Podcasts about Denis Hayes

In this episode, Ted interviews Joel Cesare, a longstanding friend,colleague, and sustainability champion, who has just begun a new job at Cambio, a firm that has an AI platform designed for portfolios of real estate. Joel explains how Cambio's platform supports all manner of data-intensive property management functions, including building decarbonization.Joel discusses his years at Google where he was on a team of sustainability managers. Their goal was to decarbonize all of Google's 40 million square feet of real estate by 2030. To do so, they studied hundreds of facilities in many countries... prioritizing projects based on numerous parameters. What Joel realized in that job was the power of AI in sifting through massive amounts of data and developing work plans to decarbonize and advance sustainable practices.Ted and Joel dig into the fact that the data centers that power AI systems are very energy intensive. Ted queries, "Is the Cambio platform a sustainable solution given the energy intensity of AI?" Joel believes that, yes, this application of AI does provide a net societal benefit as retrofits and new construction activities are flagged that make economic sense... measures and carbon savings that would not have been realized absent the AI platform.They also recount Joel's pioneering work for the City of Santa Monica, developing City Hall East, one of the world's most sustainable buildings. Joel acknowledges the key role played by Denis Hayes in promoting the project's unique design features at Santa Monica's City Council. Denis had recently completed the Bullitt Center's radically sustainable headquarters in Seattle, and had encouraged others to follow suit, pushing the envelope of sustainable buildings.Joel highlights a few of City Hall East's greatest challenges: First and foremost was rooftop rainwater collection for potable water. This involved certifying rooftop surfaces -- including solar panels -- for water that is now used for showering and drinking. Another challenge was the inclusion of composting toilets there... the first ever in a public building of its kind. 

Denis Hayes, Chairman and President at Bullitt Foundation, returns to share the strategies he implemented for effective grantmaking. Denis explains the importance of legitimacy in philanthropic decision-making, the value of diverse board representation, and how focusing efforts geographically and strategically helped the foundation create a significant impact. Denis also provides insights on the decision to spend down and offers advice for future philanthropists on how to make meaningful, long-lasting contributions to causes they care about.Episode Highlights:Denis's advice to current and future philanthropists on impactful giving strategiesDenis Hayes Bio:Denis Hayes is an environmentalist and a long-time champion of solar & renewable energy. He rose to prominence in 1970 as the coordinator for the first Earth Day. He subsequently founded the Earth Day Network and expanded the event to 180 nations. Earth Day is now the most widely observed secular holiday in the world. During the Carter Administration, Hayes was director of the federal Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory). Hayes became an adjunct professor of engineering at Stanford University for several years, and also practiced law in Silicon Valley. Since 1992, Hayes has been president of the Bullitt Foundation in Washington and continues to be a leader in environmental and energy policy. He was the principal developer of the Bullitt Center, judged by World Architecture Magazine to be "the greenest office building in the world."Hayes has also served as Executive director of Environmental Action, Director of the Illinois State Energy Office, Visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Fellow of the Worldwatch Institute, Fellow at the Bellagio Center, and Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Bosch Foundation. Hayes has received the national Jefferson Awards Medal for Outstanding Public Service as well as numerous other awards. Time Magazine named him as "Hero of the Planet" in 1999; the NYT profiled him as its Newsmaker of the Day; and Life Magazine selected him as one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century. His newest book, COWED: The Hidden Impact of 93 Million Cows on America's Health, Economy, Politics, Culture, and Environment, was published by W.W. Norton in 2015.If you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/203-do-you-have-the-requisite-experience-to-make-your/id1556900518?i=1000674680730https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/121-the-brainerd-foundation-spend-down-strategy-with/id1556900518?i=1000605062550https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/183-promoting-world-peace-with-al-jubitz-patrick/id1556900518?i=1000658428389 Crack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to PhilanthropyBecome even better at what you do as Sybil teaches you the strategies and tools you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy.Sybil offers resources including free mini-course videos, templates, checklists, and words of advice summarized in easy to review pdfs. https://www.doyourgood.com/funders Check out Sybil's website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at https://www.doyourgood.comConnect with Do Your Goodhttps://www.facebook.com/doyourgoodhttps://www.instagram.com/doyourgoodWould you like to talk with Sybil directly?Send in your inquiries through her website https://www.doyourgood.com/ or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com.

Denis Hayes, Chairman and President at Bullitt Foundation, returns to share the strategies he implemented for effective grantmaking. Denis explains the importance of legitimacy in philanthropic decision-making, the value of diverse board representation, and how focusing efforts geographically and strategically helped the foundation create a significant impact. Denis also provides insights on the decision to spend down and offers advice for future philanthropists on how to make meaningful, long-lasting contributions to causes they care about.{You can hear the full episode on Monday, November 4th}

Denis Hayes, Chairman and President at Bullitt Foundation, joins Sybil to share his experiences growing up in the 1960s during a turbulent time in American history and how his quest for purpose and meaning led him to co-found Earth Day. Sybil encourages philanthropists to consider the need for someone with specialized knowledge, like Denis, to guide their giving strategy.Episode Highlights:The social and political context of the 1960s in AmericaInsights for philanthropists on finding experienced advisors for impactful givingDenis Hayes Bio:Denis Hayes is an environmentalist and a long-time champion of solar & renewable energy. He rose to prominence in 1970 as the coordinator for the first Earth Day. He subsequently founded the Earth Day Network and expanded the event to 180 nations. Earth Day is now the most widely observed secular holiday in the world. During the Carter Administration, Hayes was director of the federal Solar Energy Research Institute (now the National Renewable Energy Laboratory). Hayes then became an adjunct professor of engineering at Stanford University for several years, and also practiced law in Silicon Valley. Since 1992, Hayes has been president of the Bullitt Foundation in Washington and continues to be a leader in environmental and energy policy. He was the principal developer of the Bullitt Center, judged by World Architecture Magazine to be "the greenest office building in the world."Hayes has also served as Executive director of Environmental Action, Director of the Illinois State Energy Office, Visiting Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Fellow of the Worldwatch Institute, Fellow at the Bellagio Center, and Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow of the Bosch Foundation. Hayes has received the national Jefferson Awards Medal for Outstanding Public Service as well as numerous other awards. Time Magazine named him as "Hero of the Planet" in 1999; the NYT profiled him as its Newsmaker of the Day; and Life Magazine selected him as one of the 100 most influential Americans of the 20th century. His newest book, COWED: The Hidden Impact of 93 Million Cows on America's Health, Economy, Politics, Culture, and Environment, was published by W.W. Norton in 2015.If you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/175-be-effective-at-supporting-nonprofits-to-work-together/id1556900518?i=1000652465880 https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/174-special-strategies-to-enhance-donor-relationships/id1556900518?i=1000651750997Crack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to PhilanthropyBecome even better at what you do as Sybil teaches you the strategies and tools you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy.Sybil offers resources including free mini-course videos, templates, checklists, and words of advice summarized in easy to review pdfs. https://www.doyourgood.com/funders Check out Sybil's website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at https://www.doyourgood.comConnect with Do Your Goodhttps://www.facebook.com/doyourgoodhttps://www.instagram.com/doyourgoodWould you like to talk with Sybil directly?Send in your inquiries through her website https://www.doyourgood.com/ or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com.

Denis Hayes, Chairman and President at Bullitt Foundation, joins Sybil to share his experiences growing up in the 1960s during a turbulent time in American history and how his quest for purpose and meaning led him to co-found Earth Day. Sybil encourages philanthropists to consider the need for someone with specialized knowledge, like Denis, to guide their giving strategy.{You can hear the full episode on Monday October 28th}

This session of the radio show shares my conversation with Town Administrator Jamie Hellen, Deputy Town Administrator Amy Frigulietti, Conservation Agent Breeki Li Goodlander and Recreation Director Ryan Jette on Monday, April 29, 2024. We get a very brief recap of current events (it's all about the budget) and jump right into Earth Day and the other activities of the Conservation and Recreation departmentsConservationProjects more this year than lastFriends of Conservation group formingRecreation Growth in participation Field upgrades at Fletcher & King StBeaver Pond has a new kayak launchWe close out with discussion and laughter around the Top 35 songs about weather https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Eu2npqGS0fH9N0Uc0iB5WCitoawIMFdJ/view?usp=drive_link Our conversation runs about 41 minutes. --------------Contact info: for Jamie & Amy -> https://www.franklinma.gov/administrator Conservation page -> https://www.franklinma.gov/conservation Recreation page -> https://www.franklinma.gov/recreation-department Fact checking update:In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event "Earth Day" https://www.earthday.org/history/ The group garnered worldwide attention with 1987 album Diesel and Dust. Its singles "The Dead Heart" and "Beds Are Burning" illuminated the plight of indigenous Australians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Oil --------------We are now producing this in collaboration with Franklin.TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) or 102.9 on the Franklin area radio dial. This podcast is my public service effort for Franklin but we can't do it alone. We can always use your help.How can you help?If you can use the information that you find here, please tell your friends and neighborsIf you don't like something here, please let me knowThrough this feedback loop we can continue to make improvements. I thank you for listening.For additional information, please visit www.franklin.news/ or www.Franklinmatters.org/ If you have questions or comments you can reach me directly at shersteve @ gmail dot comThe music for the intro and exit was provided by Michael Clark and the group "East of Shirley". The piece is titled "Ernesto, manana" c. Michael Clark & Tintype Tunes, 2008 and used with...

FM #1184 = This is the Franklin Matters radio show, number 1184 in the series. This session of the radio show shares my conversation with Town Administrator Jamie Hellen, Deputy Town Administrator Amy Frigulietti, Conservation Agent Breeka Li Goodlander and Recreation Director Ryan Jette on Monday, April 29, 2024. We get a very brief recap of current events (it's all about the budget) and jump right into Earth Day and the other activities of the Conservation and Recreation departments Conservation Projects more this year than last Friends of Conservation group forming Recreation Growth in participation Field upgrades at Fletcher & King St Beaver Pond has a new kayak launch We close out with discussion and laughter around the Top 35 songs about weather https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Eu2npqGS0fH9N0Uc0iB5WCitoawIMFdJ/view?usp=drive_link Our conversation runs about 41 minutes. -------------- Contact info: for Jamie & Amy: https://www.franklinma.gov/administrator Conservation page: https://www.franklinma.gov/conservation Recreation page: https://www.franklinma.gov/recreation-department Fact checking update: ● In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be observed on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later, United States Senator Gaylord Nelson proposed the idea to hold a nationwide environmental teach-in on April 22, 1970. He hired a young activist, Denis Hayes, to be the National Coordinator. Nelson and Hayes renamed the event "Earth Day" https://www.earthday.org/history/ ● The group garnered worldwide attention with 1987 album Diesel and Dust. Its singles "The Dead Heart" and " Beds Are Burning" illuminated the plight of indigenous Australians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Oil -------------- We are now producing this in collaboration with Franklin.TV and Franklin Public Radio (wfpr.fm) or 102.9 on the Franklin area radio dial. This podcast is my public service effort for Franklin but we can't do it alone. We can always use your help. How can you help? ● If you can use the information that you find here, please tell your friends and neighbors ● If you don't like something here, please let me know Through this feedback loop we can continue to make improvements. I thank you for listening. For additional information, please visit www.franklin.news/ or www.Franklinmatters.org/ If you have questions or comments you can reach me directly at shersteve@gmail.com The music for the intro and exit was provided by Michael Clark and the group "East of Shirley". The piece is titled "Ernesto, manana" c. Michael Clark & Tintype Tunes, 2008 and used with their permission. I hope you enjoy! ------------------ You can also subscribe and listen to Franklin Matters audio on iTunes or your favorite podcast app; search in "podcasts" for "Franklin Matters"

The climate is changing. So are we. On What On Earth, you'll explore a world of solutions with host Laura Lynch and our team of journalists. In 1970, 20 million people showed up to fight for the environment on the first Earth Day. More than five decades later, is it time for this much tamer global event to return to its radical roots? OG organizer Denis Hayes recounts how – amidst other counterculture movements at the time – his team persuaded roughly one in ten Americans to take to the streets. As he approaches 80, Denis offers his singular piece of advice to the next generation of climate leaders. Then, environmental warriors Maria Blancas and Axcelle Campana share ideas on what a reinspired Earth Day could look like – including making it a public holiday.More episodes of What On Earth are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/YX9QBtvDWe love to hear from our listeners and regularly feature them on the show. Have a question or idea? Email Earth@cbc.ca

To mark Earth Day, Christiana shares her conversation with the incredible young climate justice activist, indigenous rights advocate and author Xiye Bastida. From the Otomi-Toltec indigenous community in Central Mexico, Xiye's life and work demonstrate how indigenous wisdom and principles unearth solutions to the climate crisis. She is driven to create a climate movement that is more inclusive and more diverse.   Since 2019, Xiye has been actively involved in organising climate strikes with Fridays For Future, including for their largest youth-led march in New York City.  In her role as Co-founder and Executive Director of Re-Earth Initiative, Xiye supports frontline youth across 27 countries, whilst also studying for an​​ Environmental Studies degree with a concentration in Policy and a Minor in Latin American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.  Recently listed in TIME100 Next as a phenomenon (we agree!), she holds the UN Spirit Award. This episode is the full, unedited version of a conversation recorded for the recent mini series Our Story of Nature - From Rupture to Reconnection, co-hosted by Christiana Figueres and Isabel Cavelier. This is a wonderful and moving insight into Xiye's story of nature, on how to slow down, and how we might keep past and future generations in our minds - and hearts. We hope you enjoy it!    Background on Earth Day:   The first Earth Day was on April 22nd 1970. Across America, twenty million people took to the streets to protest against environmental destruction. Many people were motivated by the devastating impacts of a recent oil spill in California, others campaigned to reduce air pollution. The spirit, scale and power of the protests were inspired by student anti-Vietnam marches. Denis Hayes, who coordinated the original Earth Day, remembers how the day unified diverset groups:   "By the time it finally came around, it was in virtually every town, every village, in the United States. It took this basket of issues that we now call 'the environment' and elevated them spectacularly in the public consciousness." Earth Day 1970 is described as the dawn of the modern environmental movement. Events that day resulted in political changes: landmark environmental laws were later passed in the United States - the Clean Air and Water Acts - and the Environmental Protection Agency was created. Many other countries subsequently adopted similar laws. In 2016, the United Nations chose Earth Day as the day to sign the Paris Climate Agreement into force. Earth Day is now the biggest civic event in the world, with billions of people participating in events to highlight the urgent need to protect our planet. Its theme this year is Planet vs. Plastics - calling for widespread awareness on the health risk of plastics, for an end to single use plastics, and for a robust UN Treaty on Plastic Pollution.   NOTES AND RESOURCES More on Xiye Bastida, Co-founder and Director of Re-Earth Initiative More on Earth Day Links to Our Story of Nature episodes: Our Story of Nature - From Rupture to Reconnection - Episode 1 Our Story of Nature - From Rupture to Reconnection - Episode 2 Our Story of Nature - From Rupture to Reconnection - Episode 3 Our Story of Nature Intro Music - Catalina by Tru Genesis Other full, unedited interviews from the mini-series can be found HERE Learn more about the Paris Agreement. It's official, we're a TED Audio Collective Podcast - Proof! Check out more podcasts from The TED Audio Collective Please follow us on social media! Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn

The climate is changing. So are we. On What On Earth, you'll explore a world of solutions with host Laura Lynch and our team of journalists. In 1970, 20 million people showed up to fight for the environment on the first Earth Day. More than five decades later, is it time for this much tamer global event to return to its radical roots? OG organizer Denis Hayes recounts how – amidst other counterculture movements at the time – his team persuaded roughly one in ten Americans to take to the streets. As he approaches 80, Denis offers his singular piece of advice to the next generation of climate leaders. Then, environmental warriors Maria Blancas and Axcelle Campana share ideas on what a reinspired Earth Day could look like – including making it a public holiday.More episodes of What On Earth are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/5zF03qcmWe love to hear from our listeners and regularly feature them on the show. Have a question or idea? Email Earth@cbc.ca

The climate is changing. So are we. On What On Earth, you'll explore a world of solutions with host Laura Lynch and our team of journalists. In 1970, 20 million people showed up to fight for the environment on the first Earth Day. More than five decades later, is it time for this much tamer global event to return to its radical roots? OG organizer Denis Hayes recounts how – amidst other counterculture movements at the time – his team persuaded roughly one in ten Americans to take to the streets. As he approaches 80, Denis offers his singular piece of advice to the next generation of climate leaders. Then, environmental warriors Maria Blancas and Axcelle Campana share ideas on what a reinspired Earth Day could look like – including making it a public holiday.More episodes of What On Earth are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/fHfXfjAJWe love to hear from our listeners and regularly feature them on the show. Have a question or idea? Email Earth@cbc.ca

The climate is changing. So are we. On What On Earth, you'll explore a world of solutions with host Laura Lynch and our team of journalists. In 1970, 20 million people showed up to fight for the environment on the first Earth Day. More than five decades later, is it time for this much tamer global event to return to its radical roots? OG organizer Denis Hayes recounts how – amidst other counterculture movements at the time – his team persuaded roughly one in ten Americans to take to the streets. As he approaches 80, Denis offers his singular piece of advice to the next generation of climate leaders. Then, environmental warriors Maria Blancas and Axcelle Campana share ideas on what a reinspired Earth Day could look like – including making it a public holiday. More episodes of What On Earth are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/L2RFol4W We love to hear from our listeners and regularly feature them on the show. Have a question or idea? Email Earth@cbc.caAnd if you'd like to learn more about the very special guest Dr. Goldman mentioned, please check out this classic episode of White Coat, Black Art.

