Where to Listen:
“Action is the antidote to despair.” On this episode we look at how to move forward on climate when our federal government is determined to push us backward. Learn about actions you can take right now, right here in Wisconsin to defend progress. And hear from climate advocate and Wisconsin farmer Chelsea Chandler on climate strategy in the age of ‘drill baby drill.’
Host:
Amy Barrilleaux
Guest:
Chelsea Chandler, Climate, Energy and Air Program Director, Clean Wisconsin
Resources for You:
Analysis: Solar farms produce 100 times more energy per acrea than corn ethanol
PSC approves most powerful solar project in Wisconsin history
Transcript:
Amy Welcome to the Defender Podcast powered by Clean Wisconsin, protecting our air, water, and land since 1970. I’m Amy Barrilleaux. On this episode, we’re talking about what you can do if you care about the future of this planet, if you care about fighting climate change. Spoiler alert, I’m going to give you a couple of things you can do right now, right here in Wisconsin. And my guest today is going to talk about how to move forward when it feels like our federal government is determined to push us backward.
Chelsea We’re thinking strategically, we’re playing our game where we know we can win, where we know how to win. And that’s not to say that we can disregard everything that’s happening at the federal level. It hurts a lot, but there’s a lot of good progress to be made here.
Amy She’s a mom, a farmer, and a climate advocate, and she’s going to share her perspective on the courage and persistence it takes to protect progress. But first, those actions you can take right now. I’ve been hearing from folks who are feeling hopeless, who want something they can do, something they can rally around, and there are some things happening in Wisconsin. Right now the Public Service Commission is considering a rule change for apartment buildings. Currently in Wisconsin, all new or remodeled buildings are required to install a separate. electric meter for each unit. They don’t have to do that for gas or water, but they do for electricity. It’s not only expensive, it keeps apartment buildings from being able to take advantage of rooftop solar in an affordable way. It’s a big barrier in our state right now to bringing solar to people who live in apartments. The rule change is open for public comment, so you can tell the commission to waive that individual metering requirement for projects that promote efficiency and clean energy like solar. Also in front of the PSC right now, construction approval for a billion dollar methane gas plant in Oak Creek along with a new liquid natural gas pipeline. It’s part of a big, very expensive push from WeEnergies to double down on gas. You can find links to comment on those cases at CleanWisconsin.org on the Take Action page. I’m excited to talk with my guest about more ways we can dig in to defend climate progress. That’s right now on The Defender. Two and a half years ago we saw the biggest investment in the history of this country to fight climate change and air pollution, the Inflation Reduction Act. Clean energy projects under the IRA have already spurred more than five billion dollars in investments and thousands of new jobs in Wisconsin. Joining me to talk about how that investment has impacted our state and what’s next is Clean Wisconsin climate, energy and air program director Chelsea Chandler. Thanks for being here.
Chelsea Glad to be here.
Amy So you spend a lot of your time advocating for policies and protections when it comes to. our climate and our clean air, but you have a whole other life as a farmer and as a mom. So how do those roles play into your work on the environment in Wisconsin?
