types of carbon credits are ineffective in delivering their intended mitigation outcomes." "There could be clear risks to corporate use of carbon credits for the purposes of offsetting. This includes potential unintended effects of hindering the net-zero transformation and/or reducing climate finance." "All Tier A evidence challenge the legitimacy of offsetting claims, arguing that treating carbon credits as fungible with other sources, sinks, or reductions of emissions is inadvisable, illogical, or damaging to global mitigation goals." https://lnkd.in/eJfTuPyD

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🌿 Join me for Sustainability Creatives #OpenDoorClimate Office Hours. This Tuesday at 2PM CT. This week, we’re diving into Channel Design for Climate Influencers! 🌱 We'll be prototyping our channel headers—the first thing people see when they visit your LinkedIn or YouTube channel. Our brains make quick decisions when we land on someone's page, so let’s make sure your visuals resonate and authentically reflect your message! 🎨 Crafting a creative and consistent channel design is key to making a strong first impression and sharing your story with minimal words. ✨ Whether you’re a graphic design expert or just getting started, this session is for anyone eager to fight climate change and make an impact! No need to be a social media pro—just bring your creativity, curiosity, and passion for sustainability. 🌱 🔗 Register here! https://lnkd.in/gBmwpRU3 #Sustainability #ClimateAction #ClimateInfluencers #DesignThinking #SustainabilityCreatives #CreativeDesign

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I always enjoy reading Andre's Climate Substack from André Meurer. Today I learned a ton about Heat Pump Water Heaters (HPWH) and the HWH replacement process. TL;DR (But seriously you should read it, it's funny and packed with great advice) ➡️Efficiency: Heat pump water heaters (HPWHs) are significantly more energy efficient than traditional gas or electric models, offering long-term cost savings and environmental benefits. ➡️Installation: Upgrading to a HPWH can be complex, requiring electrical work and careful consideration of sizing (first-hour rating). Choosing an experienced contractor is crucial. ➡️Cost: While initial costs are higher, HPWHs pay for themselves through reduced energy bills and potential rebates. ➡️Additional Benefits: HPWHs dehumidify and slightly cool the surrounding area, which can be beneficial in humid basements. ➡️Considerations: HPWHs might be slightly noisier than traditional models and may require larger tanks to match the hot water output of gas heaters. Sign up for Andre's Climate! https://lnkd.in/e2HzZizE

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Uniting Global Efforts, to Help Restore Ecosytems – Significant progress in ecosystem restoration and sustainable land management is being made worldwide thanks to The Restoration Initiative (TRI). #ClimateChange #ConservationEfforts #Ecosystems #Nature #Restoration #Sustainability

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Watch how higher education leaders take climate action. Colleges and universities are research powerhouses, vibrant communities, and "living laboratories" for #sustainability. This year, I have gotten to meet and learn from dozens of sustainability leaders in higher education. They are all executing ambitious, multi-pronged #decarbonization plans while closely tracking the latest in climate science and carbon markets. Thank you all for your time, feedback, and guidance. Over the past few months, the Tradewater team has been working closely with Bridget Flynn, Meredith Leigh, and Bari S. at Second Nature to co-design a campaign to help higher education institutions tackle the world's most potent greenhouse gases on their own campuses and far beyond. Our shared goal is to enable the higher education sector to eliminate 1 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent through the collection, control, and destruction of non-CO2 gases. Several schools have already joined us, through on-campus refrigerant management projects and carbon offset purchases, as founding members of the 1 Million Tonne Campaign. Reach out to us or Second Nature if you would like to get involved. And stay tuned for announcements on progress towards our bold goal! #HigherEd #ClimateAction #RefrigerantManagement #Impact https://lnkd.in/gET_b8bt