The climate is changing. So are we. On What On Earth, you'll explore a world of solutions with host Laura Lynch and our team of journalists. In 1970, 20 million people showed up to fight for the environment on the first Earth Day. More than five decades later, is it time for this much tamer global event to return to its radical roots? OG organizer Denis Hayes recounts how – amidst other counterculture movements at the time – his team persuaded roughly one in ten Americans to take to the streets. As he approaches 80, Denis offers his singular piece of advice to the next generation of climate leaders. Then, environmental warriors Maria Blancas and Axcelle Campana share ideas on what a reinspired Earth Day could look like – including making it a public holiday.More episodes of What On Earth are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/rtraABEvWe love to hear from our listeners and regularly feature them on the show. Have a question or idea? Email Earth@cbc.ca

The climate is changing. So are we. On What On Earth, you'll explore a world of solutions with host Laura Lynch and our team of journalists. In 1970, 20 million people showed up to fight for the environment on the first Earth Day. More than five decades later, is it time for this much tamer global event to return to its radical roots? OG organizer Denis Hayes recounts how – amidst other counterculture movements at the time – his team persuaded roughly one in ten Americans to take to the streets. As he approaches 80, Denis offers his singular piece of advice to the next generation of climate leaders. Then, environmental warriors Maria Blancas and Axcelle Campana share ideas on what a reinspired Earth Day could look like – including making it a public holiday.More episodes of What On Earth are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/PobYcvVYWe love to hear from our listeners and regularly feature them on the show. Have a question or idea? Email Earth@cbc.ca

The climate is changing. So are we. On What On Earth, you'll explore a world of solutions with host Laura Lynch and our team of journalists. In 1970, 20 million people showed up to fight for the environment on the first Earth Day. More than five decades later, is it time for this much tamer global event to return to its radical roots? OG organizer Denis Hayes recounts how – amidst other counterculture movements at the time – his team persuaded roughly one in ten Americans to take to the streets. As he approaches 80, Denis offers his singular piece of advice to the next generation of climate leaders. Then, environmental warriors Maria Blancas and Axcelle Campana share ideas on what a reinspired Earth Day could look like – including making it a public holiday. More episodes of What On Earth are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/FV-JxPXJ We love to hear from our listeners and regularly feature them on the show. Have a question or idea? Email Earth@cbc.ca

The climate is changing. So are we. On What On Earth, you'll explore a world of solutions with host Laura Lynch and our team of journalists. In 1970, 20 million people showed up to fight for the environment on the first Earth Day. More than five decades later, is it time for this much tamer global event to return to its radical roots? OG organizer Denis Hayes recounts how – amidst other counterculture movements at the time – his team persuaded roughly one in ten Americans to take to the streets. As he approaches 80, Denis offers his singular piece of advice to the next generation of climate leaders. Then, environmental warriors Maria Blancas and Axcelle Campana share ideas on what a reinspired Earth Day could look like – including making it a public holiday. More episodes of What On Earth are available at: https://link.chtbl.com/uIkc33FTWe love to hear from our listeners and regularly feature them on the show. Have a question or idea? Email Earth@cbc.ca