Chelsea Yeah, I wear a few hats, but each one of those identities that I embody relates to the others and I can’t fully separate them. Like many people as a mom, I care about my kids’ future. I care about their experience today and I want to make sure that they have a life that is going to be healthy and productive and joyful and that they can enjoy all of the things that we get to today that you know I grew up with that my parents did and I want to make sure that they’re they have a livable healthy future basically as a farmer you know that’s a profession that is very, uh, connected to the weather, unlike many others that, you know, are pretty divorced. If you’ve got an office job, you come in the office, it doesn’t matter if it’s raining or shining or what the weather’s like really on a given day, but that’s very different when you’re on a farm and you need enough rain for your crops, uh, but not too much that you can’t harvest. Um, you know, if you’re growing fruit, you worry about having a fall spring and you know, an early, uh, warm temperatures and then you get a frost and then it kills all your fruit for the season and then you’re done until the next year. So it’s very weather dependent field and one where you’re intimately connected and always noticing what is not going according to plan, what is not normal when there’s flooding that you have to deal with and I’ve had to deal with a lot of that. We’ve had to move crops to higher ground because things were too wet and we were losing whole stands of crops. I’ve actually had to canoe out to my fields before to get to them on a harvest day because there is no other way to do it and I’ve never not made a delivery. Even impacts that people don’t necessarily associate with Wisconsin like wildfires. A couple summers ago, when there were all those terrible Canadian wildfires, we were getting really bad air quality days here. And from the smoke that was blowing across the border and into our state, and I was out in the field harvesting with a mask on. And that’s not something that I expect, that’s not something that a lot of farmers would want or think about as part of the lifestyle of being in a nice rural area with clean air. Um, yet still having to protect myself. So all of that informs, you know, the way that I advocate for, uh, good climate energy, air policy here at clean Wisconsin, because I see climate impacts already in Wisconsin playing out in my day to day when I’m out in the field. Um, and because I’m fighting for my kids’ future and for all of our kids’ futures.
Amy How did you decide you wanted to take this on? Because it’s not easy to think about the climate 24 -7 to kind of be in this fight. So when did you think, okay, this is what I want to do with my life, plus farm?
Chelsea I actually really didn’t want to be in a messy, you know, policy field like this. I started out as a scientist. I was always fascinated by weather and I studied atmospheric science and kind of wanted to go down that more straightforward path that I thought was not, you know, adulterated by all this human messiness and these big thorny issues. And of course, once I got into sort of the real world outside of school and understood how things were playing out, I very quickly realized that that wasn’t an option for me if I cared about what was happening. And I knew that climate change was probably one of the most important issues that I could work on and, you know, having that kind of science background and being able to marry that with policy and kind of a better understanding of how we can actually advocate and move solutions forward. I thought it was going to position me well to do that, but working on climate change every day does weigh heavily on me and a lot of other people I know. And especially younger people too, who increasingly are seeing the future that we are building for them, but I think that action is the antidote to despair. Um, and I’ve talked with, you know, some folks that are younger than me too, and really helped kind of guide them and show them that they have agency and that they can impact things for the better. And that it feels like it’s a, you know, scary and pivotal moment. And it is in many ways, but, um, working towards solutions is the only way that we can operate, because what’s your alternative?
Amy Yeah, I mean, we know we’re at this moment, this pivotal moment in human history, and really the only option is to work toward a better future, no matter what. But it does feel like we’ve been on this roller coaster in terms of battling climate change, and air pollution, and all those things that you work on. A few years ago, there was. Thanks for watching! As I had talked about, that momentous occasion, the Inflation Reduction Act, the largest investment to fight climate change in American history was passed, and that was right on the heels of the bipartisan infrastructure law, which saw funding going not just to pollution cleanup and infrastructure projects like getting rid of lead pipes, but also creating an EV charging network, things like that. What did it feel like for you as an advocate when you saw those laws finally passed in the United States?
Chelsea It felt like finally we get it and we’re doing something about it. Um, after a long time, um, with advocates working hard to advance some climate solutions and one that is, was so momentous, you know, at the, at a federal scale with all of this funding attached, that was going to impact, um, people and, you know, all corners of the country, um, it was. It was amazing. It was a great feeling to kind of finally feel like we’re on the right track and moving forward. We’ve had a lot of wins over the years that are never quite enough, but that our progress, we saw a lot of rolling back of those advances, pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, which of course we’ve done so again. So it was, it felt like something that was a really long time coming, but that finally we can have nice things and we’re going to, there was a lot of excitement for that moment to not to squander that opportunity because we know how hard fought it was and how long coming it was and so a real kind of excitement and just like galvanizing environmental movement okay we’ve we’ve got this win now let’s put it to use and make sure that we’re benefiting people all over the country.