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UPDATE: Tickets (free) are selling out fast on Eventbrite so DM me if you'd like to join since there will still be some space. Hi Sustainability Creatives! Tomorrow I'll be holding Sustainability Creatives #OpenDoorClimate interactive office hours on Tuesday, April 30 at 2:00PM CT. During these office hours, we allow you to see what it's like to be creative in the sustainability sector. Each week will look different. This week will be focused on #brainstorming! We will be carrying out a concept called 6 Thinking Hats, which allows us to take on different mindsets when we are ideating solutions to climate change. We will collaborate on a design challenge and brainstorm based on our: 🎩 #feelings. We bring our emotions and intuition into sustainability problem-solving. 🎩 🎩 #creativity. We explore big creative ideas and we are open to countless possibilities when fighting climate change. 🎩 🎩🎩 #optimism. We embrace brightness, positivity, and play when we brainstorm. We build each other up to create a more sustainable future. 🎩 🎩🎩🎩 #criticism. We bring an analytical eye and critique to brainstorming to help ground us in reality and create realistic solutions. 🎩 🎩🎩🎩🎩 #statisticalknowledge. We use our sustainability googling skills and subject area expertise to provide statistics, objectiveness, and neutrality to fighting climate change. 🎩 🎩🎩🎩🎩🎩 #management. We bring rules and observations into brainstorming to give our ideas structure. I love the concept of 6 thinking hats because it embraces multiple intelligences and allows each person in the session to participate in meaningful ways. During this session, we will use colorful post-it notes, work with other sustainability creatives, reflect, and brainstorm ideas together. Our goal is to have fun, connect, be creative, and see how we might bring this mindset into our workplace in fighting climate change. Anyone interested in pursuing creative careers in the climate sphere is welcome. We also welcome anyone already working in sustainability! I'd love to meet and collab with some of my connections there too! Raghav Muralidharan, Raphaela Alge, Stephanie Fischer, Nathan Shuler, Hannah Peterson, Brooke Hoffman, Vijaysinh Jadhav, Megan Welliver, Anandita Heer, Ayla Nelson, Yeva M., Nikolett Berki, Alexa Schmidt, Jess Joan Goddard, PhD, Shivani Desai, Hailey Weinberg, Erin Browning, Agustin Carrizosa Bradshaw, Zach Weismann, MPA, Leigh Fonseca, Sonia Chopra Anand, Carly Schonberg, Terra Pascarosa Duff, Lisa Phillips, Prajay Raghu, Marissa Rosen, Travis Gliedt 🌏🌏🌏, François Burra, Courtney Fairbrother, Jeevat Kumar, Sierra C., Vishad Tomar, Johanna Kloot, Eileen Laitinen, Abby Crisp, Yuqing (Sunny) Xing, ERP, Mariana Saldana, Sonia Aoula, Taraneh Arhamsadr, LeeAnn Baronett Register here or send me a DM with your email address:

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Join me for Sustainability Creatives #OpenDoorClimate Office Hours this Tuesday June 11 at 2 PM CT! During these office hours, we allow you to see what it's like to be creative in the sustainability sector. Each week will look different. This week we will be talking about sustainability leadership and facilitation (one of my favorite topics)! I will be holding an interactive discussion focused on our favorite collaboration tools ranging from Miro to Figjam to Notion to Google Slides. The reason I'm bringing this topic to office hours is because I believe a key way to be creative in the sustainability space is to change the way people work together. So many meetings are so boring and are not filled with purpose. However, we have the power to change that and lead with purpose. There is a lot we can do by bringing structure, facilitation, and existing resources to craft more engaging climate meetings. During this session, we will reflect on our favorite leadership tools as sustainability creatives and how they can be leveraged to allow people to convene in new ways, our creativity to flourish and bring our work in climate to the next level. I am really looking forward to hearing other people's perspectives on how they like to create meaningful sustainability gatherings through collaboration! Register on Eventbrite or DM me for more info: https://lnkd.in/gpAHXura

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For those interested in collaborative climate-action I highly recommend the Tamarack Institute's recent publication: “10 - A Guide to Advancing Climate Equity through Placed-Based Collaboration”.  It contains 10 of each of the following topics: questions to assess readiness, great ideas, inspiring stories, useful resources and ways to get started. Based on my years of experience with collaborative approaches this guide shares very valuable insights. I particularly liked the lessons learned encapsulated in the Foreword: “We’ve found that collaboratives need to be built on a foundation of trust between diverse groups, including trusting that others will follow through on commitments and recognizing that each partner may take action in unique but equally valid ways. We’ve learned that successful partnerships benefit from one group that ‘anchors’ the project and keeps momentum going, while supporting coordination across partners. And our experience has shown that collaboration takes time, both to execute projects and to ensure broad and inclusive participation. We are creatures of habit, and until we get used to collaborating, we can fail to see the opportunities that are open to us; yet, like a muscle, collaboration skills get stronger with use.” https://lnkd.in/gAXvz9tN #Tamarackinstitute #communityengagement #climatejustice