Please enjoy this re-air of our listeners' favorite topical show of 2023! On this topical show re-air, Crystal chats with former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and his former Senior Communications Advisor Robert Cruickshank about the missed opportunity for generational impact through how decisions were made about Seattle's waterfront and the SR99 tunnel. Mike and Robert review how the vision of the scrappy People's Waterfront Coalition, centered around making a prized public space accessible for all while taking the climate crisis on by transforming our transportation system, nearly won the fight against those who prioritized maintaining highway capacity and those who prioritized increasing Downtown property values.  The conversation then highlights how those with power and money used their outsized influence to make backroom decisions - despite flawed arguments and little public enthusiasm for their proposal - leaving Seattle with an underutilized deep bore tunnel and a car-centric waterfront. Some of the decision makers are still active in local politics - including current Mayor Bruce Harrell and his current advisor Tim Burgess. With important elections ahead, Crystal, Mike and Robert discuss how political decisions tend to conflict with campaign promises rather than donor rolls, how proven action is a better indicator than value statements, and how today's dense ecosystem of progressive leaders and organizations can take inspiration and win the next fight. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, and Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.   Mike McGinn Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks.  He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State's walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change.   Robert Cruickshank Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013.   Resources “Seattle Waterfront History Interviews: Cary Moon, Waterfront Coalition” by Dominic Black from HistoryLink   “State Route 99 tunnel - Options and political debate" from Wikipedia   “Remembering broken promises about Bertha” by Josh Cohen from Curbed Seattle   “Fewer drivers in Seattle's Highway 99 tunnel could create need for bailout” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times   “Surface Highway Undermines Seattle's Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist   “Seattle Prepares to Open Brand New Elliott Way Highway Connector” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Robert Cruickshank and former Mayor Mike McGinn to the show to talk about something that a lot of people have been thinking about, talking about recently - and that is Seattle's new waterfront. We feel like we've spent a decade under construction - from a deep bore tunnel to the tunnel machine getting stuck - that's not even covering all the debate before that, but all of the kind of follies and foibles and challenges that have beset the process of arriving at the waterfront that we have now. And now that we are getting the big reveal, a lot of people have feelings about it. So I thought we would talk about it with one of the people who was at the forefront of criticisms of the tunnel and calling out some red flags that turned out to be a very wise warning - several wise warnings that have come to pass, unfortunately - for not listening to them. But I want to start early on in the beginning, both of you - and I had a short stint in the mayor's office - worked on this, talked about this on the campaign, really got it. But when did you first hear that we needed to replace the viaduct and there were some different opinions about how to make that happen? [00:02:06] Mike McGinn: Okay, so I'm sure I can't pin down a date, but the really important date was, of course, the Nisqually earthquake in 2001. And so it gave the Alaska Way Viaduct a good shake - the decks weren't tied into the columns, the columns were on fill, which could liquefy - and everybody understood that if that quake had been a little stronger and harder, the elevated would come down. Now you might think that that would call for immediately closing the roadway for safety reasons, but what it did call for was for reconstructing it. And you have to remember that highway was really one of the very first limited access highways - it was built long ago and it was just at the end of its useful life anyway. Certainly not built to modern seismic standards or modern engineering standards. So the conversation immediately started and I don't know when everything started to settle into different roles, but the Mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels, was immediately a proponent for a tunnel - and a much larger and more expensive tunnel than what was ultimately built. And it would have been a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront that included a new seawall. So they thought they were solving two things at one time - because the seawall too was rotting away, very old, very unstable. But it would have gone all the way under South Lake Union and emerged onto Aurora Avenue further north, it would have had entrances and exits to Western and Elliott. And I seem to remember the quoted price was like $11 billion. And the state - governor at the time was Christine Gregoire - they were - No, we're replacing the highway. We don't have $11 billion for Seattle. And of course had the support of a lot of lawmakers for obvious reasons - we're not going to give Seattle all that money, we want all that highway money for our districts. And those were immediately presented as the alternatives. And so much of the credit has to go to Cary Moon, who lived on the waterfront and started something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. I think Grant Cogswell, a former City Council candidate - now runs a bookstore down in Mexico City, but wrote a book about the Monorail, worked on the different Monorail campaigns before that - they launched something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. And the basic proposition was - We don't need a highway. This is a great opportunity to get rid of the highway and have a surface street, but if you amp up the transit service - if we invest in transit instead - we can accommodate everyone. And so that was really - as it started - and actually I remember being outside City Hall one day, going to some stakeholder meeting - I went to so many different stakeholder meetings. And I remember Tim Ceis saying to me - he was the Deputy Mayor at the time - You're not supporting that Cary Moon idea - I mean, that's just crazy. I was - Well, actually, Tim. So the Sierra Club was - I was a volunteer leader in the Sierra Club - and the Sierra Club was one of the first organizations - I'm sure there were others, I shouldn't overstate it - but the Sierra Club was persuaded by the wisdom of Cary's idea and supported it in that day. And so that was really how the three different options got launched - no public process, no analysis, no description of what our needs were. The mayor went to a solution, the governor went to a solution - and it was up to members of the public to try to ask them to slow down, stop, and look at something different. [00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: And Robert, how did you first engage with this issue? [00:05:47] Robert Cruickshank: For me, I had just moved to Seattle the first time in the fall of 2001 - so it was about six months after the Nisqually quake - and I came from the Bay Area. And that was where another earthquake had damaged another waterfront highway, the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. And that was where San Francisco had voted - after that quake had damaged their viaduct beyond repair - they voted to tear it down and replace it with the Embarcadero Waterfront, which is a six-lane arterial but they built a lot more transit there. So they did the - what we might call the surface transit option - and it worked really well. It was beautiful. It still is. And so when I came up here and started to learn a little bit about the place I was living and the legacy of the Nisqually quake, I thought - Oh, why don't you just do the same thing here? It worked so well in San Francisco. Let's just tear down this unsightly monstrosity on the waterfront and replace it with a surface boulevard and put in a bunch of transit - San Francisco's made it work successfully. And the more I learned about Seattle, I realized there's a legacy of that here, too. This is a city where we had a freeway revolt, where activists came together and killed the RH Thomson freeway, which would have destroyed the Arboretum. They killed the Bay Freeway, which would have destroyed Pike Place Market. And so I naturally assumed - as being a relatively new resident - that Seattle would stay in that tradition and welcome the opportunity to tear this down and build a great waterfront for people, not cars. But as we'll talk about in a moment, we have a lot of business interests and freight interests and others who had a different vision - who didn't share that community-rooted vision. And I think at numerous points along the way, though, you see people of Seattle saying - No, this is not what we want for our waterfront. We have an opportunity now with the fact that this viaduct nearly collapsed, as Mike mentioned, in the Nisqually quake - we have an opportunity for something really wonderful here. And so I think Cary Moon and then Mike McGinn and others tapped into that - tapped into a really strong community desire to have a better waterfront. I wasn't that politically engaged at the time in the 2000s - I was just a grad student at UW - but just talking to folks who I knew, anytime this came up - God, wouldn't it be wonderful down there if this was oriented towards people and not cars, and we took that thing down? So I think one of the things you're going to see is this contest between the vision that many of us in Seattle had and still have - this beautiful location, beautiful vista on Elliott Bay, that should be for the people of the city - and those in power who have a very different vision and don't really want to share power or ultimately the right-of-way with We the People. [00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And I was involved in some things at the time - some curious coalitions - but definitely I was around a lot of people who favored either rebuilding the viaduct or the tunnel. Definitely not this roads and transit option - there's no way that's workable. That's pie-in-the-sky talk from those loony greenies over there. What are you talking about? But as this went on - I think no matter what camp people were in - there was always a clear vision articulated and people really focused on the opportunity that this represented, and I think correctly characterized it as - this is one of these generational decisions that we get to make that is going to impact the next generation or two and beyond. And there's an opportunity - the waterfront felt very disconnected with the way things were constructed - it was not easy just to go from downtown to the waterfront. It wasn't friendly for pedestrians. It wasn't friendly for tourists. It just did not feel like a world-class waterfront in a world-class city, and how we see that in so many other cities. You talk about the decision with the Embarcadero, Robert, and looking at - that definitely seemed like a definitive step forward. This was sold as - yeah, we can absolutely take a step forward and finally fix this waterfront and make it what it should have been the whole time. As you thought about the opportunity that this represented, what was the opportunity to you and what did you hear other people saying that they wanted this to be? [00:09:38] Mike McGinn: Yeah, so I think there are - I think that's really important, because I don't think there was a real discussion of what the vision was. People will say there was, but there really wasn't. Because what was baked in and what you're referring to is - well, of course you have to build automobile capacity to replace the existing automobile capacity, right? In fact, this state is still building more highways across the state in the misguided belief that more highway capacity will somehow or another do some good. So this idea that you have to replace and expand highway capacity is extremely powerful in Washington state and across the country. And there were very few examples of highway removal, so that was just a real challenge in the first place - that somehow or other the first priority has to be moving automobiles. For me, at that time I had become - the issue of climate had really penetrated me at that point. And in fact, when Greg Nickels took office and the Sierra Club endorsed him over Paul Schell - I was a local leader in the Sierra Club and a state leader in the Sierra Club - and my goal was that Mayor Nickels would do more than Paul Schell. And Paul Schell, the prior mayor, had done some good things. He had made Seattle City Light climate neutral - we'd gotten out of coal plants and we didn't purchase power from coal plants. He was really progressive on a number of environmental issues and we wanted Mayor Nickels to do more - and Mayor Nickels had stepped up. So we put on a campaign to urge him to do more. And he had stepped up to start something called the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative - which was the City of Seattle was going to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol, which was like the Paris Agreement of its day. And that was - it set an emissions reduction target by a date in the future. And that was really great - in fact, over a thousand cities around the country signed up to the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative. And I was appointed to a stakeholder group with other leaders - Denis Hayes from the Bullitt Foundation and others - to develop the first climate action plan for a city. Al Gore showed up at the press conference for it - it was a big - it was a BFD and a lot of excitement. And one of the things that was abundantly clear through that process of cataloging the emissions in the City of Seattle and coming up with a plan to reduce them was that our single largest source of emissions at that time was the transportation sector. We'd already gotten off of coal power under Mayor Schell - we received almost all of our electricity from hydroelectric dams. We had good conservation programs. Unlike other parts of the country, transportation was the biggest. Now what's fascinating is now - I don't know if I want to do the math - almost 20 years later, now what we see is that the whole country is in the same place. We're replacing coal and natural gas power plants. And now nationally, the single largest source of emissions is transportation. So how do you fix that? If we're serious about climate - and I thought we should be - because the scientists were telling us about heat waves. They were telling us about forest fires that would blanket the region in smoke. They were telling us about storms that would be bigger than we'd ever seen before. And flooding like we'd never seen and declining snowpack. And it was all going to happen in our futures. Honestly, I remember those predictions from the scientists because they're in the headlines today, every day. So what do we do to stop that? So I was - I had little kids, man - I had little kids, I had three kids. How are we going to stop this? Well, it's Seattle needs to lead - that's what has to happen. We're the progressive city. We're the first one out with a plan. We're going to show how we're going to do it. And if our biggest source is transportation, we should fix that. Well, it should seem obvious that the first thing you should do is stop building and expanding highways, and maybe even change some of the real estate used for cars and make it real estate for walking, biking, and transit. That's pretty straightforward. You also have to work on more housing. And this all led me to starting a nonprofit around all of these things and led to the Sierra Club - I think at a national level - our chapter was much further forward than any other chapter on upzones and backyard cottages and making the transition. So to me, this was the big - that was the vision. That was the opportunity. We're going to tear this down. We're going to make a massive investment in changing the system, and this in fact could be a really transformative piece. That's what motivated me. That climate argument wasn't landing with a whole bunch of other interests. There was certainly a vision from the Downtown and Downtown property owners and residents that - boy, wouldn't it be great to get rid of that elevated highway because that's terrible. There was also a vision from the people who still believed in highway capacity and that includes some of our major employers at the time and today - Boeing and Microsoft, they have facilities in the suburbs around Seattle - they think we need highway capacity. As well as all of the Port businesses, as well as all the maritime unions - thought that this highway connection here was somehow critical to their survival, the industrial areas. And then they wanted the capacity. So there were very strong competing visions. And I think it's fair to say that highway capacity is a vision - we've seen that one is now fulfilled. The second priority was an enhanced physical environment to enhance the property values of Downtown property owners. And they cut the deal with the highway capacity people - okay, we're here for your highway capacity, but we have to get some amenities. And the climate folks, I'm not seeing it - never a priority of any of the leaders - just wasn't a priority. [00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: How did you see those factions come into play and break down, Robert? [00:15:48] Robert Cruickshank: It was interesting. This all comes to a head in the late 2000s. And remembering back to that time, this is where Seattle is leading the fight to take on the climate and the fight against George W. Bush, who was seen as this avatar of and deeply connected to the oil industry. Someone who - one of his first things when he took office - he did was withdraw the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, which is the earlier version of what's now known as the Paris Agreement - global agreement to try to lower emissions. And so Seattle, in resisting Bush - that's where Greg Nickels became a national figure by leading the Mayors' Climate Action Group - not just say we're going to take on climate, we're going to do something about really de facto fighting back against Bush. And then Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore comes out with An Inconvenient Truth. And by 2007, people in Seattle are talking a lot about climate and how we need to do something about climate. But then what you see happening is the limits of that - what are people really actually willing to do and willing to support? The other piece that comes together, I think - in the 2000s - is a revival of the City itself. Seattle spends the late 20th century after the Boeing bust - since the 70s "Will the last person out of Seattle turn out the lights," recovering in the 80s somewhat, recovering in the 90s, and then the tech boom. And by the 2000s, Seattle is a destination city for young people coming to live here and living in apartments and working in the tech industry. I think that unsettles a lot of people. One thing that really stood out to me about the discussion about what to do on the waterfront was this vision from old school folks - like Joel Connelly and others - we've got to preserve that working waterfront. And it's very much the sense that blue collar working class labor is under threat - not from corporate power, but from a 20-something millennial with a laptop working at Amazon who comes to Seattle and thinks - Gosh, why is this ugly viaduct here? It's unsafe. Why don't we just tear it down and have a wonderful waterfront view? And those who are offended by this idea - who are so wedded to the 20th century model that we're going to drive everywhere, cars, freedom - this is where you see the limits of willingness to actually do something on climate. People don't actually want to give up their cars. They're afraid they're going to sacrifice their way of life. And you start to see this weird but powerful constellation come together where rather than having a discussion about transportation planning or even a discussion about climate action, we're having this weird discussion about culture. And it becomes a culture war. And the thing about a culture war is people pushing change are never actually trying to fight a war. They're just - This is a good idea. Why don't we do this? We all say these - we care about these values. And the people who don't want it just dig in and get really nasty and fight back. And so you start to see Cary Moon, People's Waterfront Coalition, Mike McGinn, and others get attacked as not wanting working class jobs, not wanting a working waterfront, not caring about how people are going to get to work, not caring about how the freight trucks are going to get around even though you're proposing a tunnel from the Port to Wallingford where - it's not exactly an industrial hub - there are some businesses there. But dumping all these cars out or in South Lake Union, it's like, what is going on here? It doesn't add up. But it became this powerful moment where a competing vision of the City - which those of us who saw a better future for Seattle didn't see any competition as necessary at all - those who are wedded to that model where we're going to drive everywhere, we're going to have trucks everywhere, really saw that under threat for other reasons. And they decided this is where they're going to make their stand. This is where they're going to make that fight. And that turned out to be pretty useful for the Port, the freight groups, the establishment democratic leaders who had already decided for their own reasons this is what they wanted too. [00:19:11] Mike McGinn: It's important to recognize too, in this, is to follow the money. And I think that this is true for highway construction generally. You have a big section of the economy - there's a section of the economy that believes in it, as Robert was saying, right? And I do think the culture war stuff is fully there - that somehow or another a bike lane in an industrial area will cause the failure of business. Although if you went to the bike - outside the industrial building - you'll find a bunch of the workers' bike there, right? Because it's affordable and efficient. So there's this weird belief that just isn't true - that you can't accommodate industry and transit and walking and biking. Of course you can. And in fact, adding all the cars is bad for freight movement because of all the traffic jams. So there's that belief, but there's also a whole bunch of people - I mentioned Downtown property owners - that gets you to your Downtown Seattle Association. The value of their property is going to be dramatically enhanced by burying, by eliminating the waterfront highway. But then you also have all of the people who build highways and all of the people who support the people who build highways. Who's going to float $4 billion in bonds? It's going to be a Downtown law firm. And by the way, the person who worked for that Downtown law firm and did the bond work was the head of the greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time. So you have the engineering firms, you have the material providers, and then you have the union jobs that go with it. So really at this point - and this isn't just about the waterfront highway, this could be any highway expansion - you've captured the business community because a big chunk of the business community will get direct dollars from the government to them. And you've actually captured a significant chunk of the labor community as well, because labor fights for labor jobs. In the big picture, service workers are taking transit, service workers need housing in town, and you can start to see a split - like in my ultimate run for mayor, I won some service worker unions, never won any construction trades. In fact, they held a rally my first year in office to denounce me, right? Because I was standing in the way of jobs. So that's a really powerful coalition. And I think what you see today in the country as a whole - as you know, I'm the ED of America Walks, so I get to see a lot more - this is a pattern. Highways aren't really supported by the public. They don't go to the public for public votes on highways anymore - the public wouldn't support it. And in fact, the data suggests the public gets that building more highway lanes won't solve everything. But you've got a big, big chunk of the economy that's gotten extremely used to billions and billions of dollars flowing into their pockets. And they need to protect that in every year. So you get that level of intensity around - Look, we're talking about $4 billion on the waterfront and a bunch of that money's coming to us. Better believe it's a good idea, and what are you talking about, climate? [00:22:03] Robert Cruickshank: You talk about public votes, and I think there are three crucial public votes we got to talk about. One is 2007, when these advisory votes are on the ballot - and they're not binding, but they're advisory. Do you want to rebuild the viaduct or build a tunnel? They both get rejected. And then the next big vote is 2009, the mayoral election, where Mike McGinn becomes mayor - in part by channeling public frustration at this giant boondoggle. And then ultimately, the last public vote on this, 2011 - in June, I believe it was, it was in August - about whether we go forward or not and the public by this point, fatigued and beaten down by The Seattle Times, decides let's just move on from this. [00:22:43] Mike McGinn: There's no other alternative. And it is worth returning to that early vote, because it was such a fascinating moment, because - I think the mayor's office didn't want to put his expansive tunnel option in a direct vote against the new elevated, fearing it would lose. So they engineered an agreement with the governor that each one would get a separate up or down vote. And by the way, Tim Ceis, the Deputy Mayor at the time, called in the Sierra Club, briefed us on it, and one of our members said - What would happen if they both got voted down? And Deputy Mayor Ceis said - by the way, Tim Ceis has got a big contract right now from Mayor Harrell, longtime tunnel supporter. Tim Ceis is the consultant for most of the business side candidates. Tim Burgess, another big supporter of the tunnel, now works for Mayor Harrell. Oh, and Christine Gregoire has been hired by the biggest corporations in the region to do their work for them as well. So there's a pretty good payoff if you stick around and support the right side of this stuff. But anyway, Mayor Ceis, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, when said, What happens if they're both voted down? He goes - Well, that would be chaos. You don't want that, do you? And I remember all of us just kind of looked at each other - and we all went out on the sidewalk, there were like six of us. And we went - We want that, right? And so we joined in and supported the No and No campaign. And The Stranger came in really hard. And I think Erica Barnett wrote the articles. And Cary Moon was in on it. And the defeat of that, for the first time, opened up the possibility - Well, let's think about something else. And so a stakeholder group was formed. Cary Moon was appointed. Mike O'Brien was appointed. The waterfront guys were appointed. And the Downtown folks were appointed. And the labor folks were appointed. And I think a really important part of the story here is that it was advisory - they weren't making the decisions, it was advisory. But they got to a point at which the head of the State DOT, the head of the Seattle DOT, and the head of the King County DOT all expressed to their respective executives that surface transit worked and was worth it. And this was extremely distressing to the business community. So they mounted a big lobbying push and went straight to Gregoire. And Gregoire, for the first time, became a tunnel supporter. And they were promised that this new tunneling technology - the deep bore tunnel - would solve the cost issues of the deep bore tunnel. And not only that, the state's commitment, which to date was $2.4 billion - they had committed $2.4 billion to a rebuild - the state wouldn't have to pay anymore, because the Port would put in $300 million and they would raise $400 million from tolling. And coincidentally, the amount they thought they could raise from tolling was the exact amount needed to meet the projected cost of using the deep bore tunnel boring machine. So the deal was cut and announced. And the whole stakeholder group and the recommendations from the DOT heads were abandoned. And that occurred, basically, late 2008, early 2009 - the deal was made. And that was about the time that I was contemplating - well, I think I'd already decided to run, but I had not yet announced. [00:26:14] Crystal Fincher: And this was an interesting time, especially during that vote. Because at that time, I had an eye into what the business community was doing and thinking, and it was clear that their numbers didn't add up. [00:26:26] Mike McGinn: Oh my God - no. [00:26:28] Crystal Fincher: But they just did not want to face that. And what they knew is they had enough money and resources to throw at this issue and to throw at a marketing effort to obfuscate that, that they wouldn't have to worry about it. And there was this sense of offense, of indignation that - Who are these people trying to come up and tell us that we don't need freight capacity, that we don't need - that this extra highway capacity, don't they understand how important these freeways are? Who are these people who just don't understand how our economy works? [00:27:02] Mike McGinn: They were the grownups who really understood how things worked. And we were the upstarts who didn't understand anything. But there's a great line from Willie Brown talking about - I think the Transbay Bridge, and Robert can correct the name, in California, which was way over budget. And people were lamenting that the early estimates had been made up. And he goes - Look, this is how it works. You just need to dig a hole in the ground so deep that the only way to fill it up is with money. I think that's pretty much the quote. So that's the strategy. You get it started. Of course you have rosy estimates. And then you just have that commitment, and it's the job of legislators to come up with the cost overruns, dollars later. [00:27:43] Robert Cruickshank: And I think it's so key to understand this moment here in the late 2000s, where the public had already weighed in. I remember voting - it was the last thing I voted on before I moved to California for four years. I'm like no - I was No and No. And that's where the Seattle voters were. They rejected both options. And then you start to hear, coming out of the stakeholder group - Okay, we can make the surface transit option work. And I left town thinking - Alright, that's what's going to happen, just like the Embarcadero in San Francisco and done. And the next thing I hear in late 2008, early 2009, there's this deal that's been cut and all of a sudden a deep bore tunnel is on the table. And this is Seattle politics in a nutshell. I think people look back and think that because we are this smart, progressive technocratic city - those people who live here are - we think that our government works the same way. And it doesn't. This is - time and time again, the public will make its expression felt. They'll weigh in with opinion poll or protest or vote. And the powers that be will say - Well, actually, we want to do this thing instead. We'll cook it up in a backroom. We're going to jam it on all of you, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, then we're going to start marshaling resources. We're gonna throw a bunch of money at it. We'll get The Seattle Times to weigh in and pound away at the enemy. And that's how politics works here - that's how so much of our transportation system is built and managed. And so people today, in 2023, looking at this monstrosity on the waterfront that we have now think - How did we get here? Who planned this? It was planned in a backroom without public involvement. And I think that's a thing that has to be understood because that, as we just heard, was baked in from the very start. [00:29:11] Mike McGinn: Well, Robert, the idea of a deep bore tunnel was brought forward by a representative of the Discovery Institute, who you may know as the folks that believe in creationism. [00:29:21] Robert Cruickshank: Well, and not only that, the Discovery Institute is responsible for turning Christopher Rufo from a failed Seattle City Council candidate in 2019 into a national figure. [00:29:31] Mike McGinn: The Discovery Institute, with money from local donors - major, very wealthy local folks - they actually had a long-term plan to turn all of 99 into a limited access freeway. It's like - we need to get rid of that First Avenue South and Highway 99 and Aurora Avenue stuff - all of that should be a freeway. So they were the architects of the idea of - Hey, this deep bore tunnel is the solution. But Robert's point is just right on - transportation policy was driven by power and money, not by transportation needs, or climate needs, or equity needs, or even local economy needs really. When you get right down to it, our city runs on transit - that's what really matters. Our city runs on the fact that it's a city where people can walk from place to place. The idea that our economic future was tied to a highway that would skip Downtown - the most valuable place in the Pacific Northwest, Downtown Seattle. No, that's not really what powers our economy. But it certainly worked for the people that were going to get the dollars that flowed from folks and for the people who own Downtown property. [00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: And I want to talk about money and power with this. Who were the people in power? What was the Council at that time? Who made these decisions? [00:30:50] Mike McGinn: The Council at the time was elected citywide. And I think some people have concerns about district representation, but one of the things that citywide elections meant at the time was that you had to run a citywide campaign, and that's expensive. There's no way to knock on enough doors citywide. I did not have a lot of money when I ran for mayor, but at least I had the media attention that would go to a mayoral candidate. A City Council candidate would kind of flow under the radar. So you had people come from different places, right? They might come from the business side, they might come from the labor side. But ultimately, they would tend to make peace with the other major players - because only business and only labor could finance a campaign. They were the only ones with the resources to do that. So the other interests - the environmentalists, the social service folks, neighborhood advocates of whatever stripe - we chose from amongst the candidates that were elevated by, they would unify - in some cases, the business and labor folks would unify around a candidate. In fact, that's what we saw in the last two mayoral elections as well, where they pick a candidate. And so this doesn't leave much room. So when I was mayor, almost the entire council was aligned with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time, either endorsed by them or had made their peace with them so the challenger was not being financed. So Robert said something about those outsiders - I went under the radar screen as a candidate at the beginning of my campaign. When I entered the race, nobody was running because everybody thought that Greg Nickels had the institutional support locked down. [00:32:33] Crystal Fincher: But then a snowstorm happened. [00:32:35] Mike McGinn: Well, it was even before that - honestly, everybody thought that he could win. And long before the snowstorm, I was like - We're getting a new mayor. And I was actually looking around to try to figure out who it was going to be - because I wanted a mayor who actually believed in climate, who had my values. But nobody - I was looking through who the people were that might run, and it dawned on me - Well, nobody's going to run. But we're going to get a new mayor and I have my values - and I've actually run ballot measure campaigns and had a very modest base of support. So I was really the first one in the race that got any attention. So I got some great media attention off that. Then my opponent in the general, Joe Mallahan - whatever else you may think about Joe Mallahan - he actually saw it too. He saw that there was an opening. And then we were joined by a long-time City Councilmember, Jan Drago. And I remember the headline from The Seattle Times or the comments at the time was - Okay, now it's a real race. But it just really wasn't. So I was really under the radar screen in that race because they were disregarding me. But there was in fact a lot of anger about the tunnel. There was a lot of just - Greg, for whatever his positives or negatives that history will deal with - and by the way, I actually think Greg did a lot of good. I just was disappointed in his highway policies and his climate policies at the end of the day - I have a lot of respect for Greg Nickels, but he wasn't going to win that race. And I came out of the primary against Joe Mallahan. And all of a sudden we had these two outsiders and the business community's freaking out. All of it - I remember watching it - all of the support, the business support shifted to Joe. It took about a month, it took a few weeks. But all of a sudden - there was actually one week where I think I raised more money than he did, that was pretty unusual - and then all of a sudden all the money was pouring in. And boy, did Joe believe in that tunnel. And did Joe believe in what the Chamber of Commerce wanted to do. In fact, he believed in it so much that he believed that Seattle should pay cost overruns if there were cost overruns on the tunnel - an admission I got from him during the televised debate, I was shocked he admitted to it. [00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: I remember that debate. [00:34:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah. So you were kind of asking about how politics worked. It was really something. Yeah - here's another memory. About two weeks before the election, the City Council took - three weeks before the, two, three weeks, four weeks - they took a vote to say that the tunnel was their choice. Even though there's a mayoral election in which the tunnel is on the ballot, so to speak - in terms of the issues of the candidates - they took a vote for no reason to say it was a done deal. And then WSDOT released a video of the elevated collapsing in a highway, which is the first time a public disclosure request from a third party was ever given straight to a TV station, I think, in my experience in Seattle. I had Gregoire and the DOT folks down there working on that campaign too - their tunnel was threatened. So it really was something how - I indeed was kind of shocked at - it was such a learning experience for me - how much the ranks closed around this. I didn't appreciate it. I had my own nonprofit, I had been on stakeholder committees, I'd worked with a lot of people that weren't just Sierra Club members and neighborhood types. I'd worked with a lot of business people, many of whom had supported my nonprofit because they liked its vision. But they were very clear with me that as long as I supported the surface transit option, there was no way they could be associated with my run for mayor in any way, shape, or form - even if they liked me. It was a complete lockdown - right after the primary where Greg lost the primary and it was me and Joe, I was - Okay, open field running. I can now reach out to these people. There's no incumbent - maybe some of them can support me now. And they were abundantly clear on all of those phone calls that - Nope, can't do it. Until you change your position on the tunnel, we just can't do it. We have business in this town, Mike. We have relationships in this town. We cannot do that. So it was a real lockdown - politically. [00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: That was also a big learning experience for me - watching that consolidation, watching how not only were they fighting for the tunnel against you and making the fight against you a fight about the tunnel, but the enforcement to those third parties that you were talking about that - Hey, if you play ball with him, you're cut off. And those kinds of threats and that kind of dealing - watching that happen was very formative for me. I'm like - Okay, I see how this works, and this is kind of insidious. And if you are branded as an outsider, if you don't play ball, if you don't kiss the ring of the adults in the room - which is definitely what they considered themselves - then you're on the outs and they're at war. And it was really a war footing against you and the campaign. Who was on the Council at that time? [00:37:30] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. Let me see if I can go through the list. No, and it really, it was - your point about it was a war footing was not something that I fully, that I did not appreciate until actually going through that experience - how unified that would be. Excuse me. The City Council chair was Tim Burgess at the time. Bruce Harrell was on the Council. Sally Clark, Richard Conlin, Nick Licata. Mike O'Brien was running on the same platform as me with regard to the tunnel and he'd just been elected. Jean Godden, Sally Bagshaw. I hope I'm not leaving anything out - because - [00:38:04] Robert Cruickshank: Tom Rasmussen will forgive you. [00:38:06] Mike McGinn: Tom Rasmussen. Yeah - because City Councilmembers would get really offended if you didn't thank them publicly - that was another thing I had to learn. You have to publicly thank any other politician on stage with you or they held a grudge. Yeah. So I had - I didn't know all the politicians' rules when I started. [00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: There are so many rules. [00:38:27] Mike McGinn: There are so many, there's so many rules. But really what you saw then was that the Council tended to move in lockstep on many issues - because if they all voted together and they all worked citywide, there was protection. None of them could be singled out. So it was very - and it's not to say that some of them didn't take principled votes and would find themselves on an 8-1 position sometimes, but for the most part, it was much, much safer to be - it was much, much safer to vote as a group. And they tended to do that. And they had coalesced around the tunnel, except for O'Brien. And that could not be shaken by anything we brought to bear. [00:39:04] Robert Cruickshank: And this is wrapped up in not just the electoral politics, but the power politics. Because Mike McGinn comes in - mayor leading the 7th floor of City Hall, the head of City government - and smart guy, nice guy, willing to talk to anybody. But is not from their crew, is not from that group. And as Crystal and Mike said, the ranks were closed from the start. This is - again, 2009, 2010 - when nationally Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying, It's his ambition to make Obama a one-term president. I don't know if he's ever caught on record, but I would be quite certain that Tim Burgess would have said the exact same thing - that his ambition was to make Mike McGinn a one-term mayor. As it turned out in 2013, Tim Burgess wanted his job - one of the candidates running for it. So these are all people who have a reason to close ranks against Mike McGinn and to use a tunnel as a bludgeon against him to do so. [00:39:58] Mike McGinn: There were other bludgeons. After I won the general election and before I took office, they passed their annual budget - they cut the mayor's office budget by a third before I even took office. Just boom - I know - they were determined, they were determined. And so that was when the planning - that council then and with WSDOT - that was when basically the contours of the waterfront were locked into place, including what we now see as that very wide surface road. That was that Council. So if you're wondering, if you're looking at that going - Okay, wow, who decided that and where did it come from? Again, our current mayor and his current advisor and others - they've always been for that. Building that big surface road has always been the plan to go along with the tunnel, because highway capacity was their highest priority. And the park on the waterfront, along with a lot of money into the aquarium and into these new structures - that's their signature thing for so many other people. But the idea that you should, that there was an opportunity to transform our transportation system and transform our city to make it more equitable and climate friendly was never a priority in this process. Just wasn't. [00:41:20] Crystal Fincher: It was never a priority. It was never seriously considered. And to me, through this process - lots of people know, have talked about it on the show before - I actually didn't start off Team McGinn. I wound up Team McGinn - didn't start off that way. But through that - and you won me over with logic - it was you being proven right on several things. You pointed out that their projections, their traffic projections were just so far out of left field that there was no way that they were going to come close. And they even had to come down on their projections before we even saw the traffic - the actual traffic turned out to be lower. You were right on that one - the laughable - [00:41:59] Mike McGinn: They're under 40,000 cars a day - for a highway that was carrying 110,000 cars a day beforehand. So even as a traffic solution - to put that into context, 40,000 cars a day is like the Ballard Bridge. And I can guarantee you the replacement costs of the Ballard Bridge is not $4 billion or $3.1 billion. The E Line, I think, carries 15,000 people a day. Metro carries 220,000 people a day. What you could do with that $3.1 billion or $4 billion in terms of bus lanes, bike lanes, rolling stock for Metro, maybe pay raises for bus drivers so that we could actually have service - you could do so much with those billions of dollars. And we put it all into moving 40,000 cars a day? It's just pathetic. That's three Rapid Ride lines we could have had for a 10th of the cost, or even less. I think the investments in Rapid Ride lines are about $50-100 million a line to make the capital investments to make it work. So the waste - even if you don't care about climate, the waste of dollars - and who's paying those taxes? To a great degree, we have the most regressive state and local tax system in the nation. And we'll have a ballot measure soon, and I know a lot of environmentalists will be out there if the package spends for the right thing saying - Hey, we need money for local streets. Imagine if we'd taken that gas tax money and the Legislature had allowed cities and towns to use it to improve their streets - which they can do. I know that the constitution says highway purposes, but when you read highway purposes, it says roads and bridges. It includes everything. You can use gas taxes for anything that improves the road. And they do. WSDOT has used gas taxes to pay for bike lanes and sidewalks. It's legal. That's a choice. So we're driving around potholed streets. We have - we're putting up little plastic dividers because we care more about the car getting hurt than the bicyclist on the other side of that plastic divider. We're watching our transit service melt away because we can't pay bus drivers enough. But hey, man, somebody's got a really rapid - 3,000 people a day get to skip Downtown in their private vehicles. Where are our priorities for equity? Where are the priorities for economy, or even just plain old-fashioned fiscal prudence? None of that was there - because all of those dollars were going to fund the needs of the most powerful people in the City. And they captured those dollars - and all of us will pay the taxes, all of us will breathe the smoky air, and all of us will watch our streets deteriorate and our transit service evaporate. [00:44:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And to me, it was such a foundational lesson that the people that we have making decisions really matter - and that we have to really explore their records, their donors, their histories - because over and over again, we look at the decisions that wind up being made that frequently conflict with campaign promises, but that very, very rarely conflict with their donor rolls. [00:45:16] Mike McGinn: And yes - and every one of them knows how to make the value statements. So if I had any advice for people in this year's election - everyone is going to say they care about housing, everyone's going to say they think biking safe. I don't - one of the things that I came away with - I don't care about the goals you put into some policy anymore. Show me the hard physical action you will take that might piss somebody off, but you're willing to do it because it's right. And if you can't do that, then your value statements are meaningless. So take a look - who actually, and that's the question I always ask candidates for office - Tell me about a time you did something hard that might've caused you criticism, but you did it because it was right. Or that you made somebody who was an ally or friend upset, but you did it because it was right. Tell me about that time. [00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And to your point and learning through just watching how people operated through that and some other processes - but that certainly was a big learning for me - is the role of coalitions, the role of accountability, and understanding. You have always had your finger on the pulse of Seattle, really - you're extraordinarily good at that. You're actually - both of you - are great strategists. But our political class is so detached from that sometimes - certainly I'm feeling frustration at some recent actions by our Legislature - we just had our special session day where they increased criminalization of substances, personal possession of substances - just reflecting on legislation to provide school, kids with free meals at school, things that seem like really basic and foundational that we should be able to land this. If we can call a special session to hand Boeing billions of dollars, we should be able to feed kids, right? [00:47:00] Mike McGinn: At the time we were cutting school budgets - when we found money for that. But I don't want to be too gloomy. And then I want to turn it over to Robert to get a last word in here, 'cause I just loved - his analysis is so awesome. I don't want to be too gloomy because - I look at what happened in the Legislature this year on housing, that we're finally going to allow housing, people to build more housing in places so people can actually live closer to their jobs and live more affordably. 10 years ago, we would have thought that was impossible. There's a lot of hard organizing that did it. At America Walks, we're the host of the Freeway Fighters Networks - there are people in 40 cities or more around the country that are organizing to remove highways. And while it's just a small amount of money compared to the amount going to highway expansion, there's actually federal funds to study and remove highways. So it's a long, hard slog. What felt for us - for Robert and me and Cary Moon and others fighting this - which felt like an impossible fight at the time is a fight that is now winning in places. Not winning enough - we're not winning fast enough - but it can change. And so that's - I don't want to be too negative. They got money, but organizing and people - and we actually have the public with us on this, just like we have the public with us on housing. So we just have to do more. We just got to keep at it, folks - got to keep at it. We can win this one. Don't allow this story of how hard it was to deal with the unified political class in the City of Seattle for their climate arson - should not deter you. It should inspire you, 'cause I actually won the mayor's office and we actually did do a lot of good. And the next fight is right in front of us again today, so get in it people. We need you. [00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's spot on. And I remember coming to work in your office at the very beginning of 2011, when it seemed like the tunnel was just dominating discussion, but not in the mayor's office, right? When I joined, I fully expected to be like - roll my sleeves up to take on that tunnel. Instead, I'm working on the mayor's jobs plan, the Families and Education Levy, on transit. That's the stuff that was really getting done, and I think McGinn left a really great legacy on that. But we didn't win the tunnel fight. And I think we've diagnosed many of the reasons why, but one thing that really stands out to me as I look back from 12, 13 years distance is we didn't have the same density of genuinely progressive and social democratic organizations and people and leaders in Seattle that we have now. I think that matters because Mike's been talking about what's the next fight. I think one of the big fights coming up next year - when it comes time to renew that Move Seattle Levy - that's nearly a billion dollars that's going to be on the table. And we keep getting promised - when we are asked to approve these massive levies - that a lot of that money is going to go to safe streets, it's going to go to protect vulnerable users, we're going to do something to finally get towards Vision Zero. And instead it all gets taken away to build more car infrastructure. At what point do we finally stand - literally in the road - and say, No more. Do we look at the broken promises on the waterfront where we were promised a beautiful pedestrian-friendly waterfront and got another car sewer? We're going to have to organize and come together. We have many more groups now and many more leaders who are willing to stand up and say - We're not passing this levy unless it actually focuses on safe streets, unless it focuses on pedestrians and cyclists and transit users, and gives iron-clad promises to make sure stuff gets built so that some future mayor can't just walk in and start canceling projects left and right that we were promised. That's the lesson I take from this is - we're better organized now, we have more resources now, but it's still going to be a slog, and we're going to have to stand our ground - otherwise we get rolled. [00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I thank you both for this conversation today - reflections on the tunnel fight, how it came to be, what it was like in the middle of it, and the lessons that we take moving forward in these elections that we have coming up this year, next year, and beyond. Thanks so much for the conversation. [00:50:50] Mike McGinn: Thank you, Crystal. [00:50:51] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you - it's been wonderful. [00:50:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