Amy And so, you know, when you talk about these programs, these laws, they are big. There is a lot of stuff in there, especially in the Inflation Reduction Act. So many different programs that are coming out of that piece of legislation aimed at all different kinds of things, from efficiency to large -scale clean energy, wind and solar and everything in between. Because you’re a farmer, what are some of the farm programs that are part of the Inflation Reduction Act that I think a lot of people may not even know about?
Chelsea Yeah, some of the conservation programs like Equip, which can fund a lot of different things. I’ve actually gotten some Equip funding on my farm for things like high tunnels, like a hoop house as a season extender and to help us mitigate disease with some of the crops that we’re growing in the summer. There’s, people can buy cover crops and do all sorts of things to reduce soil erosion on their farms. Um, and basically setting them up to be more resilient to, you know, extreme weather and have healthy soil that is staying in place. So those programs are really critical and really in high demand. Um, in Wisconsin, it’s sort of been well known that you might have to wait a few years if you apply for a program like this, because there’s way more demand than there was supply. Okay, so. with the Inflation Reduction Act, injecting a lot more funding into some of these existing programs like EQIP that provided a lot of relief for people and they were able to access the funds that we wanted. I’ve heard a misconception from congressional offices that like, oh, that’s underused, or we don’t need that. And that is absolutely not the case in Wisconsin. It’s quite the opposite. If there’s funding out there, farmers know how to take advantage of it and they are eager to.
Amy And then there’s another program, I think it’s the Rural Energy Assistance Program, or REAP, how does that work?
Chelsea Um, REAP, it’s funding, uh, you can get a lot of funding for renewable energy. I know a lot of, uh, farms have used that to put up solar panels, um, on their farm to help offset the energy from their operations, which can save them, you know, tens of thousands of dollars in a year for some of these big farms with, you know, really high energy demands, you know, dairies and things like that. So that’s really critical too, because we need. um, you know, renewable energy at all different scales. And that kind of business scale is both contributing to more clean energy on the grid and, you know, reducing our alliance on fossil fuels. And then it makes a huge difference for their business operations cause they can save that money and reinvest it in other parts of their business.
Amy I think I’ve heard about some things that are just, you know, efficiency too, like more efficient pumps for a cranberry farm, more efficient operations in general. So when it comes to farmers, I mean, I know I’ve heard you say that margins are thin and things like that matter. How much does it matter from your farming perspective to lower energy bills on a farm?
Chelsea Yeah, that’s huge. Farms are operating on tight margins. You don’t go into farming to make a lot of money and there’s a lot of farms that are going out of business. And that’s not because farmers aren’t good planners. They are, you have to be to know how to make it. It’s just, there’s so much that’s out of our control or at the whim of commodity prices or what kind of incentives are out there or not. And so it is razor thin margins and it’s really tough. and being able to have some more certainty and have lower costs of any kind, you know, whether that’s your inputs, that’s your fuel costs, you know, in this case your electricity costs, if you’ve got more energy efficient electrical equipment, that really does take some of that pressure off and it’s helping, you know, businesses stay in operation and, you know, especially… family farms. It’s really tight. I don’t know a lot of family farmers that are just family farming because it’s hard to make things work and stay in the black and so those things really can be a lifeline.
Amy So there are programs in the IRA that are designed specifically for, you know, nonprofits, small businesses, homeowners to either maybe take a look at their insulation or get better insulation, get some rooftop solar, maybe finally have access to some of those technologies like heat pumps and geothermal. Why is it important to, you know, of course there’s a focus on big wind and solar projects, but to bring that all the way down to a church or a school or somebody’s house?