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Exciting times ahead as Nika Eco pioneers climate data solutions with AI! By leveraging advanced technology. Nika Eco is transforming how we understand and address climate challenges through advanced carbon modeling. Their AI-driven platform provides actionable insights, helping businesses and governments make data-informed decisions to combat climate change effectively. https://lnkd.in/gW_69V3Z

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Ambitious #climate goals are bringing #cities and counties face-to-face with a serious reality: the need for carbon dioxide removal in addition to #decarbonization. As some local governments start to look at carbon removal strategies, experts say the public sector entering the ring could help bring down the cost for everyone. My story for Smart Cities Dive:

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The more I cover energy and environment, the more obvious it becomes how much the climate coalition is not aligned on strategy, on how to actually make change happen. Case in point: Manchin's new permitting bill. It's undeniable that permitting and siting rules, environmental reviews, and litigation are making it nearly impossible to build enough clean energy, killing countless projects before they get off the ground. The Manchin-Barrasso bill proposes to fix a lot of the problems, giving clean energy and transmission a more equal footing with fossil fuels (which currently have a much easier process). But it also gives some big concessions to the oil and gas industry. The Sierra Club, Earthjustice, and the Center for Biological Diversity are among those who adamantly oppose this bill. But everyone in the clean energy world is thrilled, convinced the concessions are worth it to ensure clean energy can actually compete with the fossil fuels they're trying to replace. So who's right, and why the disagreement? I captured the growing rifts in the climate coalition in my latest for NOTUS:

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UPDATE: Sold out! Hi Sustainability Creatives! I'll be holding Sustainability Creatives #OpenDoorClimate interactive office hours on Tuesday, May 7 at 2:00PM CT. During these office hours, we allow you to see what it's like to be creative in the sustainability sector. Each week will look different. This week is a BIG week for us in office hours and would love for you to attend! We will be talking about the Sustainability Creatives Career Framework we developed at Sustain Tomorrow. Our framework applies to job seekers, current sustainability leaders, ecoprenuers, and career switchers and is all about how to build our dream careers as #sustainabilitycreatives. Our hope is to gather your feedback on this framework in a design thinking session and co-design the framework. We want to hear your stories, help other innovative thinkers, and make our framework great! The reason this session important to me is because I've heard a lot of talk recently about how "every job is a climate job." I wholeheartedly agree! But I also believe "EVERY JOB IS A CREATIVE CLIMATE JOB." In other words, every person can bring innovation, problem-solving, design, and creativity into their work to fight climate change. The problem is... many of us don't know where to start. That's why I've been working really hard to create a this framework on how you can bring creativity + sustainability into their work. Guidance on how to take your big next steps as a sustainability creative :) Would love to see you there Nilam P., Rana A., Elyse Lichtenthal, Tiffany Burnette, Arusha Baker, Haley Stauffer, Marissa Rosen, María Belén Sanmauro, Rishabh Sonkar - MIA, MBA, PGDM, Isobel S. Davis, Charissa West, Robert Fetter, Ph.D., Taylor Landeryou, Charles Stubington, Alexander Crease, Sarah Matthews, Cara Reiner, Manasi Nandakumar, Lily Donge, Jennifer Salpietro, Lena Fleischer, Jim Schneider, LEED AP, Mira Shah, Leslie Forman, Hannah Ment, Sydney Clark, Shannon Kenny, Lila Roginski, Stephanie Hallinan, Daniel Hill Register on Eventbrite and DM me to be included:

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Microgrids significantly impact EV charging by enabling faster deployment and operation of charging stations, offering cost savings, lower emissions, and 100% reliability. They allow for quicker electrification of fleets, beneficial for areas like Southern California facing regulatory pressures.

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