On this re-air, Crystal chats with former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and his former Senior Communications Advisor Robert Cruickshank about the missed opportunity for generational impact through how decisions were made about Seattle's waterfront and the SR99 tunnel. Mike and Robert review how the vision of the scrappy People's Waterfront Coalition, centered around making a prized public space accessible for all while taking the climate crisis on by transforming our transportation system, nearly won the fight against those who prioritized maintaining highway capacity and those who prioritized increasing Downtown property values.  The conversation then highlights how those with power and money used their outsized influence to make backroom decisions - despite flawed arguments and little public enthusiasm for their proposal - leaving Seattle with an underutilized deep bore tunnel and a car-centric waterfront. Some of the decision makers are still active in local politics - including current Mayor Bruce Harrell and his current advisor Tim Burgess. With important elections ahead, Crystal, Mike and Robert discuss how political decisions tend to conflict with campaign promises rather than donor rolls, how proven action is a better indicator than value statements, and how today's dense ecosystem of progressive leaders and organizations can take inspiration and win the next fight. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, and Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.   Mike McGinn Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks.  He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State's walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change.   Robert Cruickshank Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013.   Resources “Seattle Waterfront History Interviews: Cary Moon, Waterfront Coalition” by Dominic Black from HistoryLink   “State Route 99 tunnel - Options and political debate" from Wikipedia   “Remembering broken promises about Bertha” by Josh Cohen from Curbed Seattle   “Fewer drivers in Seattle's Highway 99 tunnel could create need for bailout” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times   “Surface Highway Undermines Seattle's Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist   “Seattle Prepares to Open Brand New Elliott Way Highway Connector” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Robert Cruickshank and former Mayor Mike McGinn to the show to talk about something that a lot of people have been thinking about, talking about recently - and that is Seattle's new waterfront. We feel like we've spent a decade under construction - from a deep bore tunnel to the tunnel machine getting stuck - that's not even covering all the debate before that, but all of the kind of follies and foibles and challenges that have beset the process of arriving at the waterfront that we have now. And now that we are getting the big reveal, a lot of people have feelings about it. So I thought we would talk about it with one of the people who was at the forefront of criticisms of the tunnel and calling out some red flags that turned out to be a very wise warning - several wise warnings that have come to pass, unfortunately - for not listening to them. But I want to start early on in the beginning, both of you - and I had a short stint in the mayor's office - worked on this, talked about this on the campaign, really got it. But when did you first hear that we needed to replace the viaduct and there were some different opinions about how to make that happen? [00:02:06] Mike McGinn: Okay, so I'm sure I can't pin down a date, but the really important date was, of course, the Nisqually earthquake in 2001. And so it gave the Alaska Way Viaduct a good shake - the decks weren't tied into the columns, the columns were on fill, which could liquefy - and everybody understood that if that quake had been a little stronger and harder, the elevated would come down. Now you might think that that would call for immediately closing the roadway for safety reasons, but what it did call for was for reconstructing it. And you have to remember that highway was really one of the very first limited access highways - it was built long ago and it was just at the end of its useful life anyway. Certainly not built to modern seismic standards or modern engineering standards. So the conversation immediately started and I don't know when everything started to settle into different roles, but the Mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels, was immediately a proponent for a tunnel - and a much larger and more expensive tunnel than what was ultimately built. And it would have been a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront that included a new seawall. So they thought they were solving two things at one time - because the seawall too was rotting away, very old, very unstable. But it would have gone all the way under South Lake Union and emerged onto Aurora Avenue further north, it would have had entrances and exits to Western and Elliott. And I seem to remember the quoted price was like $11 billion. And the state - governor at the time was Christine Gregoire - they were - No, we're replacing the highway. We don't have $11 billion for Seattle. And of course had the support of a lot of lawmakers for obvious reasons - we're not going to give Seattle all that money, we want all that highway money for our districts. And those were immediately presented as the alternatives. And so much of the credit has to go to Cary Moon, who lived on the waterfront and started something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. I think Grant Cogswell, a former City Council candidate - now runs a bookstore down in Mexico City, but wrote a book about the Monorail, worked on the different Monorail campaigns before that - they launched something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. And the basic proposition was - We don't need a highway. This is a great opportunity to get rid of the highway and have a surface street, but if you amp up the transit service - if we invest in transit instead - we can accommodate everyone. And so that was really - as it started - and actually I remember being outside City Hall one day, going to some stakeholder meeting - I went to so many different stakeholder meetings. And I remember Tim Ceis saying to me - he was the Deputy Mayor at the time - You're not supporting that Cary Moon idea - I mean, that's just crazy. I was - Well, actually, Tim. So the Sierra Club was - I was a volunteer leader in the Sierra Club - and the Sierra Club was one of the first organizations - I'm sure there were others, I shouldn't overstate it - but the Sierra Club was persuaded by the wisdom of Cary's idea and supported it in that day. And so that was really how the three different options got launched - no public process, no analysis, no description of what our needs were. The mayor went to a solution, the governor went to a solution - and it was up to members of the public to try to ask them to slow down, stop, and look at something different. [00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: And Robert, how did you first engage with this issue? [00:05:47] Robert Cruickshank: For me, I had just moved to Seattle the first time in the fall of 2001 - so it was about six months after the Nisqually quake - and I came from the Bay Area. And that was where another earthquake had damaged another waterfront highway, the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. And that was where San Francisco had voted - after that quake had damaged their viaduct beyond repair - they voted to tear it down and replace it with the Embarcadero Waterfront, which is a six-lane arterial but they built a lot more transit there. So they did the - what we might call the surface transit option - and it worked really well. It was beautiful. It still is. And so when I came up here and started to learn a little bit about the place I was living and the legacy of the Nisqually quake, I thought - Oh, why don't you just do the same thing here? It worked so well in San Francisco. Let's just tear down this unsightly monstrosity on the waterfront and replace it with a surface boulevard and put in a bunch of transit - San Francisco's made it work successfully. And the more I learned about Seattle, I realized there's a legacy of that here, too. This is a city where we had a freeway revolt, where activists came together and killed the RH Thomson freeway, which would have destroyed the Arboretum. They killed the Bay Freeway, which would have destroyed Pike Place Market. And so I naturally assumed - as being a relatively new resident - that Seattle would stay in that tradition and welcome the opportunity to tear this down and build a great waterfront for people, not cars. But as we'll talk about in a moment, we have a lot of business interests and freight interests and others who had a different vision - who didn't share that community-rooted vision. And I think at numerous points along the way, though, you see people of Seattle saying - No, this is not what we want for our waterfront. We have an opportunity now with the fact that this viaduct nearly collapsed, as Mike mentioned, in the Nisqually quake - we have an opportunity for something really wonderful here. And so I think Cary Moon and then Mike McGinn and others tapped into that - tapped into a really strong community desire to have a better waterfront. I wasn't that politically engaged at the time in the 2000s - I was just a grad student at UW - but just talking to folks who I knew, anytime this came up - God, wouldn't it be wonderful down there if this was oriented towards people and not cars, and we took that thing down? So I think one of the things you're going to see is this contest between the vision that many of us in Seattle had and still have - this beautiful location, beautiful vista on Elliott Bay, that should be for the people of the city - and those in power who have a very different vision and don't really want to share power or ultimately the right-of-way with We the People. [00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And I was involved in some things at the time - some curious coalitions - but definitely I was around a lot of people who favored either rebuilding the viaduct or the tunnel. Definitely not this roads and transit option - there's no way that's workable. That's pie-in-the-sky talk from those loony greenies over there. What are you talking about? But as this went on - I think no matter what camp people were in - there was always a clear vision articulated and people really focused on the opportunity that this represented, and I think correctly characterized it as - this is one of these generational decisions that we get to make that is going to impact the next generation or two and beyond. And there's an opportunity - the waterfront felt very disconnected with the way things were constructed - it was not easy just to go from downtown to the waterfront. It wasn't friendly for pedestrians. It wasn't friendly for tourists. It just did not feel like a world-class waterfront in a world-class city, and how we see that in so many other cities. You talk about the decision with the Embarcadero, Robert, and looking at - that definitely seemed like a definitive step forward. This was sold as - yeah, we can absolutely take a step forward and finally fix this waterfront and make it what it should have been the whole time. As you thought about the opportunity that this represented, what was the opportunity to you and what did you hear other people saying that they wanted this to be? [00:09:38] Mike McGinn: Yeah, so I think there are - I think that's really important, because I don't think there was a real discussion of what the vision was. People will say there was, but there really wasn't. Because what was baked in and what you're referring to is - well, of course you have to build automobile capacity to replace the existing automobile capacity, right? In fact, this state is still building more highways across the state in the misguided belief that more highway capacity will somehow or another do some good. So this idea that you have to replace and expand highway capacity is extremely powerful in Washington state and across the country. And there were very few examples of highway removal, so that was just a real challenge in the first place - that somehow or other the first priority has to be moving automobiles. For me, at that time I had become - the issue of climate had really penetrated me at that point. And in fact, when Greg Nickels took office and the Sierra Club endorsed him over Paul Schell - I was a local leader in the Sierra Club and a state leader in the Sierra Club - and my goal was that Mayor Nickels would do more than Paul Schell. And Paul Schell, the prior mayor, had done some good things. He had made Seattle City Light climate neutral - we'd gotten out of coal plants and we didn't purchase power from coal plants. He was really progressive on a number of environmental issues and we wanted Mayor Nickels to do more - and Mayor Nickels had stepped up. So we put on a campaign to urge him to do more. And he had stepped up to start something called the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative - which was the City of Seattle was going to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol, which was like the Paris Agreement of its day. And that was - it set an emissions reduction target by a date in the future. And that was really great - in fact, over a thousand cities around the country signed up to the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative. And I was appointed to a stakeholder group with other leaders - Denis Hayes from the Bullitt Foundation and others - to develop the first climate action plan for a city. Al Gore showed up at the press conference for it - it was a big - it was a BFD and a lot of excitement. And one of the things that was abundantly clear through that process of cataloging the emissions in the City of Seattle and coming up with a plan to reduce them was that our single largest source of emissions at that time was the transportation sector. We'd already gotten off of coal power under Mayor Schell - we received almost all of our electricity from hydroelectric dams. We had good conservation programs. Unlike other parts of the country, transportation was the biggest. Now what's fascinating is now - I don't know if I want to do the math - almost 20 years later, now what we see is that the whole country is in the same place. We're replacing coal and natural gas power plants. And now nationally, the single largest source of emissions is transportation. So how do you fix that? If we're serious about climate - and I thought we should be - because the scientists were telling us about heat waves. They were telling us about forest fires that would blanket the region in smoke. They were telling us about storms that would be bigger than we'd ever seen before. And flooding like we'd never seen and declining snowpack. And it was all going to happen in our futures. Honestly, I remember those predictions from the scientists because they're in the headlines today, every day. So what do we do to stop that? So I was - I had little kids, man - I had little kids, I had three kids. How are we going to stop this? Well, it's Seattle needs to lead - that's what has to happen. We're the progressive city. We're the first one out with a plan. We're going to show how we're going to do it. And if our biggest source is transportation, we should fix that. Well, it should seem obvious that the first thing you should do is stop building and expanding highways, and maybe even change some of the real estate used for cars and make it real estate for walking, biking, and transit. That's pretty straightforward. You also have to work on more housing. And this all led me to starting a nonprofit around all of these things and led to the Sierra Club - I think at a national level - our chapter was much further forward than any other chapter on upzones and backyard cottages and making the transition. So to me, this was the big - that was the vision. That was the opportunity. We're going to tear this down. We're going to make a massive investment in changing the system, and this in fact could be a really transformative piece. That's what motivated me. That climate argument wasn't landing with a whole bunch of other interests. There was certainly a vision from the Downtown and Downtown property owners and residents that - boy, wouldn't it be great to get rid of that elevated highway because that's terrible. There was also a vision from the people who still believed in highway capacity and that includes some of our major employers at the time and today - Boeing and Microsoft, they have facilities in the suburbs around Seattle - they think we need highway capacity. As well as all of the Port businesses, as well as all the maritime unions - thought that this highway connection here was somehow critical to their survival, the industrial areas. And then they wanted the capacity. So there were very strong competing visions. And I think it's fair to say that highway capacity is a vision - we've seen that one is now fulfilled. The second priority was an enhanced physical environment to enhance the property values of Downtown property owners. And they cut the deal with the highway capacity people - okay, we're here for your highway capacity, but we have to get some amenities. And the climate folks, I'm not seeing it - never a priority of any of the leaders - just wasn't a priority. [00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: How did you see those factions come into play and break down, Robert? [00:15:48] Robert Cruickshank: It was interesting. This all comes to a head in the late 2000s. And remembering back to that time, this is where Seattle is leading the fight to take on the climate and the fight against George W. Bush, who was seen as this avatar of and deeply connected to the oil industry. Someone who - one of his first things when he took office - he did was withdraw the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, which is the earlier version of what's now known as the Paris Agreement - global agreement to try to lower emissions. And so Seattle, in resisting Bush - that's where Greg Nickels became a national figure by leading the Mayors' Climate Action Group - not just say we're going to take on climate, we're going to do something about really de facto fighting back against Bush. And then Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore comes out with An Inconvenient Truth. And by 2007, people in Seattle are talking a lot about climate and how we need to do something about climate. But then what you see happening is the limits of that - what are people really actually willing to do and willing to support? The other piece that comes together, I think - in the 2000s - is a revival of the City itself. Seattle spends the late 20th century after the Boeing bust - since the 70s "Will the last person out of Seattle turn out the lights," recovering in the 80s somewhat, recovering in the 90s, and then the tech boom. And by the 2000s, Seattle is a destination city for young people coming to live here and living in apartments and working in the tech industry. I think that unsettles a lot of people. One thing that really stood out to me about the discussion about what to do on the waterfront was this vision from old school folks - like Joel Connelly and others - we've got to preserve that working waterfront. And it's very much the sense that blue collar working class labor is under threat - not from corporate power, but from a 20-something millennial with a laptop working at Amazon who comes to Seattle and thinks - Gosh, why is this ugly viaduct here? It's unsafe. Why don't we just tear it down and have a wonderful waterfront view? And those who are offended by this idea - who are so wedded to the 20th century model that we're going to drive everywhere, cars, freedom - this is where you see the limits of willingness to actually do something on climate. People don't actually want to give up their cars. They're afraid they're going to sacrifice their way of life. And you start to see this weird but powerful constellation come together where rather than having a discussion about transportation planning or even a discussion about climate action, we're having this weird discussion about culture. And it becomes a culture war. And the thing about a culture war is people pushing change are never actually trying to fight a war. They're just - This is a good idea. Why don't we do this? We all say these - we care about these values. And the people who don't want it just dig in and get really nasty and fight back. And so you start to see Cary Moon, People's Waterfront Coalition, Mike McGinn, and others get attacked as not wanting working class jobs, not wanting a working waterfront, not caring about how people are going to get to work, not caring about how the freight trucks are going to get around even though you're proposing a tunnel from the Port to Wallingford where - it's not exactly an industrial hub - there are some businesses there. But dumping all these cars out or in South Lake Union, it's like, what is going on here? It doesn't add up. But it became this powerful moment where a competing vision of the City - which those of us who saw a better future for Seattle didn't see any competition as necessary at all - those who are wedded to that model where we're going to drive everywhere, we're going to have trucks everywhere, really saw that under threat for other reasons. And they decided this is where they're going to make their stand. This is where they're going to make that fight. And that turned out to be pretty useful for the Port, the freight groups, the establishment democratic leaders who had already decided for their own reasons this is what they wanted too. [00:19:11] Mike McGinn: It's important to recognize too, in this, is to follow the money. And I think that this is true for highway construction generally. You have a big section of the economy - there's a section of the economy that believes in it, as Robert was saying, right? And I do think the culture war stuff is fully there - that somehow or another a bike lane in an industrial area will cause the failure of business. Although if you went to the bike - outside the industrial building - you'll find a bunch of the workers' bike there, right? Because it's affordable and efficient. So there's this weird belief that just isn't true - that you can't accommodate industry and transit and walking and biking. Of course you can. And in fact, adding all the cars is bad for freight movement because of all the traffic jams. So there's that belief, but there's also a whole bunch of people - I mentioned Downtown property owners - that gets you to your Downtown Seattle Association. The value of their property is going to be dramatically enhanced by burying, by eliminating the waterfront highway. But then you also have all of the people who build highways and all of the people who support the people who build highways. Who's going to float $4 billion in bonds? It's going to be a Downtown law firm. And by the way, the person who worked for that Downtown law firm and did the bond work was the head of the greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time. So you have the engineering firms, you have the material providers, and then you have the union jobs that go with it. So really at this point - and this isn't just about the waterfront highway, this could be any highway expansion - you've captured the business community because a big chunk of the business community will get direct dollars from the government to them. And you've actually captured a significant chunk of the labor community as well, because labor fights for labor jobs. In the big picture, service workers are taking transit, service workers need housing in town, and you can start to see a split - like in my ultimate run for mayor, I won some service worker unions, never won any construction trades. In fact, they held a rally my first year in office to denounce me, right? Because I was standing in the way of jobs. So that's a really powerful coalition. And I think what you see today in the country as a whole - as you know, I'm the ED of America Walks, so I get to see a lot more - this is a pattern. Highways aren't really supported by the public. They don't go to the public for public votes on highways anymore - the public wouldn't support it. And in fact, the data suggests the public gets that building more highway lanes won't solve everything. But you've got a big, big chunk of the economy that's gotten extremely used to billions and billions of dollars flowing into their pockets. And they need to protect that in every year. So you get that level of intensity around - Look, we're talking about $4 billion on the waterfront and a bunch of that money's coming to us. Better believe it's a good idea, and what are you talking about, climate? [00:22:03] Robert Cruickshank: You talk about public votes, and I think there are three crucial public votes we got to talk about. One is 2007, when these advisory votes are on the ballot - and they're not binding, but they're advisory. Do you want to rebuild the viaduct or build a tunnel? They both get rejected. And then the next big vote is 2009, the mayoral election, where Mike McGinn becomes mayor - in part by channeling public frustration at this giant boondoggle. And then ultimately, the last public vote on this, 2011 - in June, I believe it was, it was in August - about whether we go forward or not and the public by this point, fatigued and beaten down by The Seattle Times, decides let's just move on from this. [00:22:43] Mike McGinn: There's no other alternative. And it is worth returning to that early vote, because it was such a fascinating moment, because - I think the mayor's office didn't want to put his expansive tunnel option in a direct vote against the new elevated, fearing it would lose. So they engineered an agreement with the governor that each one would get a separate up or down vote. And by the way, Tim Ceis, the Deputy Mayor at the time, called in the Sierra Club, briefed us on it, and one of our members said - What would happen if they both got voted down? And Deputy Mayor Ceis said - by the way, Tim Ceis has got a big contract right now from Mayor Harrell, longtime tunnel supporter. Tim Ceis is the consultant for most of the business side candidates. Tim Burgess, another big supporter of the tunnel, now works for Mayor Harrell. Oh, and Christine Gregoire has been hired by the biggest corporations in the region to do their work for them as well. So there's a pretty good payoff if you stick around and support the right side of this stuff. But anyway, Mayor Ceis, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, when said, What happens if they're both voted down? He goes - Well, that would be chaos. You don't want that, do you? And I remember all of us just kind of looked at each other - and we all went out on the sidewalk, there were like six of us. And we went - We want that, right? And so we joined in and supported the No and No campaign. And The Stranger came in really hard. And I think Erica Barnett wrote the articles. And Cary Moon was in on it. And the defeat of that, for the first time, opened up the possibility - Well, let's think about something else. And so a stakeholder group was formed. Cary Moon was appointed. Mike O'Brien was appointed. The waterfront guys were appointed. And the Downtown folks were appointed. And the labor folks were appointed. And I think a really important part of the story here is that it was advisory - they weren't making the decisions, it was advisory. But they got to a point at which the head of the State DOT, the head of the Seattle DOT, and the head of the King County DOT all expressed to their respective executives that surface transit worked and was worth it. And this was extremely distressing to the business community. So they mounted a big lobbying push and went straight to Gregoire. And Gregoire, for the first time, became a tunnel supporter. And they were promised that this new tunneling technology - the deep bore tunnel - would solve the cost issues of the deep bore tunnel. And not only that, the state's commitment, which to date was $2.4 billion - they had committed $2.4 billion to a rebuild - the state wouldn't have to pay anymore, because the Port would put in $300 million and they would raise $400 million from tolling. And coincidentally, the amount they thought they could raise from tolling was the exact amount needed to meet the projected cost of using the deep bore tunnel boring machine. So the deal was cut and announced. And the whole stakeholder group and the recommendations from the DOT heads were abandoned. And that occurred, basically, late 2008, early 2009 - the deal was made. And that was about the time that I was contemplating - well, I think I'd already decided to run, but I had not yet announced. [00:26:14] Crystal Fincher: And this was an interesting time, especially during that vote. Because at that time, I had an eye into what the business community was doing and thinking, and it was clear that their numbers didn't add up. [00:26:26] Mike McGinn: Oh my God - no. [00:26:28] Crystal Fincher: But they just did not want to face that. And what they knew is they had enough money and resources to throw at this issue and to throw at a marketing effort to obfuscate that, that they wouldn't have to worry about it. And there was this sense of offense, of indignation that - Who are these people trying to come up and tell us that we don't need freight capacity, that we don't need - that this extra highway capacity, don't they understand how important these freeways are? Who are these people who just don't understand how our economy works? [00:27:02] Mike McGinn: They were the grownups who really understood how things worked. And we were the upstarts who didn't understand anything. But there's a great line from Willie Brown talking about - I think the Transbay Bridge, and Robert can correct the name, in California, which was way over budget. And people were lamenting that the early estimates had been made up. And he goes - Look, this is how it works. You just need to dig a hole in the ground so deep that the only way to fill it up is with money. I think that's pretty much the quote. So that's the strategy. You get it started. Of course you have rosy estimates. And then you just have that commitment, and it's the job of legislators to come up with the cost overruns, dollars later. [00:27:43] Robert Cruickshank: And I think it's so key to understand this moment here in the late 2000s, where the public had already weighed in. I remember voting - it was the last thing I voted on before I moved to California for four years. I'm like no - I was No and No. And that's where the Seattle voters were. They rejected both options. And then you start to hear, coming out of the stakeholder group - Okay, we can make the surface transit option work. And I left town thinking - Alright, that's what's going to happen, just like the Embarcadero in San Francisco and done. And the next thing I hear in late 2008, early 2009, there's this deal that's been cut and all of a sudden a deep bore tunnel is on the table. And this is Seattle politics in a nutshell. I think people look back and think that because we are this smart, progressive technocratic city - those people who live here are - we think that our government works the same way. And it doesn't. This is - time and time again, the public will make its expression felt. They'll weigh in with opinion poll or protest or vote. And the powers that be will say - Well, actually, we want to do this thing instead. We'll cook it up in a backroom. We're going to jam it on all of you, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, then we're going to start marshaling resources. We're gonna throw a bunch of money at it. We'll get The Seattle Times to weigh in and pound away at the enemy. And that's how politics works here - that's how so much of our transportation system is built and managed. And so people today, in 2023, looking at this monstrosity on the waterfront that we have now think - How did we get here? Who planned this? It was planned in a backroom without public involvement. And I think that's a thing that has to be understood because that, as we just heard, was baked in from the very start. [00:29:11] Mike McGinn: Well, Robert, the idea of a deep bore tunnel was brought forward by a representative of the Discovery Institute, who you may know as the folks that believe in creationism. [00:29:21] Robert Cruickshank: Well, and not only that, the Discovery Institute is responsible for turning Christopher Rufo from a failed Seattle City Council candidate in 2019 into a national figure. [00:29:31] Mike McGinn: The Discovery Institute, with money from local donors - major, very wealthy local folks - they actually had a long-term plan to turn all of 99 into a limited access freeway. It's like - we need to get rid of that First Avenue South and Highway 99 and Aurora Avenue stuff - all of that should be a freeway. So they were the architects of the idea of - Hey, this deep bore tunnel is the solution. But Robert's point is just right on - transportation policy was driven by power and money, not by transportation needs, or climate needs, or equity needs, or even local economy needs really. When you get right down to it, our city runs on transit - that's what really matters. Our city runs on the fact that it's a city where people can walk from place to place. The idea that our economic future was tied to a highway that would skip Downtown - the most valuable place in the Pacific Northwest, Downtown Seattle. No, that's not really what powers our economy. But it certainly worked for the people that were going to get the dollars that flowed from folks and for the people who own Downtown property. [00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: And I want to talk about money and power with this. Who were the people in power? What was the Council at that time? Who made these decisions? [00:30:50] Mike McGinn: The Council at the time was elected citywide. And I think some people have concerns about district representation, but one of the things that citywide elections meant at the time was that you had to run a citywide campaign, and that's expensive. There's no way to knock on enough doors citywide. I did not have a lot of money when I ran for mayor, but at least I had the media attention that would go to a mayoral candidate. A City Council candidate would kind of flow under the radar. So you had people come from different places, right? They might come from the business side, they might come from the labor side. But ultimately, they would tend to make peace with the other major players - because only business and only labor could finance a campaign. They were the only ones with the resources to do that. So the other interests - the environmentalists, the social service folks, neighborhood advocates of whatever stripe - we chose from amongst the candidates that were elevated by, they would unify - in some cases, the business and labor folks would unify around a candidate. In fact, that's what we saw in the last two mayoral elections as well, where they pick a candidate. And so this doesn't leave much room. So when I was mayor, almost the entire council was aligned with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time, either endorsed by them or had made their peace with them so the challenger was not being financed. So Robert said something about those outsiders - I went under the radar screen as a candidate at the beginning of my campaign. When I entered the race, nobody was running because everybody thought that Greg Nickels had the institutional support locked down. [00:32:33] Crystal Fincher: But then a snowstorm happened. [00:32:35] Mike McGinn: Well, it was even before that - honestly, everybody thought that he could win. And long before the snowstorm, I was like - We're getting a new mayor. And I was actually looking around to try to figure out who it was going to be - because I wanted a mayor who actually believed in climate, who had my values. But nobody - I was looking through who the people were that might run, and it dawned on me - Well, nobody's going to run. But we're going to get a new mayor and I have my values - and I've actually run ballot measure campaigns and had a very modest base of support. So I was really the first one in the race that got any attention. So I got some great media attention off that. Then my opponent in the general, Joe Mallahan - whatever else you may think about Joe Mallahan - he actually saw it too. He saw that there was an opening. And then we were joined by a long-time City Councilmember, Jan Drago. And I remember the headline from The Seattle Times or the comments at the time was - Okay, now it's a real race. But it just really wasn't. So I was really under the radar screen in that race because they were disregarding me. But there was in fact a lot of anger about the tunnel. There was a lot of just - Greg, for whatever his positives or negatives that history will deal with - and by the way, I actually think Greg did a lot of good. I just was disappointed in his highway policies and his climate policies at the end of the day - I have a lot of respect for Greg Nickels, but he wasn't going to win that race. And I came out of the primary against Joe Mallahan. And all of a sudden we had these two outsiders and the business community's freaking out. All of it - I remember watching it - all of the support, the business support shifted to Joe. It took about a month, it took a few weeks. But all of a sudden - there was actually one week where I think I raised more money than he did, that was pretty unusual - and then all of a sudden all the money was pouring in. And boy, did Joe believe in that tunnel. And did Joe believe in what the Chamber of Commerce wanted to do. In fact, he believed in it so much that he believed that Seattle should pay cost overruns if there were cost overruns on the tunnel - an admission I got from him during the televised debate, I was shocked he admitted to it. [00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: I remember that debate. [00:34:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah. So you were kind of asking about how politics worked. It was really something. Yeah - here's another memory. About two weeks before the election, the City Council took - three weeks before the, two, three weeks, four weeks - they took a vote to say that the tunnel was their choice. Even though there's a mayoral election in which the tunnel is on the ballot, so to speak - in terms of the issues of the candidates - they took a vote for no reason to say it was a done deal. And then WSDOT released a video of the elevated collapsing in a highway, which is the first time a public disclosure request from a third party was ever given straight to a TV station, I think, in my experience in Seattle. I had Gregoire and the DOT folks down there working on that campaign too - their tunnel was threatened. So it really was something how - I indeed was kind of shocked at - it was such a learning experience for me - how much the ranks closed around this. I didn't appreciate it. I had my own nonprofit, I had been on stakeholder committees, I'd worked with a lot of people that weren't just Sierra Club members and neighborhood types. I'd worked with a lot of business people, many of whom had supported my nonprofit because they liked its vision. But they were very clear with me that as long as I supported the surface transit option, there was no way they could be associated with my run for mayor in any way, shape, or form - even if they liked me. It was a complete lockdown - right after the primary where Greg lost the primary and it was me and Joe, I was - Okay, open field running. I can now reach out to these people. There's no incumbent - maybe some of them can support me now. And they were abundantly clear on all of those phone calls that - Nope, can't do it. Until you change your position on the tunnel, we just can't do it. We have business in this town, Mike. We have relationships in this town. We cannot do that. So it was a real lockdown - politically. [00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: That was also a big learning experience for me - watching that consolidation, watching how not only were they fighting for the tunnel against you and making the fight against you a fight about the tunnel, but the enforcement to those third parties that you were talking about that - Hey, if you play ball with him, you're cut off. And those kinds of threats and that kind of dealing - watching that happen was very formative for me. I'm like - Okay, I see how this works, and this is kind of insidious. And if you are branded as an outsider, if you don't play ball, if you don't kiss the ring of the adults in the room - which is definitely what they considered themselves - then you're on the outs and they're at war. And it was really a war footing against you and the campaign. Who was on the Council at that time? [00:37:30] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. Let me see if I can go through the list. No, and it really, it was - your point about it was a war footing was not something that I fully, that I did not appreciate until actually going through that experience - how unified that would be. Excuse me. The City Council chair was Tim Burgess at the time. Bruce Harrell was on the Council. Sally Clark, Richard Conlin, Nick Licata. Mike O'Brien was running on the same platform as me with regard to the tunnel and he'd just been elected. Jean Godden, Sally Bagshaw. I hope I'm not leaving anything out - because - [00:38:04] Robert Cruickshank: Tom Rasmussen will forgive you. [00:38:06] Mike McGinn: Tom Rasmussen. Yeah - because City Councilmembers would get really offended if you didn't thank them publicly - that was another thing I had to learn. You have to publicly thank any other politician on stage with you or they held a grudge. Yeah. So I had - I didn't know all the politicians' rules when I started. [00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: There are so many rules. [00:38:27] Mike McGinn: There are so many, there's so many rules. But really what you saw then was that the Council tended to move in lockstep on many issues - because if they all voted together and they all worked citywide, there was protection. None of them could be singled out. So it was very - and it's not to say that some of them didn't take principled votes and would find themselves on an 8-1 position sometimes, but for the most part, it was much, much safer to be - it was much, much safer to vote as a group. And they tended to do that. And they had coalesced around the tunnel, except for O'Brien. And that could not be shaken by anything we brought to bear. [00:39:04] Robert Cruickshank: And this is wrapped up in not just the electoral politics, but the power politics. Because Mike McGinn comes in - mayor leading the 7th floor of City Hall, the head of City government - and smart guy, nice guy, willing to talk to anybody. But is not from their crew, is not from that group. And as Crystal and Mike said, the ranks were closed from the start. This is - again, 2009, 2010 - when nationally Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying, It's his ambition to make Obama a one-term president. I don't know if he's ever caught on record, but I would be quite certain that Tim Burgess would have said the exact same thing - that his ambition was to make Mike McGinn a one-term mayor. As it turned out in 2013, Tim Burgess wanted his job - one of the candidates running for it. So these are all people who have a reason to close ranks against Mike McGinn and to use a tunnel as a bludgeon against him to do so. [00:39:58] Mike McGinn: There were other bludgeons. After I won the general election and before I took office, they passed their annual budget - they cut the mayor's office budget by a third before I even took office. Just boom - I know - they were determined, they were determined. And so that was when the planning - that council then and with WSDOT - that was when basically the contours of the waterfront were locked into place, including what we now see as that very wide surface road. That was that Council. So if you're wondering, if you're looking at that going - Okay, wow, who decided that and where did it come from? Again, our current mayor and his current advisor and others - they've always been for that. Building that big surface road has always been the plan to go along with the tunnel, because highway capacity was their highest priority. And the park on the waterfront, along with a lot of money into the aquarium and into these new structures - that's their signature thing for so many other people. But the idea that you should, that there was an opportunity to transform our transportation system and transform our city to make it more equitable and climate friendly was never a priority in this process. Just wasn't. [00:41:20] Crystal Fincher: It was never a priority. It was never seriously considered. And to me, through this process - lots of people know, have talked about it on the show before - I actually didn't start off Team McGinn. I wound up Team McGinn - didn't start off that way. But through that - and you won me over with logic - it was you being proven right on several things. You pointed out that their projections, their traffic projections were just so far out of left field that there was no way that they were going to come close. And they even had to come down on their projections before we even saw the traffic - the actual traffic turned out to be lower. You were right on that one - the laughable - [00:41:59] Mike McGinn: They're under 40,000 cars a day - for a highway that was carrying 110,000 cars a day beforehand. So even as a traffic solution - to put that into context, 40,000 cars a day is like the Ballard Bridge. And I can guarantee you the replacement costs of the Ballard Bridge is not $4 billion or $3.1 billion. The E Line, I think, carries 15,000 people a day. Metro carries 220,000 people a day. What you could do with that $3.1 billion or $4 billion in terms of bus lanes, bike lanes, rolling stock for Metro, maybe pay raises for bus drivers so that we could actually have service - you could do so much with those billions of dollars. And we put it all into moving 40,000 cars a day? It's just pathetic. That's three Rapid Ride lines we could have had for a 10th of the cost, or even less. I think the investments in Rapid Ride lines are about $50-100 million a line to make the capital investments to make it work. So the waste - even if you don't care about climate, the waste of dollars - and who's paying those taxes? To a great degree, we have the most regressive state and local tax system in the nation. And we'll have a ballot measure soon, and I know a lot of environmentalists will be out there if the package spends for the right thing saying - Hey, we need money for local streets. Imagine if we'd taken that gas tax money and the Legislature had allowed cities and towns to use it to improve their streets - which they can do. I know that the constitution says highway purposes, but when you read highway purposes, it says roads and bridges. It includes everything. You can use gas taxes for anything that improves the road. And they do. WSDOT has used gas taxes to pay for bike lanes and sidewalks. It's legal. That's a choice. So we're driving around potholed streets. We have - we're putting up little plastic dividers because we care more about the car getting hurt than the bicyclist on the other side of that plastic divider. We're watching our transit service melt away because we can't pay bus drivers enough. But hey, man, somebody's got a really rapid - 3,000 people a day get to skip Downtown in their private vehicles. Where are our priorities for equity? Where are the priorities for economy, or even just plain old-fashioned fiscal prudence? None of that was there - because all of those dollars were going to fund the needs of the most powerful people in the City. And they captured those dollars - and all of us will pay the taxes, all of us will breathe the smoky air, and all of us will watch our streets deteriorate and our transit service evaporate. [00:44:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And to me, it was such a foundational lesson that the people that we have making decisions really matter - and that we have to really explore their records, their donors, their histories - because over and over again, we look at the decisions that wind up being made that frequently conflict with campaign promises, but that very, very rarely conflict with their donor rolls. [00:45:16] Mike McGinn: And yes - and every one of them knows how to make the value statements. So if I had any advice for people in this year's election - everyone is going to say they care about housing, everyone's going to say they think biking safe. I don't - one of the things that I came away with - I don't care about the goals you put into some policy anymore. Show me the hard physical action you will take that might piss somebody off, but you're willing to do it because it's right. And if you can't do that, then your value statements are meaningless. So take a look - who actually, and that's the question I always ask candidates for office - Tell me about a time you did something hard that might've caused you criticism, but you did it because it was right. Or that you made somebody who was an ally or friend upset, but you did it because it was right. Tell me about that time. [00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And to your point and learning through just watching how people operated through that and some other processes - but that certainly was a big learning for me - is the role of coalitions, the role of accountability, and understanding. You have always had your finger on the pulse of Seattle, really - you're extraordinarily good at that. You're actually - both of you - are great strategists. But our political class is so detached from that sometimes - certainly I'm feeling frustration at some recent actions by our Legislature - we just had our special session day where they increased criminalization of substances, personal possession of substances - just reflecting on legislation to provide school, kids with free meals at school, things that seem like really basic and foundational that we should be able to land this. If we can call a special session to hand Boeing billions of dollars, we should be able to feed kids, right? [00:47:00] Mike McGinn: At the time we were cutting school budgets - when we found money for that. But I don't want to be too gloomy. And then I want to turn it over to Robert to get a last word in here, 'cause I just loved - his analysis is so awesome. I don't want to be too gloomy because - I look at what happened in the Legislature this year on housing, that we're finally going to allow housing, people to build more housing in places so people can actually live closer to their jobs and live more affordably. 10 years ago, we would have thought that was impossible. There's a lot of hard organizing that did it. At America Walks, we're the host of the Freeway Fighters Networks - there are people in 40 cities or more around the country that are organizing to remove highways. And while it's just a small amount of money compared to the amount going to highway expansion, there's actually federal funds to study and remove highways. So it's a long, hard slog. What felt for us - for Robert and me and Cary Moon and others fighting this - which felt like an impossible fight at the time is a fight that is now winning in places. Not winning enough - we're not winning fast enough - but it can change. And so that's - I don't want to be too negative. They got money, but organizing and people - and we actually have the public with us on this, just like we have the public with us on housing. So we just have to do more. We just got to keep at it, folks - got to keep at it. We can win this one. Don't allow this story of how hard it was to deal with the unified political class in the City of Seattle for their climate arson - should not deter you. It should inspire you, 'cause I actually won the mayor's office and we actually did do a lot of good. And the next fight is right in front of us again today, so get in it people. We need you. [00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's spot on. And I remember coming to work in your office at the very beginning of 2011, when it seemed like the tunnel was just dominating discussion, but not in the mayor's office, right? When I joined, I fully expected to be like - roll my sleeves up to take on that tunnel. Instead, I'm working on the mayor's jobs plan, the Families and Education Levy, on transit. That's the stuff that was really getting done, and I think McGinn left a really great legacy on that. But we didn't win the tunnel fight. And I think we've diagnosed many of the reasons why, but one thing that really stands out to me as I look back from 12, 13 years distance is we didn't have the same density of genuinely progressive and social democratic organizations and people and leaders in Seattle that we have now. I think that matters because Mike's been talking about what's the next fight. I think one of the big fights coming up next year - when it comes time to renew that Move Seattle Levy - that's nearly a billion dollars that's going to be on the table. And we keep getting promised - when we are asked to approve these massive levies - that a lot of that money is going to go to safe streets, it's going to go to protect vulnerable users, we're going to do something to finally get towards Vision Zero. And instead it all gets taken away to build more car infrastructure. At what point do we finally stand - literally in the road - and say, No more. Do we look at the broken promises on the waterfront where we were promised a beautiful pedestrian-friendly waterfront and got another car sewer? We're going to have to organize and come together. We have many more groups now and many more leaders who are willing to stand up and say - We're not passing this levy unless it actually focuses on safe streets, unless it focuses on pedestrians and cyclists and transit users, and gives iron-clad promises to make sure stuff gets built so that some future mayor can't just walk in and start canceling projects left and right that we were promised. That's the lesson I take from this is - we're better organized now, we have more resources now, but it's still going to be a slog, and we're going to have to stand our ground - otherwise we get rolled. [00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I thank you both for this conversation today - reflections on the tunnel fight, how it came to be, what it was like in the middle of it, and the lessons that we take moving forward in these elections that we have coming up this year, next year, and beyond. Thanks so much for the conversation. [00:50:50] Mike McGinn: Thank you, Crystal. [00:50:51] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you - it's been wonderful. [00:50:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