Chelsea Every kilowatt adds up to make a difference, and we need every kilowatt we can get right now. And so it’s not an either or, it’s a both and. We absolutely need these rooftop systems, you know, those efficiency at the household, business, nonprofit level. and we need the big projects to transition off of fossil fuels and to net zero by mid -century, which is what all the research says we need to avert the worst impacts of climate change. I think it also, to what we were talking about earlier, people have agency and want to be able to contribute to solutions. And when you’re able to kind of do your part in your home and your business and your community. and make those positive clean energy changes. Not only are you benefiting your own health, most likely you’re benefiting the health of your community by avoiding more burning fossil fuels and the pollution that is around those plants, you’re benefiting the climate. So it’s really kind of a win -win -win. And I think it also helps people feel more connected to the energy system. I’ve talked with… friends who say, you know, after I got my solar panels, then I really started paying attention to my energy use. I started checking the app that comes with it. And, you know, I wanted to see what I was using and when. energy use. Um, and it really helps for kind of more, or sorry, that awareness helps for more action, um, as well, you know, both within sort of a sphere of influence, kind of in your, your home, your community and, and beyond too.
Amy I think advocates and people who just really care about climate issues have gone from, I mentioned this emotional roller coaster, from really celebrating back in August the two year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act and that investment in some of these efficiencies and clean energy projects, to now much of that being undone or at least there’s an effort to undo it from the Trump administration and you know Congress is considering taking aim at the IRA. So how does it feel, I guess, to be here? You know, out of the Paris Climate Agreement, again, to have that big investment in energy efficiency, clean energy, fighting climate change, farms, homes, businesses, basically all hanging in the balance right now. What does that feel like for you as an advocate who does this every day?
Chelsea Working on climate change has always been a battle. It’s never been an easy. Um, so we know how to do that. We know how to, we know how to, you know, get unwinnable wins. We know how to fight hard for things that are not easy to fight for. Um, it’s really, it is discouraging, of course, you know, after having such huge progress and seeing, uh, both, you know, attempts to claw back funding that is supposed to be, um, you know, allocated to all of these things we wanted to see to watch a lot of the very institutions that are really critical for, you know, protecting the environment, for keeping us safe. It’s disheartening and, you know, it’s very alarming because the reality of what this means is the environment is going to be harmed and people are going to be harmed as a result of this. So, you know, as a professional, I can look at it from, you know, a climate perspective and say, of course this is making our goals that much harder to reach. And from a human perspective, I look and know that a lot more people are going to suffer as a result of this. And so that is really devastating to think about. As climate advocate, we’re playing the long game, which is hard when everything feels so urgent, you know, because it feels like we’ve got these closing windows. But the thing that I always remind myself is all of those actions are adding up to make a difference. And even if the progress isn’t as fast as we want it to be, or if it’s two steps forward, one step back, or one step forward, two steps back, or I don’t know how many steps back we’re taking right now, but it’s more than that. We’re still going to be moving forward and everything that we do is going to keep things from getting worse. Every big renewable energy project that we build that’s saving lives and that matters. So even though we’re seeing rollbacks in all these areas I think we need to you know mourn those things and have you know appropriate human response. Um, but our response also needs to be continuing to forge ahead because like I said, it’s, it’s always been a hard battle. And so it was nice when it felt like maybe we didn’t have to fight quite so hard, um, but we still do and it’s worth fighting for. Um, there’s no black and white we have climate change, we don’t have climate change. You like flip a switch on or not, you know, it’s not like there’s this breaking point of like, oh.it’s either awful or it’s fine, it’s a spectrum. And so the closer we can get to – things are better, that makes it a huge, very real difference in everyday people’s lives and our kids’ lives. And that’s something that we need to keep fighting for.
Amy I think it’s maybe easy to forget how much progress we’ve made in such a short time. If I think back to the beginning of the first Trump Administration, you know, I don’t remember as many people with solar on their homes or driving EVs or as many big clean energy projects. I never saw an electric bus. But now you’re seeing clean energy everywhere. Even states like Iowa and Texas are embracing wind power to a large degree. And so I guess, is there still progress being made here in Wisconsin despite some the efforts to roll back the Inflation Reduction Act?