On this midweek show, Crystal chats with former Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn and his former Senior Communications Advisor Robert Cruickshank about the missed opportunity for generational impact through how decisions were made about Seattle's waterfront and the SR99 tunnel. Mike and Robert review how the vision of the scrappy People's Waterfront Coalition, centered around making a prized public space accessible for all while taking the climate crisis on by transforming our transportation system, nearly won the fight against those who prioritized maintaining highway capacity and those who prioritized increasing Downtown property values.  The conversation then highlights how those with power and money used their outsized influence to make backroom decisions - despite flawed arguments and little public enthusiasm for their proposal - leaving Seattle with an underutilized deep bore tunnel and a car-centric waterfront. Some of the decision makers are still active in local politics - including current Mayor Bruce Harrell and his current advisor Tim Burgess. With important elections ahead, Crystal, Mike and Robert discuss how political decisions tend to conflict with campaign promises rather than donor rolls, how proven action is a better indicator than value statements, and how today's dense ecosystem of progressive leaders and organizations can take inspiration and win the next fight. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii, Mike McGinn at @mayormcginn, and Robert Cruickshank at @cruickshank.   Mike McGinn Mike is the Executive Director of national nonprofit America Walks.  He got his start in local politics as a neighborhood activist pushing for walkability. From there he founded a non-profit focused on sustainable and equitable growth, and then became mayor of Seattle. Just before joining America Walks, Mike worked to help Feet First, Washington State's walking advocacy organization, expand their sphere of influence across Washington state. He has worked on numerous public education, legislative, ballot measure and election campaigns – which has given him an abiding faith in the power of organizing and volunteers to create change.   Robert Cruickshank Robert is the Director of Digital Strategy at California YIMBY and Chair of Sierra Club Seattle. A long time communications and political strategist, he was Senior Communications Advisor to Mike McGinn from 2011-2013.   Resources “Seattle Waterfront History Interviews: Cary Moon, Waterfront Coalition” by Dominic Black from HistoryLink   “State Route 99 tunnel - Options and political debate" from Wikipedia   “Remembering broken promises about Bertha” by Josh Cohen from Curbed Seattle   “Fewer drivers in Seattle's Highway 99 tunnel could create need for bailout” by Mike Lindblom from The Seattle Times   “Surface Highway Undermines Seattle's Waterfront Park” by Doug Trumm from The Urbanist   “Seattle Prepares to Open Brand New Elliott Way Highway Connector” by Ryan Packer from The Urbanist   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I am very excited to be welcoming Robert Cruickshank and former Mayor Mike McGinn to the show to talk about something that a lot of people have been thinking about, talking about recently - and that is Seattle's new waterfront. We feel like we've spent a decade under construction - from a deep bore tunnel to the tunnel machine getting stuck - that's not even covering all the debate before that, but all of the kind of follies and foibles and challenges that have beset the process of arriving at the waterfront that we have now. And now that we are getting the big reveal, a lot of people have feelings about it. So I thought we would talk about it with one of the people who was at the forefront of criticisms of the tunnel and calling out some red flags that turned out to be a very wise warning - several wise warnings that have come to pass, unfortunately - for not listening to them. But I want to start early on in the beginning, both of you - and I had a short stint in the mayor's office - worked on this, talked about this on the campaign, really got it. But when did you first hear that we needed to replace the viaduct and there were some different opinions about how to make that happen? [00:02:06] Mike McGinn: Okay, so I'm sure I can't pin down a date, but the really important date was, of course, the Nisqually earthquake in 2001. And so it gave the Alaska Way Viaduct a good shake - the decks weren't tied into the columns, the columns were on fill, which could liquefy - and everybody understood that if that quake had been a little stronger and harder, the elevated would come down. Now you might think that that would call for immediately closing the roadway for safety reasons, but what it did call for was for reconstructing it. And you have to remember that highway was really one of the very first limited access highways - it was built long ago and it was just at the end of its useful life anyway. Certainly not built to modern seismic standards or modern engineering standards. So the conversation immediately started and I don't know when everything started to settle into different roles, but the Mayor of Seattle Greg Nickels, was immediately a proponent for a tunnel - and a much larger and more expensive tunnel than what was ultimately built. And it would have been a cut-and-cover tunnel along the waterfront that included a new seawall. So they thought they were solving two things at one time - because the seawall too was rotting away, very old, very unstable. But it would have gone all the way under South Lake Union and emerged onto Aurora Avenue further north, it would have had entrances and exits to Western and Elliott. And I seem to remember the quoted price was like $11 billion. And the state - governor at the time was Christine Gregoire - they were - No, we're replacing the highway. We don't have $11 billion for Seattle. And of course had the support of a lot of lawmakers for obvious reasons - we're not going to give Seattle all that money, we want all that highway money for our districts. And those were immediately presented as the alternatives. And so much of the credit has to go to Cary Moon, who lived on the waterfront and started something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. I think Grant Cogswell, a former City Council candidate - now runs a bookstore down in Mexico City, but wrote a book about the Monorail, worked on the different Monorail campaigns before that - they launched something called the People's Waterfront Coalition. And the basic proposition was - We don't need a highway. This is a great opportunity to get rid of the highway and have a surface street, but if you amp up the transit service - if we invest in transit instead - we can accommodate everyone. And so that was really - as it started - and actually I remember being outside City Hall one day, going to some stakeholder meeting - I went to so many different stakeholder meetings. And I remember Tim Ceis saying to me - he was the Deputy Mayor at the time - You're not supporting that Cary Moon idea - I mean, that's just crazy. I was - Well, actually, Tim. So the Sierra Club was - I was a volunteer leader in the Sierra Club - and the Sierra Club was one of the first organizations - I'm sure there were others, I shouldn't overstate it - but the Sierra Club was persuaded by the wisdom of Cary's idea and supported it in that day. And so that was really how the three different options got launched - no public process, no analysis, no description of what our needs were. The mayor went to a solution, the governor went to a solution - and it was up to members of the public to try to ask them to slow down, stop, and look at something different. [00:05:42] Crystal Fincher: And Robert, how did you first engage with this issue? [00:05:47] Robert Cruickshank: For me, I had just moved to Seattle the first time in the fall of 2001 - so it was about six months after the Nisqually quake - and I came from the Bay Area. And that was where another earthquake had damaged another waterfront highway, the Embarcadero Freeway in San Francisco. And that was where San Francisco had voted - after that quake had damaged their viaduct beyond repair - they voted to tear it down and replace it with the Embarcadero Waterfront, which is a six-lane arterial but they built a lot more transit there. So they did the - what we might call the surface transit option - and it worked really well. It was beautiful. It still is. And so when I came up here and started to learn a little bit about the place I was living and the legacy of the Nisqually quake, I thought - Oh, why don't you just do the same thing here? It worked so well in San Francisco. Let's just tear down this unsightly monstrosity on the waterfront and replace it with a surface boulevard and put in a bunch of transit - San Francisco's made it work successfully. And the more I learned about Seattle, I realized there's a legacy of that here, too. This is a city where we had a freeway revolt, where activists came together and killed the RH Thomson freeway, which would have destroyed the Arboretum. They killed the Bay Freeway, which would have destroyed Pike Place Market. And so I naturally assumed - as being a relatively new resident - that Seattle would stay in that tradition and welcome the opportunity to tear this down and build a great waterfront for people, not cars. But as we'll talk about in a moment, we have a lot of business interests and freight interests and others who had a different vision - who didn't share that community-rooted vision. And I think at numerous points along the way, though, you see people of Seattle saying - No, this is not what we want for our waterfront. We have an opportunity now with the fact that this viaduct nearly collapsed, as Mike mentioned, in the Nisqually quake - we have an opportunity for something really wonderful here. And so I think Cary Moon and then Mike McGinn and others tapped into that - tapped into a really strong community desire to have a better waterfront. I wasn't that politically engaged at the time in the 2000s - I was just a grad student at UW - but just talking to folks who I knew, anytime this came up - God, wouldn't it be wonderful down there if this was oriented towards people and not cars, and we took that thing down? So I think one of the things you're going to see is this contest between the vision that many of us in Seattle had and still have - this beautiful location, beautiful vista on Elliott Bay, that should be for the people of the city - and those in power who have a very different vision and don't really want to share power or ultimately the right-of-way with We the People. [00:08:05] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, definitely. And I was involved in some things at the time - some curious coalitions - but definitely I was around a lot of people who favored either rebuilding the viaduct or the tunnel. Definitely not this roads and transit option - there's no way that's workable. That's pie-in-the-sky talk from those loony greenies over there. What are you talking about? But as this went on - I think no matter what camp people were in - there was always a clear vision articulated and people really focused on the opportunity that this represented, and I think correctly characterized it as - this is one of these generational decisions that we get to make that is going to impact the next generation or two and beyond. And there's an opportunity - the waterfront felt very disconnected with the way things were constructed - it was not easy just to go from downtown to the waterfront. It wasn't friendly for pedestrians. It wasn't friendly for tourists. It just did not feel like a world-class waterfront in a world-class city, and how we see that in so many other cities. You talk about the decision with the Embarcadero, Robert, and looking at - that definitely seemed like a definitive step forward. This was sold as - yeah, we can absolutely take a step forward and finally fix this waterfront and make it what it should have been the whole time. As you thought about the opportunity that this represented, what was the opportunity to you and what did you hear other people saying that they wanted this to be? [00:09:38] Mike McGinn: Yeah, so I think there are - I think that's really important, because I don't think there was a real discussion of what the vision was. People will say there was, but there really wasn't. Because what was baked in and what you're referring to is - well, of course you have to build automobile capacity to replace the existing automobile capacity, right? In fact, this state is still building more highways across the state in the misguided belief that more highway capacity will somehow or another do some good. So this idea that you have to replace and expand highway capacity is extremely powerful in Washington state and across the country. And there were very few examples of highway removal, so that was just a real challenge in the first place - that somehow or other the first priority has to be moving automobiles. For me, at that time I had become - the issue of climate had really penetrated me at that point. And in fact, when Greg Nickels took office and the Sierra Club endorsed him over Paul Schell - I was a local leader in the Sierra Club and a state leader in the Sierra Club - and my goal was that Mayor Nickels would do more than Paul Schell. And Paul Schell, the prior mayor, had done some good things. He had made Seattle City Light climate neutral - we'd gotten out of coal plants and we didn't purchase power from coal plants. He was really progressive on a number of environmental issues and we wanted Mayor Nickels to do more - and Mayor Nickels had stepped up. So we put on a campaign to urge him to do more. And he had stepped up to start something called the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative - which was the City of Seattle was going to meet the standards of the Kyoto Protocol, which was like the Paris Agreement of its day. And that was - it set an emissions reduction target by a date in the future. And that was really great - in fact, over a thousand cities around the country signed up to the Mayors' Climate Protection Initiative. And I was appointed to a stakeholder group with other leaders - Denis Hayes from the Bullitt Foundation and others - to develop the first climate action plan for a city. Al Gore showed up at the press conference for it - it was a big - it was a BFD and a lot of excitement. And one of the things that was abundantly clear through that process of cataloging the emissions in the City of Seattle and coming up with a plan to reduce them was that our single largest source of emissions at that time was the transportation sector. We'd already gotten off of coal power under Mayor Schell - we received almost all of our electricity from hydroelectric dams. We had good conservation programs. Unlike other parts of the country, transportation was the biggest. Now what's fascinating is now - I don't know if I want to do the math - almost 20 years later, now what we see is that the whole country is in the same place. We're replacing coal and natural gas power plants. And now nationally, the single largest source of emissions is transportation. So how do you fix that? If we're serious about climate - and I thought we should be - because the scientists were telling us about heat waves. They were telling us about forest fires that would blanket the region in smoke. They were telling us about storms that would be bigger than we'd ever seen before. And flooding like we'd never seen and declining snowpack. And it was all going to happen in our futures. Honestly, I remember those predictions from the scientists because they're in the headlines today, every day. So what do we do to stop that? So I was - I had little kids, man - I had little kids, I had three kids. How are we going to stop this? Well, it's Seattle needs to lead - that's what has to happen. We're the progressive city. We're the first one out with a plan. We're going to show how we're going to do it. And if our biggest source is transportation, we should fix that. Well, it should seem obvious that the first thing you should do is stop building and expanding highways, and maybe even change some of the real estate used for cars and make it real estate for walking, biking, and transit. That's pretty straightforward. You also have to work on more housing. And this all led me to starting a nonprofit around all of these things and led to the Sierra Club - I think at a national level - our chapter was much further forward than any other chapter on upzones and backyard cottages and making the transition. So to me, this was the big - that was the vision. That was the opportunity. We're going to tear this down. We're going to make a massive investment in changing the system, and this in fact could be a really transformative piece. That's what motivated me. That climate argument wasn't landing with a whole bunch of other interests. There was certainly a vision from the Downtown and Downtown property owners and residents that - boy, wouldn't it be great to get rid of that elevated highway because that's terrible. There was also a vision from the people who still believed in highway capacity and that includes some of our major employers at the time and today - Boeing and Microsoft, they have facilities in the suburbs around Seattle - they think we need highway capacity. As well as all of the Port businesses, as well as all the maritime unions - thought that this highway connection here was somehow critical to their survival, the industrial areas. And then they wanted the capacity. So there were very strong competing visions. And I think it's fair to say that highway capacity is a vision - we've seen that one is now fulfilled. The second priority was an enhanced physical environment to enhance the property values of Downtown property owners. And they cut the deal with the highway capacity people - okay, we're here for your highway capacity, but we have to get some amenities. And the climate folks, I'm not seeing it - never a priority of any of the leaders - just wasn't a priority. [00:15:44] Crystal Fincher: How did you see those factions come into play and break down, Robert? [00:15:48] Robert Cruickshank: It was interesting. This all comes to a head in the late 2000s. And remembering back to that time, this is where Seattle is leading the fight to take on the climate and the fight against George W. Bush, who was seen as this avatar of and deeply connected to the oil industry. Someone who - one of his first things when he took office - he did was withdraw the U.S. from the Kyoto Protocol, which is the earlier version of what's now known as the Paris Agreement - global agreement to try to lower emissions. And so Seattle, in resisting Bush - that's where Greg Nickels became a national figure by leading the Mayors' Climate Action Group - not just say we're going to take on climate, we're going to do something about really de facto fighting back against Bush. And then Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Al Gore comes out with An Inconvenient Truth. And by 2007, people in Seattle are talking a lot about climate and how we need to do something about climate. But then what you see happening is the limits of that - what are people really actually willing to do and willing to support? The other piece that comes together, I think - in the 2000s - is a revival of the City itself. Seattle spends the late 20th century after the Boeing bust - since the 70s "Will the last person out of Seattle turn out the lights," recovering in the 80s somewhat, recovering in the 90s, and then the tech boom. And by the 2000s, Seattle is a destination city for young people coming to live here and living in apartments and working in the tech industry. I think that unsettles a lot of people. One thing that really stood out to me about the discussion about what to do on the waterfront was this vision from old school folks - like Joel Connelly and others - we've got to preserve that working waterfront. And it's very much the sense that blue collar working class labor is under threat - not from corporate power, but from a 20-something millennial with a laptop working at Amazon who comes to Seattle and thinks - Gosh, why is this ugly viaduct here? It's unsafe. Why don't we just tear it down and have a wonderful waterfront view? And those who are offended by this idea - who are so wedded to the 20th century model that we're going to drive everywhere, cars, freedom - this is where you see the limits of willingness to actually do something on climate. People don't actually want to give up their cars. They're afraid they're going to sacrifice their way of life. And you start to see this weird but powerful constellation come together where rather than having a discussion about transportation planning or even a discussion about climate action, we're having this weird discussion about culture. And it becomes a culture war. And the thing about a culture war is people pushing change are never actually trying to fight a war. They're just - This is a good idea. Why don't we do this? We all say these - we care about these values. And the people who don't want it just dig in and get really nasty and fight back. And so you start to see Cary Moon, People's Waterfront Coalition, Mike McGinn, and others get attacked as not wanting working class jobs, not wanting a working waterfront, not caring about how people are going to get to work, not caring about how the freight trucks are going to get around even though you're proposing a tunnel from the Port to Wallingford where - it's not exactly an industrial hub - there are some businesses there. But dumping all these cars out or in South Lake Union, it's like, what is going on here? It doesn't add up. But it became this powerful moment where a competing vision of the City - which those of us who saw a better future for Seattle didn't see any competition as necessary at all - those who are wedded to that model where we're going to drive everywhere, we're going to have trucks everywhere, really saw that under threat for other reasons. And they decided this is where they're going to make their stand. This is where they're going to make that fight. And that turned out to be pretty useful for the Port, the freight groups, the establishment democratic leaders who had already decided for their own reasons this is what they wanted too. [00:19:11] Mike McGinn: It's important to recognize too, in this, is to follow the money. And I think that this is true for highway construction generally. You have a big section of the economy - there's a section of the economy that believes in it, as Robert was saying, right? And I do think the culture war stuff is fully there - that somehow or another a bike lane in an industrial area will cause the failure of business. Although if you went to the bike - outside the industrial building - you'll find a bunch of the workers' bike there, right? Because it's affordable and efficient. So there's this weird belief that just isn't true - that you can't accommodate industry and transit and walking and biking. Of course you can. And in fact, adding all the cars is bad for freight movement because of all the traffic jams. So there's that belief, but there's also a whole bunch of people - I mentioned Downtown property owners - that gets you to your Downtown Seattle Association. The value of their property is going to be dramatically enhanced by burying, by eliminating the waterfront highway. But then you also have all of the people who build highways and all of the people who support the people who build highways. Who's going to float $4 billion in bonds? It's going to be a Downtown law firm. And by the way, the person who worked for that Downtown law firm and did the bond work was the head of the greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time. So you have the engineering firms, you have the material providers, and then you have the union jobs that go with it. So really at this point - and this isn't just about the waterfront highway, this could be any highway expansion - you've captured the business community because a big chunk of the business community will get direct dollars from the government to them. And you've actually captured a significant chunk of the labor community as well, because labor fights for labor jobs. In the big picture, service workers are taking transit, service workers need housing in town, and you can start to see a split - like in my ultimate run for mayor, I won some service worker unions, never won any construction trades. In fact, they held a rally my first year in office to denounce me, right? Because I was standing in the way of jobs. So that's a really powerful coalition. And I think what you see today in the country as a whole - as you know, I'm the ED of America Walks, so I get to see a lot more - this is a pattern. Highways aren't really supported by the public. They don't go to the public for public votes on highways anymore - the public wouldn't support it. And in fact, the data suggests the public gets that building more highway lanes won't solve everything. But you've got a big, big chunk of the economy that's gotten extremely used to billions and billions of dollars flowing into their pockets. And they need to protect that in every year. So you get that level of intensity around - Look, we're talking about $4 billion on the waterfront and a bunch of that money's coming to us. Better believe it's a good idea, and what are you talking about, climate? [00:22:03] Robert Cruickshank: You talk about public votes, and I think there are three crucial public votes we got to talk about. One is 2007, when these advisory votes are on the ballot - and they're not binding, but they're advisory. Do you want to rebuild the viaduct or build a tunnel? They both get rejected. And then the next big vote is 2009, the mayoral election, where Mike McGinn becomes mayor - in part by channeling public frustration at this giant boondoggle. And then ultimately, the last public vote on this, 2011 - in June, I believe it was, it was in August - about whether we go forward or not and the public by this point, fatigued and beaten down by The Seattle Times, decides let's just move on from this. [00:22:43] Mike McGinn: There's no other alternative. And it is worth returning to that early vote, because it was such a fascinating moment, because - I think the mayor's office didn't want to put his expansive tunnel option in a direct vote against the new elevated, fearing it would lose. So they engineered an agreement with the governor that each one would get a separate up or down vote. And by the way, Tim Ceis, the Deputy Mayor at the time, called in the Sierra Club, briefed us on it, and one of our members said - What would happen if they both got voted down? And Deputy Mayor Ceis said - by the way, Tim Ceis has got a big contract right now from Mayor Harrell, longtime tunnel supporter. Tim Ceis is the consultant for most of the business side candidates. Tim Burgess, another big supporter of the tunnel, now works for Mayor Harrell. Oh, and Christine Gregoire has been hired by the biggest corporations in the region to do their work for them as well. So there's a pretty good payoff if you stick around and support the right side of this stuff. But anyway, Mayor Ceis, Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis, when said, What happens if they're both voted down? He goes - Well, that would be chaos. You don't want that, do you? And I remember all of us just kind of looked at each other - and we all went out on the sidewalk, there were like six of us. And we went - We want that, right? And so we joined in and supported the No and No campaign. And The Stranger came in really hard. And I think Erica Barnett wrote the articles. And Cary Moon was in on it. And the defeat of that, for the first time, opened up the possibility - Well, let's think about something else. And so a stakeholder group was