Chelsea Absolutely, and all the renewable energy that you cited are really good examples and a lot of the reason why we’ve made so much progress and why we will continue to make so much progress regardless of what’s happening at the federal level is because it makes economic sense. It’s you know, wind and solar are the cheapest forms of energy now. So, you know, we are seeing all these attempts by, you know, a dying fossil fuel industry on its last breath, like trying to maintain relevance and, you know, throwing money around to donations and, you know, lobbyists and trying to take over a lot of these institutions and roll back regulations. So yeah, they can do a lot of damage that way, but they’re doing that because they know they’ve got a losing product. But a winning product where, you know, the fuel is free, the wind is free, the sun is free, and the technology has just plummeted. I love looking at charts of just how much the cost of wind and solar has come down in recent years, because that tells you exactly why it’s moving forward no matter what, because it’s a smart business decision. It’s a bad business decision to prop up expensive fuels that you have to drill for or import that are, you know, not as reliable in many respects. So, you know, I think we need to make some more progress. Still, when it comes to getting more batteries online, you know, we need more, more things to pair with with wind and solar, so we make sure we’ve got, you know, 24 -7 energy supply. Um, but we can do that and, you know, those projects are growing too. It’s not a technological problem anymore. It’s a, it’s a political will problem. Um, but fortunately it’s, it’s less of an economic problem. So that’s why we’re seeing a lot of those solutions, um, that are going to go ahead regardless.
Amy I think people don’t always or maybe never think about where their energy comes from. And I’ve heard you say, well, Wisconsin doesn’t have any coal. We don’t have oil. Most of what we use for fuel here or almost all of it comes from other states or even other countries. So you talk a lot about homegrown energy. Why is it important to talk about energy that way?
Chelsea Um, yeah, because it’s, it’s in our self interest. Um, and it’s, uh, helps us be more kind of economically resilient and vibrant. Um, to your point, we spend 14 billion with a B dollars every year importing fossil fuels because we don’t have those resources here. So regardless of what you think about the environmental impacts from a straight economic standpoint, that’s 14 billion dollars that we could be spending on, I could name a billion different things that I would do with that money. Um, you know, there’s, um, we could reinvest in our communities instead. Um, and we do have these homegrown resources here and solar and wind, and we’ve got plenty of resource, even though we’re more Northern state, um, you know, we’re not the Dakotas, but we’ve got enough wind blowing here. Certainly, you may have noticed that lately. And we’ve got enough sun here, even in the winter, you know, again, the technology has really come along. Solar panels, a lot of the big commercial ones now are bifacial. So they capture the light that’s reflecting off the bottom of them as well. So even on a snowy day, the solar panels are actually capturing the light that reflects off the snow and they’re very efficient. They actually operate more efficiently at cold temperatures than they do in the summer. So there’s a lot of great opportunity here. And it just is, again, a smart kind of economic decision for Wisconsin to tap into the resources that we have here where your fuel cost of solar and wind is zero versus 14 billion that we have to get from somewhere else. Again, that’s $14 billion check. How would you spend that in Wisconsin? and there’s so many. so many great ways that we can use that money.
Amy And so here we are right now with, as I mentioned, the Inflation Reduction Act and bipartisan infrastructure law injecting billions of dollars into our state, and those programs are at risk beyond calling your congressional lawmaker. What can people do in this moment when, I mean, you kind of feel powerless in some ways to try to keep the progress that we’ve made.