formed. Cary Moon was appointed. Mike O'Brien was appointed. The waterfront guys were appointed. And the Downtown folks were appointed. And the labor folks were appointed. And I think a really important part of the story here is that it was advisory - they weren't making the decisions, it was advisory. But they got to a point at which the head of the State DOT, the head of the Seattle DOT, and the head of the King County DOT all expressed to their respective executives that surface transit worked and was worth it. And this was extremely distressing to the business community. So they mounted a big lobbying push and went straight to Gregoire. And Gregoire, for the first time, became a tunnel supporter. And they were promised that this new tunneling technology - the deep bore tunnel - would solve the cost issues of the deep bore tunnel. And not only that, the state's commitment, which to date was $2.4 billion - they had committed $2.4 billion to a rebuild - the state wouldn't have to pay anymore, because the Port would put in $300 million and they would raise $400 million from tolling. And coincidentally, the amount they thought they could raise from tolling was the exact amount needed to meet the projected cost of using the deep bore tunnel boring machine. So the deal was cut and announced. And the whole stakeholder group and the recommendations from the DOT heads were abandoned. And that occurred, basically, late 2008, early 2009 - the deal was made. And that was about the time that I was contemplating - well, I think I'd already decided to run, but I had not yet announced. [00:26:14] Crystal Fincher: And this was an interesting time, especially during that vote. Because at that time, I had an eye into what the business community was doing and thinking, and it was clear that their numbers didn't add up. [00:26:26] Mike McGinn: Oh my God - no. [00:26:28] Crystal Fincher: But they just did not want to face that. And what they knew is they had enough money and resources to throw at this issue and to throw at a marketing effort to obfuscate that, that they wouldn't have to worry about it. And there was this sense of offense, of indignation that - Who are these people trying to come up and tell us that we don't need freight capacity, that we don't need - that this extra highway capacity, don't they understand how important these freeways are? Who are these people who just don't understand how our economy works? [00:27:02] Mike McGinn: They were the grownups who really understood how things worked. And we were the upstarts who didn't understand anything. But there's a great line from Willie Brown talking about - I think the Transbay Bridge, and Robert can correct the name, in California, which was way over budget. And people were lamenting that the early estimates had been made up. And he goes - Look, this is how it works. You just need to dig a hole in the ground so deep that the only way to fill it up is with money. I think that's pretty much the quote. So that's the strategy. You get it started. Of course you have rosy estimates. And then you just have that commitment, and it's the job of legislators to come up with the cost overruns, dollars later. [00:27:43] Robert Cruickshank: And I think it's so key to understand this moment here in the late 2000s, where the public had already weighed in. I remember voting - it was the last thing I voted on before I moved to California for four years. I'm like no - I was No and No. And that's where the Seattle voters were. They rejected both options. And then you start to hear, coming out of the stakeholder group - Okay, we can make the surface transit option work. And I left town thinking - Alright, that's what's going to happen, just like the Embarcadero in San Francisco and done. And the next thing I hear in late 2008, early 2009, there's this deal that's been cut and all of a sudden a deep bore tunnel is on the table. And this is Seattle politics in a nutshell. I think people look back and think that because we are this smart, progressive technocratic city - those people who live here are - we think that our government works the same way. And it doesn't. This is - time and time again, the public will make its expression felt. They'll weigh in with opinion poll or protest or vote. And the powers that be will say - Well, actually, we want to do this thing instead. We'll cook it up in a backroom. We're going to jam it on all of you, and you're going to like it. And if you don't like it, then we're going to start marshaling resources. We're gonna throw a bunch of money at it. We'll get The Seattle Times to weigh in and pound away at the enemy. And that's how politics works here - that's how so much of our transportation system is built and managed. And so people today, in 2023, looking at this monstrosity on the waterfront that we have now think - How did we get here? Who planned this? It was planned in a backroom without public involvement. And I think that's a thing that has to be understood because that, as we just heard, was baked in from the very start. [00:29:11] Mike McGinn: Well, Robert, the idea of a deep bore tunnel was brought forward by a representative of the Discovery Institute, who you may know as the folks that believe in creationism. [00:29:21] Robert Cruickshank: Well, and not only that, the Discovery Institute is responsible for turning Christopher Rufo from a failed Seattle City Council candidate in 2019 into a national figure. [00:29:31] Mike McGinn: The Discovery Institute, with money from local donors - major, very wealthy local folks - they actually had a long-term plan to turn all of 99 into a limited access freeway. It's like - we need to get rid of that First Avenue South and Highway 99 and Aurora Avenue stuff - all of that should be a freeway. So they were the architects of the idea of - Hey, this deep bore tunnel is the solution. But Robert's point is just right on - transportation policy was driven by power and money, not by transportation needs, or climate needs, or equity needs, or even local economy needs really. When you get right down to it, our city runs on transit - that's what really matters. Our city runs on the fact that it's a city where people can walk from place to place. The idea that our economic future was tied to a highway that would skip Downtown - the most valuable place in the Pacific Northwest, Downtown Seattle. No, that's not really what powers our economy. But it certainly worked for the people that were going to get the dollars that flowed from folks and for the people who own Downtown property. [00:30:42] Crystal Fincher: And I want to talk about money and power with this. Who were the people in power? What was the Council at that time? Who made these decisions? [00:30:50] Mike McGinn: The Council at the time was elected citywide. And I think some people have concerns about district representation, but one of the things that citywide elections meant at the time was that you had to run a citywide campaign, and that's expensive. There's no way to knock on enough doors citywide. I did not have a lot of money when I ran for mayor, but at least I had the media attention that would go to a mayoral candidate. A City Council candidate would kind of flow under the radar. So you had people come from different places, right? They might come from the business side, they might come from the labor side. But ultimately, they would tend to make peace with the other major players - because only business and only labor could finance a campaign. They were the only ones with the resources to do that. So the other interests - the environmentalists, the social service folks, neighborhood advocates of whatever stripe - we chose from amongst the candidates that were elevated by, they would unify - in some cases, the business and labor folks would unify around a candidate. In fact, that's what we saw in the last two mayoral elections as well, where they pick a candidate. And so this doesn't leave much room. So when I was mayor, almost the entire council was aligned with the Greater Seattle Chamber of Commerce at that time, either endorsed by them or had made their peace with them so the challenger was not being financed. So Robert said something about those outsiders - I went under the radar screen as a candidate at the beginning of my campaign. When I entered the race, nobody was running because everybody thought that Greg Nickels had the institutional support locked down. [00:32:33] Crystal Fincher: But then a snowstorm happened. [00:32:35] Mike McGinn: Well, it was even before that - honestly, everybody thought that he could win. And long before the snowstorm, I was like - We're getting a new mayor. And I was actually looking around to try to figure out who it was going to be - because I wanted a mayor who actually believed in climate, who had my values. But nobody - I was looking through who the people were that might run, and it dawned on me - Well, nobody's going to run. But we're going to get a new mayor and I have my values - and I've actually run ballot measure campaigns and had a very modest base of support. So I was really the first one in the race that got any attention. So I got some great media attention off that. Then my opponent in the general, Joe Mallahan - whatever else you may think about Joe Mallahan - he actually saw it too. He saw that there was an opening. And then we were joined by a long-time City Councilmember, Jan Drago. And I remember the headline from The Seattle Times or the comments at the time was - Okay, now it's a real race. But it just really wasn't. So I was really under the radar screen in that race because they were disregarding me. But there was in fact a lot of anger about the tunnel. There was a lot of just - Greg, for whatever his positives or negatives that history will deal with - and by the way, I actually think Greg did a lot of good. I just was disappointed in his highway policies and his climate policies at the end of the day - I have a lot of respect for Greg Nickels, but he wasn't going to win that race. And I came out of the primary against Joe Mallahan. And all of a sudden we had these two outsiders and the business community's freaking out. All of it - I remember watching it - all of the support, the business support shifted to Joe. It took about a month, it took a few weeks. But all of a sudden - there was actually one week where I think I raised more money than he did, that was pretty unusual - and then all of a sudden all the money was pouring in. And boy, did Joe believe in that tunnel. And did Joe believe in what the Chamber of Commerce wanted to do. In fact, he believed in it so much that he believed that Seattle should pay cost overruns if there were cost overruns on the tunnel - an admission I got from him during the televised debate, I was shocked he admitted to it. [00:34:41] Crystal Fincher: I remember that debate. [00:34:43] Mike McGinn: Yeah. So you were kind of asking about how politics worked. It was really something. Yeah - here's another memory. About two weeks before the election, the City Council took - three weeks before the, two, three weeks, four weeks - they took a vote to say that the tunnel was their choice. Even though there's a mayoral election in which the tunnel is on the ballot, so to speak - in terms of the issues of the candidates - they took a vote for no reason to say it was a done deal. And then WSDOT released a video of the elevated collapsing in a highway, which is the first time a public disclosure request from a third party was ever given straight to a TV station, I think, in my experience in Seattle. I had Gregoire and the DOT folks down there working on that campaign too - their tunnel was threatened. So it really was something how - I indeed was kind of shocked at - it was such a learning experience for me - how much the ranks closed around this. I didn't appreciate it. I had my own nonprofit, I had been on stakeholder committees, I'd worked with a lot of people that weren't just Sierra Club members and neighborhood types. I'd worked with a lot of business people, many of whom had supported my nonprofit because they liked its vision. But they were very clear with me that as long as I supported the surface transit option, there was no way they could be associated with my run for mayor in any way, shape, or form - even if they liked me. It was a complete lockdown - right after the primary where Greg lost the primary and it was me and Joe, I was - Okay, open field running. I can now reach out to these people. There's no incumbent - maybe some of them can support me now. And they were abundantly clear on all of those phone calls that - Nope, can't do it. Until you change your position on the tunnel, we just can't do it. We have business in this town, Mike. We have relationships in this town. We cannot do that. So it was a real lockdown - politically. [00:36:38] Crystal Fincher: That was also a big learning experience for me - watching that consolidation, watching how not only were they fighting for the tunnel against you and making the fight against you a fight about the tunnel, but the enforcement to those third parties that you were talking about that - Hey, if you play ball with him, you're cut off. And those kinds of threats and that kind of dealing - watching that happen was very formative for me. I'm like - Okay, I see how this works, and this is kind of insidious. And if you are branded as an outsider, if you don't play ball, if you don't kiss the ring of the adults in the room - which is definitely what they considered themselves - then you're on the outs and they're at war. And it was really a war footing against you and the campaign. Who was on the Council at that time? [00:37:30] Mike McGinn: Oh my God. Let me see if I can go through the list. No, and it really, it was - your point about it was a war footing was not something that I fully, that I did not appreciate until actually going through that experience - how unified that would be. Excuse me. The City Council chair was Tim Burgess at the time. Bruce Harrell was on the Council. Sally Clark, Richard Conlin, Nick Licata. Mike O'Brien was running on the same platform as me with regard to the tunnel and he'd just been elected. Jean Godden, Sally Bagshaw. I hope I'm not leaving anything out - because - [00:38:04] Robert Cruickshank: Tom Rasmussen will forgive you. [00:38:06] Mike McGinn: Tom Rasmussen. Yeah - because City Councilmembers would get really offended if you didn't thank them publicly - that was another thing I had to learn. You have to publicly thank any other politician on stage with you or they held a grudge. Yeah. So I had - I didn't know all the politicians' rules when I started. [00:38:25] Crystal Fincher: There are so many rules. [00:38:27] Mike McGinn: There are so many, there's so many rules. But really what you saw then was that the Council tended to move in lockstep on many issues - because if they all voted together and they all worked citywide, there was protection. None of them could be singled out. So it was very - and it's not to say that some of them didn't take principled votes and would find themselves on an 8-1 position sometimes, but for the most part, it was much, much safer to be - it was much, much safer to vote as a group. And they tended to do that. And they had coalesced around the tunnel, except for O'Brien. And that could not be shaken by anything we brought to bear. [00:39:04] Robert Cruickshank: And this is wrapped up in not just the electoral politics, but the power politics. Because Mike McGinn comes in - mayor leading the 7th floor of City Hall, the head of City government - and smart guy, nice guy, willing to talk to anybody. But is not from their crew, is not from that group. And as Crystal and Mike said, the ranks were closed from the start. This is - again, 2009, 2010 - when nationally Mitch McConnell is quoted as saying, It's his ambition to make Obama a one-term president. I don't know if he's ever caught on record, but I would be quite certain that Tim Burgess would have said the exact same thing - that his ambition was to make Mike McGinn a one-term mayor. As it turned out in 2013, Tim Burgess wanted his job - one of the candidates running for it. So these are all people who have a reason to close ranks against Mike McGinn and to use a tunnel as a bludgeon against him to do so. [00:39:58] Mike McGinn: There were other bludgeons. After I won the general election and before I took office, they passed their annual budget - they cut the mayor's office budget by a third before I even took office. Just boom - I know - they were determined, they were determined. And so that was when the planning - that council then and with WSDOT - that was when basically the contours of the waterfront were locked into place, including what we now see as that very wide surface road. That was that Council. So if you're wondering, if you're looking at that going - Okay, wow, who decided that and where did it come from? Again, our current mayor and his current advisor and others - they've always been for that. Building that big surface road has always been the plan to go along with the tunnel, because highway capacity was their highest priority. And the park on the waterfront, along with a lot of money into the aquarium and into these new structures - that's their signature thing for so many other people. But the idea that you should, that there was an opportunity to transform our transportation system and transform our city to make it more equitable and climate friendly was never a priority in this process. Just wasn't. [00:41:20] Crystal Fincher: It was never a priority. It was never seriously considered. And to me, through this process - lots of people know, have talked about it on the show before - I actually didn't start off Team McGinn. I wound up Team McGinn - didn't start off that way. But through that - and you won me over with logic - it was you being proven right on several things. You pointed out that their projections, their traffic projections were just so far out of left field that there was no way that they were going to come close. And they even had to come down on their projections before we even saw the traffic - the actual traffic turned out to be lower. You were right on that one - the laughable - [00:41:59] Mike McGinn: They're under 40,000 cars a day - for a highway that was carrying 110,000 cars a day beforehand. So even as a traffic solution - to put that into context, 40,000 cars a day is like the Ballard Bridge. And I can guarantee you the replacement costs of the Ballard Bridge is not $4 billion or $3.1 billion. The E Line, I think, carries 15,000 people a day. Metro carries 220,000 people a day. What you could do with that $3.1 billion or $4 billion in terms of bus lanes, bike lanes, rolling stock for Metro, maybe pay raises for bus drivers so that we could actually have service - you could do so much with those billions of dollars. And we put it all into moving 40,000 cars a day? It's just pathetic. That's three Rapid Ride lines we could have had for a 10th of the cost, or even less. I think the investments in Rapid Ride lines are about $50-100 million a line to make the capital investments to make it work. So the waste - even if you don't care about climate, the waste of dollars - and who's paying those taxes? To a great degree, we have the most regressive state and local tax system in the nation. And we'll have a ballot measure soon, and I know a lot of environmentalists will be out there if the package spends for the right thing saying - Hey, we need money for local streets. Imagine if we'd taken that gas tax money and the Legislature had allowed cities and towns to use it to improve their streets - which they can do. I know that the constitution says highway purposes, but when you read highway purposes, it says roads and bridges. It includes everything. You can use gas taxes for anything that improves the road. And they do. WSDOT has used gas taxes to pay for bike lanes and sidewalks. It's legal. That's a choice. So we're driving around potholed streets. We have - we're putting up little plastic dividers because we care more about the car getting hurt than the bicyclist on the other side of that plastic divider. We're watching our transit service melt away because we can't pay bus drivers enough. But hey, man, somebody's got a really rapid - 3,000 people a day get to skip Downtown in their private vehicles. Where are our priorities for equity? Where are the priorities for economy, or even just plain old-fashioned fiscal prudence? None of that was there - because all of those dollars were going to fund the needs of the most powerful people in the City. And they captured those dollars - and all of us will pay the taxes, all of us will breathe the smoky air, and all of us will watch our streets deteriorate and our transit service evaporate. [00:44:52] Crystal Fincher: Yeah. And to me, it was such a foundational lesson that the people that we have making decisions really matter - and that we have to really explore their records, their donors, their histories - because over and over again, we look at the decisions that wind up being made that frequently conflict with campaign promises, but that very, very rarely conflict with their donor rolls. [00:45:16] Mike McGinn: And yes - and every one of them knows how to make the value statements. So if I had any advice for people in this year's election - everyone is going to say they care about housing, everyone's going to say they think biking safe. I don't - one of the things that I came away with - I don't care about the goals you put into some policy anymore. Show me the hard physical action you will take that might piss somebody off, but you're willing to do it because it's right. And if you can't do that, then your value statements are meaningless. So take a look - who actually, and that's the question I always ask candidates for office - Tell me about a time you did something hard that might've caused you criticism, but you did it because it was right. Or that you made somebody who was an ally or friend upset, but you did it because it was right. Tell me about that time. [00:46:04] Crystal Fincher: Yeah, it's a challenge. And to your point and learning through just watching how people operated through that and some other processes - but that certainly was a big learning for me - is the role of coalitions, the role of accountability, and understanding. You have always had your finger on the pulse of Seattle, really - you're extraordinarily good at that. You're actually - both of you - are great strategists. But our political class is so detached from that sometimes - certainly I'm feeling frustration at some recent actions by our Legislature - we just had our special session day where they increased criminalization of substances, personal possession of substances - just reflecting on legislation to provide school, kids with free meals at school, things that seem like really basic and foundational that we should be able to land this. If we can call a special session to hand Boeing billions of dollars, we should be able to feed kids, right? [00:47:00] Mike McGinn: At the time we were cutting school budgets - when we found money for that. But I don't want to be too gloomy. And then I want to turn it over to Robert to get a last word in here, 'cause I just loved - his analysis is so awesome. I don't want to be too gloomy because - I look at what happened in the Legislature this year on housing, that we're finally going to allow housing, people to build more housing in places so people can actually live closer to their jobs and live more affordably. 10 years ago, we would have thought that was impossible. There's a lot of hard organizing that did it. At America Walks, we're the host of the Freeway Fighters Networks - there are people in 40 cities or more around the country that are organizing to remove highways. And while it's just a small amount of money compared to the amount going to highway expansion, there's actually federal funds to study and remove highways. So it's a long, hard slog. What felt for us - for Robert and me and Cary Moon and others fighting this - which felt like an impossible fight at the time is a fight that is now winning in places. Not winning enough - we're not winning fast enough - but it can change. And so that's - I don't want to be too negative. They got money, but organizing and people - and we actually have the public with us on this, just like we have the public with us on housing. So we just have to do more. We just got to keep at it, folks - got to keep at it. We can win this one. Don't allow this story of how hard it was to deal with the unified political class in the City of Seattle for their climate arson - should not deter you. It should inspire you, 'cause I actually won the mayor's office and we actually did do a lot of good. And the next fight is right in front of us again today, so get in it people. We need you. [00:48:46] Robert Cruickshank: I think that's spot on. And I remember coming to work in your office at the very beginning of 2011, when it seemed like the tunnel was just dominating discussion, but not in the mayor's office, right? When I joined, I fully expected to be like - roll my sleeves up to take on that tunnel. Instead, I'm working on the mayor's jobs plan, the Families and Education Levy, on transit. That's the stuff that was really getting done, and I think McGinn left a really great legacy on that. But we didn't win the tunnel fight. And I think we've diagnosed many of the reasons why, but one thing that really stands out to me as I look back from 12, 13 years distance is we didn't have the same density of genuinely progressive and social democratic organizations and people and leaders in Seattle that we have now. I think that matters because Mike's been talking about what's the next fight. I think one of the big fights coming up next year - when it comes time to renew that Move Seattle Levy - that's nearly a billion dollars that's going to be on the table. And we keep getting promised - when we are asked to approve these massive levies - that a lot of that money is going to go to safe streets, it's going to go to protect vulnerable users, we're going to do something to finally get towards Vision Zero. And instead it all gets taken away to build more car infrastructure. At what point do we finally stand - literally in the road - and say, No more. Do we look at the broken promises on the waterfront where we were promised a beautiful pedestrian-friendly waterfront and got another car sewer? We're going to have to organize and come together. We have many more groups now and many more leaders who are willing to stand up and say - We're not passing this levy unless it actually focuses on safe streets, unless it focuses on pedestrians and cyclists and transit users, and gives iron-clad promises to make sure stuff gets built so that some future mayor can't just walk in and start canceling projects left and right that we were promised. That's the lesson I take from this is - we're better organized now, we have more resources now, but it's still going to be a slog, and we're going to have to stand our ground - otherwise we get rolled. [00:50:34] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I thank you both for this conversation today - reflections on the tunnel fight, how it came to be, what it was like in the middle of it, and the lessons that we take moving forward in these elections that we have coming up this year, next year, and beyond. Thanks so much for the conversation. [00:50:50] Mike McGinn: Thank you, Crystal. [00:50:51] Robert Cruickshank: Thank you - it's been wonderful. [00:50:52] Crystal Fincher: Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is co-produced by Shannon Cheng and Bryce Cannatelli. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on iTunes, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts - just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday almost-live shows and our midweek show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

On this 53rd anniversary, we talk to Denis Hayes the coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970. Those early days helped define environmentalism as Earth Day served as a big tent for pollution, endangered species and a myriad of other issues. Sadly being green in 2023 is as hard as ever as we learn from Hayes who bemoans political populism and the incredibly challenging mother of all environmental issues - Climate Change. For this story Green Energy Futures collaborated with Mitchell Beer, publisher of The Energy Mix. Check out our blog for the full story and to hear Mitchell's hour long interview with Denis Hayes. Visit GreenEnergyFutures.ca

In this month of December, Sybil is focusing on the question of why people give, and she is very excited to share this interview with Alicia. Alicia is somebody who is focused on giving back and she's donating her time and her money to an issue that she cares personally about so much, and it's connected to her daughter and her family. Alicia is a great example of why people give and why you as a donor, might find inspiration in her story to continue to give to the world.Episode Highlights:Alicia's journey as a mother of a special needs daughterGiving to fill a gapSpecial opportunity in the niche donorsAlicia DeLashmutt Bio:Alicia DeLashmutt is the Founder and President of Our Home, Inclusive Community Collaborative, a non-profit whose mission is to promote, support and develop inclusive and diverse communities. She is also the Founding Neighbor of Cathedral Park Cohousing, an inclusive and diverse cohousing community forming in Portland, Oregon. She is the proud mother of an awesome young adult daughter whose interests include baseball, Fritos and opera. Her daughter, Neva experiences Mowat-Wilson Syndrome, a rare genetic syndrome whose effects are widespread and will require significant supports throughout her life. Alicia is a Montana State University graduate and has a professional background in landscape, interior and architectural design. A 2007 Oregon Partners in Policy Making graduate she has participated in the Portland Public Schools Special Education Advisory Council, the Oregon DD Coalition, the OHSU Lend and Oregon Pediatric Improvement Programs, and as Program Coordinator and advisor for the North West Down Syndrome Association Kindergarten Inclusion Cohort. She is a national speaker on the importance of community and connection for all of us. Alicia is an active advocate and parent mentor who believes that the inclusion of ALL, regardless of race, color, national origin, sexual orientation, religion, age, disability, or gender identity is necessary for a vibrant and healthy community.Links: Our Home Website: https://www.ourhomeicc.org Cathedral Park Cohousing Website: https://www.cathedralparkcohousing.com E-Mail: alicia@ourhomeicc.com or alicia@cathedralparkcohousing.comIf you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well:#95 When a Passion for Salmon and Reptiles Creates a Powerful Giving Strategy with Guido Rahr President & CEO of Wild Salmon Center#87 A Climate Change Visionary Shares his Story and Tips for Donors, with Steve Kretzmann Founder of Oil Change International#75 The Co-Founder of Earth Day Explains His Funding Philosophy with Denis Hayes, President, Bullitt FoundationCrack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to PhilanthropyBecome even better at what you do as Sybil teaches you the strategies as well as the tools, you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy through my new course, Crack the Code!In this new course, you'll gain access to beautifully animated and filmed engaging videos, and many more! Link for the wait list for the Philanthropy Accelerator https://www.doyourgood.com/Philanthropy-Accelerator-Mastermind-WaitlistLink to the nonprofit email sign-up to connect https://www.doyourgood.com/ticket-to-fundraisingCheck out her website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at www.doyourgood.com. Connect with Do Your GoodFacebook @doyourgoodInstagram @doyourgoodWould you like to talk with Sybil directly?Send in your inquiries through her website www.doyourgood.com, or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com!