Chelsea So one of the ways I think about this is we’ve got a couple of different games playing out right now. There’s the federal game where maybe we don’t feel like we’ve got as much influence or you know we’ve got some limited things you mentioned calling representatives and things like that. And that game is pretty chaotic right now. There’s a lot happening, there’s a lot of attacks and the way that we can engage there is really on defense, um, to, to these attacks. And I think there’s a role for some people to play that game. If you’re a lawyer, please play that game. Um, there’s a lot that needs defending that, you know, a lot of illegal things happening right now that we need to have some accountability for that. Um, and we need to, you know, tell some of the stories of, of impact about why these things matter for for people, and why they should matter to the people in positions of power. So I think that those things are important, but we are doing really good things with our game and our game has for a long time, you know, working here in Wisconsin, been trying to advance clean energy here. trying to cut energy waste by having more efficiency. And there’s a lot of ways that we can do that that are under our control. There’s a lot that happens at the state level through our agencies, through the Public Service Commission. That’s where clean energy projects get approved. We’ve been seeing some more local pushback for solar and wind projects. We also know there’s a lot of people that locally are supportive of these projects. And so if that’s you, we need to hear your voice because we need these projects now more than ever. Um, locally, there’s a always a lot of great innovation and work happening, uh, locally, um, at, you know, city town, uh, county levels. Um, and there’s a lot of great information sharing that’s happening, uh, between those groups. Uh, for example, there’s the Wisconsin local government climate coalition, um, that has been going strong in Wisconsin for a number of years now. Um, so there’s a lot that we can achieve, um, at the state level, at the local level. Clean Wisconsin is, you know, leading a lot of those fights. There’s a really robust, um, community of environmental advocates here in Wisconsin that are leading a lot of these fights too. So for people that want to figure out like, okay, there’s all of these assaults on the environment and the things that I care about. What can I do? I would say, you know, get looped into some of the actions that environmental groups are planning because we’re thinking strategically. We’re playing our game where we know we can win, where we know how to win. And, you know, that’s not to say that we can disregard everything that’s happening at the federal level. It hurts. a lot, but there’s a lot of good progress to be made here locally and at the state level.
Amy You touched a little bit on your early interest in weather, and I know we’re getting news about cuts at NOAA as a farmer and an advocate. What is your reaction to some of the things happening just in terms of the expertise and the support that we need from the federal government in these areas?
Chelsea So I think I’m going to answer this in a little bit of a roundabout way, but I will get there. So I was looking at the Wisconsin State Climatology Office recently shared a recap of the 2024 weather in Wisconsin. They described it as warm, wet, and wavering. I would add weird and worrisome to that list. But I think it’s important to highlight exactly what’s… kind of weird weather we’re seeing in Wisconsin right now. And so their recap, they talked about how it was the warmest year on record last year. We had the warmest winter on record, which we know is devastating for our economy too. Think of all the northern businesses that have no snow, a lot less tourism. We had the first February tornadoes. We had a whole slew of tornadoes in the spring and the summer. This was actually pretty devastating in my community. One went about a mile from my house, and it actually totally destroyed a church that had been there for decades and decades, and was just devastating for the community. We saw months with intense rainfalls that caused flash flooding. There was a dam breach in Waupaca County, a bunch of states of emergency declared in counties. Um, and then we also had sort of this whiplash of this very wet spring and then really, really dry fall. And again, from a farming perspective, that’s really hard. You can’t, you can’t plan for that. It’s hard to plan for both, but this is the kind of thing that we expect in a changing climate is this, this sort of ping pong effect, right? Where we see sort of these really big extremes. And so knowing that that is the backdrop for what we’re dealing with in Wisconsin, it is extra concerning when we see. institutions like NOAA that are getting gutted, because NOAA is an organization that, you know, has a lot of, they’re generating a lot of data. You know, they’ve got a lot of satellites. They are the ones, they’re not on your local TV station, but your local meteorologist is probably using some NOAA data to make those predictions, to tell you, you know, if… you should expect a flash flood coming in your area and you need to go to safety or how close a tornado might get to you and if you need to go down in the basement. So when we’re seeing increasing instances of warm, or sorry, of extreme weather, like we saw in Wisconsin last year, that’s really scary from a safety perspective. We’re seeing the same kind of cuts. you know, threatened against EPA and, you know, talks about, you know, whether they could pull back on the endangerment finding or whether they can push back on, you know, California’s Clean Air Act waiver that basically kind of lets them act more ambitiously than at the federal level and then other states can choose to follow that example and follow suit. So it’s really discouraging and it’s really scary. And again, it’s going to lead to people getting hurt, not just the environment, because those institutions have been built up for a really long time. They’re really providing some essential services and ones that people rely on, whether you think about that or not, when you check the weather app on your phone. It’s easy to break things, and it’s hard to build them back up, so I worry about, you know, what the consequences are and how long it takes to rebuild that. But yeah, very much is gonna have a negative impact on people and you’re gonna feel it, unfortunately. And I just hope that we’re able to weather some of these storms as well as we can, without all of the good kind of science -based information that we need to make good decisions.
Amy A lot of people are feeling pretty stressed out if they hear about the environment or clean air, clean water or climate and the attacks that are happening at the federal level and sometimes even at the state level. And so it’s hard to kind of describe the emotional toll it can take when you hear about these issues in this moment. How do you come in every day to work at Clean Wisconsin or head out every day to on the farm or just be a mom, drop off your kids at school, and stay optimistic day to day in this work when you are not just reading the headlines, but you are working in this every single day.
Chelsea I don’t describe myself as an optimist, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t think that this work is worth doing and that I do very much feel called to do it. The way that I like to think about this, there’s a climate scientist named Kate Marvel. She was a scientist at NASA. She’s with Project Drawdown now, I believe. Um, and she talks about how what we need is not hope, but courage. And that’s always really resonated with me. Um, this idea that it’s a courageous act to, uh, to move forward and fight for something, knowing that there’s still going to be losses, knowing that you might not get everything that, that you want. And I think that’s kind of the, the moment that we’re in right now. It’s not to be a downer. You know, I want to look sort of with clear eyes. And as I said before, every action that we take is saving lives. And so that’s motivating too in itself. Um, but I think that really drawing from that area of courage and not just hope. Hope can feel a little bit, um, more passive. You know, courage is sort of saying like, yeah, this is a tough moment, but we’re going to move forward anyway, because we have to, because the alternative of just giving up isn’t acceptable, and because we know that we can still do so much good. And I think it’s really important to think about the future that we want to build. I think so often. the environmental movement has positioned itself in reaction to something and often like as a, like pushing back or saying no to things, you know? And there’s a, there’s a reason for that. It’s reasonable. Like, you know, there’s this big proposed plant and it’s gonna be polluting. So no, fight the plant, you know, that’s been the reaction. But I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently and, you know, when it comes to infrastructure law, for example, and all of the solar, all the wind, all the batteries, you know, all the things that we need to build, how we need to embrace more of this vision for the future and what we want to work towards too. So, you know, it’s not to say that I don’t have hope, it’s just to say that I think What motivates me more is… the courage side of things, because it’s something that I feel like is active and is something that I can kind of activate myself and activate in other people, because there’s a lot that’s worth fighting for, you know, not just against, that’s for our environment, that’s for our kids, and it’s tough to reconcile seeing this kind of. backward movement after feeling like we’re moving forward and to know what the human cost is going to be for that. But that’s when we need to dig deep and do it anyway. I think as more people wake up to what the impacts mean on them personally and what they mean for them economically, you know, whether it’s… you know, shifting, you know, where wind and where tornadoes are happening or, you know, hurricanes, if you’re on the coast or wildfires, like the ones we just saw in LA this year, just devastating. Um, eventually more people are going to wake up to that. And I think we’re going to see some, some more momentum. So it’s hard to be in this work while you’re watching things get bad. Um, but that’s especially when we need people to, to stick with the because we’re gonna We’re gonna watch them get better. Not perfect, but better. And that’s 1000 % worth fighting for.
Amy Climate, Energy, and Air Program Director for Clean Wisconsin, Chelsea Chandler. Thank you so much for talking through all this and I think leaving us on a somewhat hopeful note.
Chelsea A courageous note.
Amy Yeah, courage. We’ve got it. We just need to keep our eye on the prize. Thank you so much.
Chelsea Yeah, thank you, Amy.
Amy And thank you for listening to the Defender podcast. Remember, you can join our action network so you’ll never miss an opportunity to take an action here in Wisconsin that helps defend our environment. Just head to cleanwisconsin.org. I’m Amy Barrilleaux, talk to you later.