Sybil is pleased to have Samantha Campbell as a guest on today's episode. She shares her experience as a trustee at her family foundation working on what inspired her and her family to make a difference, and why giving is such an important part of her family's DNA. Samantha talks with Sybil about what motivates her for giving, what her dad's motivation was for giving, what the foundation focuses on and why it excites her. Episode Highlights:What inspires people to giveTips and tricks for effective givingCritiques of the funding worldSamantha Campbell Bio:In October of 2003, Samantha opened the Foundation's San Francisco office and began as Program Officer of the Pacific Region, tasked with developing a portfolio of work focused on improving marine and estuarine ecosystem health. In those early years, her work addressed domestic needs to improve fisheries management in addition to advancing the implementation of the California Marine Life Protection Act.In January of 2009, Samantha assumed the role of President of the Foundation, which brought the Foundation's Chesapeake grants program under her direction. She has navigated the Foundation's portfolio to focus on improvements to water quality in the two regions, and to a partnership approach across all Foundation initiatives.She is currently a Trustee of the Monterey Bay Aquarium.Samantha attended Syracuse University and earned a BFA in Advertising Design. She lives in San Francisco with her daughter and son.Links: Campbell Foundation for the Environment website: campbellfoundation.orgIf you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well:#95 When a Passion for Salmon and Reptiles Creates a Powerful Giving Strategy with Guido Rahr President & CEO of Wild Salmon Center#87 A Climate Change Visionary Shares his Story and Tips for Donors, with Steve Kretzmann Founder of Oil Change International#75 The Co-Founder of Earth Day Explains His Funding Philosophy with Denis Hayes, President, Bullitt FoundationCrack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to PhilanthropyBecome even better at what you do as Sybil teaches you the strategies as well as the tools, you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy through my new course, Crack the Code!In this new course, you'll gain access to beautifully animated and filmed engaging videos, and many more! Link for the wait list for the Philanthropy Accelerator https://www.doyourgood.com/Philanthropy-Accelerator-Mastermind-WaitlistLink to the nonprofit email sign-up to connect https://www.doyourgood.com/ticket-to-fundraisingCheck out her website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at www.doyourgood.com. Connect with Do Your GoodFacebook @doyourgoodInstagram @doyourgoodWould you like to talk with Sybil directly?Send in your inquiries through her website www.doyourgood.com, or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com!

Elizabeth Bast and Sybil discuss her role at Oil Change International. She explains how a nonprofit can make a big difference moving a cause forward while at the same time navigate change leadership after its founder steps down. Elizabeth explains why success requires both a visionary and an implementer. Episode Highlights: Elizabeth's personal journey How Oil Change International keeps donors updated Transitioning from the founder to a new leader The need for both a visionary and an implementer  The importance of engaging staff   Links:  Oil change International - https://priceofoil.org Oil Change International: ETwitter @esbast   If you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well: #75 The Co-Founder of Earth Day Explains His Funding Philosophy with Denis Hayes, President, Bullitt Foundation #46 An Entrepreneurial Philanthropist Takes Action on Climate Change with Tim Miller, Executive Director, PECI #12 Be Inspired to Support the Grassroots with Pam Fujita-Yuhas and Zoe Rothchild, Foundation Directors, NW Fund for the Environment   Crack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to Philanthropy Become even better at what you do as I teach you the strategies as well as the tools you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy through my new course, Crack the Code! In this new course, you'll gain access to beautifully animated and filmed engaging videos, and many more! Check out her website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at www.doyourgood.com.  Connect with Do Your Good Facebook @doyourgood Instagram @doyourgood Would you like to talk with Sybil directly? Send in your inquiries through her website www.doyourgood.com, or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com!

Steve Kretzman and Sybil discuss his involvement with combating fossil fuel development, his experiences around the world with Greenpeace and his inspiration to start an entirely new organization from scratch, called “Oil Change International.” Steve describes the path that brought him to work for the movement. He shares some first-person accounts from the front lines in Africa to underscore the human cost. Steve explains how donors can make sure they are advancing the cause rather than wasting time and resources. Episode Highlights: Steve Kretzman's journey Stories from the front line in Africa How donors can cause more time and money instead of helping the mission succeed    Links:  Oil change International - https://priceofoil.org Twitter @Kretzmann   If you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well: #75 The Co-Founder of Earth Day Explains His Funding Philosophy with Denis Hayes, President, Bullitt Foundation #46 An Entrepreneurial Philanthropist Takes Action on Climate Change with Tim Miller, Executive Director, PECI #12 Be Inspired to Support the Grassroots with Pam Fujita-Yuhas and Zoe Rothchild, Foundation Directors, NW Fund for the Environment   Crack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to Philanthropy Become even better at what you do as I teach you the strategies as well as the tools you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy through my new course, Crack the Code! In this new course, you'll gain access to beautifully animated and filmed engaging videos, and many more! Check out her website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at www.doyourgood.com.  Connect with Do Your Good Facebook @doyourgood Instagram @doyourgood Would you like to talk with Sybil directly? Send in your inquiries through her website www.doyourgood.com, or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com!

Sybil offers advice on what to do after the campaign you supported has come to completion and is either won or lost. How can you go on advocating for the cause you care about once a campaign is over?   Episode Highlights: Goals: What new actions must be made to accomplish the new goal? Leadership: Who are the individuals capable of carrying out the long-term objective? Structure: What kind of new organizational structure is required for implementation? Funding: Do you require additional funding for implementation? New Value: What is the new proposition's value?    If you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well: Guest Feature: Influential Entrepreneurs, Sybil Ackerman-Munson, Donor Advisor and Founder of Do Your Good #81 Finding Your Next Leader, with Sherry Cadsawan, CEO & Founder, Talence Group #75 The Co-Founder of Earth Day Explains His Funding Philosophy with Denis Hayes, President, Bullitt Foundation   Crack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to Philanthropy Become even better at what you do as I teach you the strategies as well as the tools you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy through my new course, Crack the Code! In this new course, you'll gain access to beautifully animated and filmed engaging videos, and many more! Check out her website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at www.doyourgood.com.  Connect with Do Your Good Facebook @doyourgood Instagram @doyourgood Would you like to talk with Sybil directly? Send in your inquiries through her website www.doyourgood.com, or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com!  

Shane Anderson, the director, and producer of Swiftwater Films joins Sybil. Shane discusses his experience finding environmental films and the kinds of questions donors should ask before supporting a project so that they don't leave money on the table. Episode Highlights: Shane's motivation to make movies that also make a difference in the world. Why funders should be excited to fund films provided they ask the right questions first. The concrete steps a donor should take before funding a movie project.    Links referenced in this podcast:  Guardians of the River Short: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0H4cVmTAbE&t=325s Chehalis: A Watershed Moment https://www.amazon.com/Chehalis-Watershed-Moment-Shane-Anderson/dp/B08G2D3324/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1IY9RRJFJ0OFN&keywords=chehalis+a+watershed+moment&qid=1655852179&s=instant-video&sprefix=chehalis+a+watershed+moment%2Cinstant-video%2C149&sr=1-1 Run Wild Run Free: 50 Years of Wild and Scenic Rivers https://www.amazon.com/Run-Wild-Free-scenic-rivers/dp/B08927YJF1/ref=sr_1_1?crid=13744ZUIDIK4B&keywords=run+wild+run+free&qid=1655852240&s=instant-video&sprefix=run+wild+run+%2Cinstant-video%2C119&sr=1-1 A Rivers Last Chance: https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.2eb3ba93-efbd-dfd8-4611-e8d163c78daa?autoplay=1&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb Wild Reverence (first film) https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.38b443e8-302a-c39b-7052-90642f9f94b6?autoplay=1&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb   If you enjoyed this episode, listen to these as well: #75 The Co-Founder of Earth Day Explains His Funding Philosophy with Denis Hayes, President, Bullitt Foundation #46 An Entrepreneurial Philanthropist Takes Action on Climate Change with Tim Miller, Executive Director, PECI #12 Be Inspired to Support the Grassroots with Pam Fujita-Yuhas and Zoe Rothchild, Foundation Directors, NW Fund for the Environment   Crack the Code: Sybil's Successful Guide to Philanthropy Become even better at what you do as I teach you the strategies as well as the tools you'll need to avoid mistakes and make a career out of philanthropy through my new course, Crack the Code! In this new course, you'll gain access to beautifully animated and filmed engaging videos, and many more! Check out her website with all the latest opportunities to learn from Sybil at www.doyourgood.com.  Connect with Do Your Good Facebook @doyourgood Instagram @doyourgood Would you like to talk with Sybil directly? Send in your inquiries through her website www.doyourgood.com, or you can email her directly at sybil@doyourgood.com!  

I am very excited to welcome one of my mentors, Denis Hayes, to the show. As the Co-Founder of Earth Day and President of the Bullitt Foundation, Denis shares his funding philosophy and rich history of working with trustees and nonprofits in his efforts to make the best impact in progressing the environmental movement worldwide.   Episode Highlights: • Denis' personal journey and motivations which led him to environmental activism. • The evolution of Denis' environmental work with the Bullitt Foundation. • The risks of oversimplifying complex societal issues. • The Bullitt Foundation's decision to spend down. • Denis' advice for people who want to start giving or continue giving to nonprofits.   Get the full show notes and more information here: https://www.doyourgood.com/blog/75-denis-hayes 

I am very excited to welcome one of my mentors, Denis Hayes, to the show. As the Co-Founder of Earth Day and President of the Bullitt Foundation, Denis shares his funding philosophy and rich history of working with trustees and nonprofits in his efforts to make the best impact in progressing the environmental movement worldwide. Episode Highlights: • Denis' personal journey and motivations which led him to environmental activism. • The evolution of Denis' environmental work with the Bullitt Foundation. • The risks of oversimplifying complex societal issues. • The Bullitt Foundation's decision to spend down. • Denis' advice for people who want to start giving or continue giving to nonprofits. Get the full show notes and more information here: https://www.doyourgood.com/blog/75-denis-hayes

In this episode Tibet House US | Menla President & Co-Founder Robert A.F. Thurman sits down for a heart-centered talk about Buddhist perspectives on the environment, Earth Day and the importance of rallying the modern environmental movement's understanding of the too often overlooked crisis on the Tibetan plateau, the Hindu Kush, and the Himalayas, known as "the Third Pole," due to its containing the world's largest collection of glacial ice after the Arctic and Antarctic poles. The Third Pole crisis comes from the ice melting four to six times faster than other global overheating sites, due to widespread mismanagement and exploitation, threatening the water resources flowing down the Yellow, Yangtse, Mekong, Irawaddy, Brahmaputra, Ganges, and Indus rivers, among others, the lifelines of over a billion people during long dry seasons between annual monsoons Using personal anecdotes, statistics from Al Gore's Climate Reality Project, as well as insights from the historical Buddha's teachings and life story, Thurman weaves an inspiring call to action for intelligent beings of all faiths, backgrounds, political beliefs and stances. This podcast includes: an extended re-telling of the Buddha's enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, introductions to the histories of Earth Day, The Climate Reality Project and Tibet House US | Menla, as well as simple ways anyone, anywhere can employ to shift their perspective to begin making a difference both in their own lives and in their communities. The episode concludes with an invitation to the Third Pole Hybrid Online & In-Person Conference, happening in the Fall of 2022 at Menla Retreat and Dewa Spa as well as a frank discussion on the importance of direct engagement and democratic participation in saving the planet for this and all future generations. About Earth Day: Every year on April 22, Earth Day marks the anniversary of the birth of the modern environmental movement in 1970. In the decades leading up to the first Earth Day, Air pollution was commonly accepted as the smell of prosperity. Until this point, mainstream America remained largely oblivious to environmental concerns and how a polluted environment threatens human health. However, the stage was set for change with the publication of Rachel Carson's New York Times bestseller Silent Spring in 1962. The book represented a watershed moment, selling more than 500,000 copies in 24 countries as it raised public awareness and concern for living organisms, the environment and the inextricable links between pollution and public health. Senator Gaylord Nelson, the junior senator from Wisconsin, had long been concerned about the deteriorating environment in the United States. Then in January 1969, he and many others witnessed the ravages of a massive oil spill in Santa Barbara, California. Inspired by the student anti-war movement, Senator Nelson wanted to infuse the energy of student anti-war protests with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution. Senator Nelson announced the idea for a teach-in on college campuses to the national media, and persuaded Pete McCloskey, a conservation-minded Republican Congressman, to serve as his co-chair. They recruited Denis Hayes, a young activist, to organize the campus teach-ins and they chose April 22, a weekday falling between Spring Break and Final Exams, to maximize the greatest student participation. Text via the official Earth Day website: www.earthday.org. To learn more about The Climate Reality Project, please visit: www.climaterealityproject.org. To sign up to receive updates about the upcoming Tibet House US | Menla "Third Pole" in-person and online program, please visit: www.menla.org.

Quantum Quote: “If it has been done, it must be possible.” – Kenneth Boulding   April 22, 2021 is the 51st Anniversary of Earth Day - the most widely-observed non-religious holiday in the world.    Over 1 BILLION people participate in Earth Day events in virtually every nation on Earth. Earth Day events educate and mobilize on local, state, national, and global environmental issues.    The 2020s HAS to be the turning point for humanity's transition to clean energy and a sustainable future. 90% of our carbon emissions come from burning fossil fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) for our electricity, heating, cooling and transportation.     The Good News is that the Forces of Nature provide 1,000 times the energy we need. The Better News is that we have the technology to channel that clean energy and meet all our needs. And the BEST news is that we can save money doing it.   This week AWESome EarthKind will re-run our interview with Denis Hayes, the first Earth Day coordinator - who then led the way to make Earth Day an international event.   Denis also did the ground-breaking work that created the first 6 story Net Energy Positive building - despite developers saying it was an impossible dream.    Dive into the world of Earth Day's Denis Hayes and realize that we can overcome the seemingly impossible challenges that confront humanity today.   Denis Hayes is a Stanford University graduate and has been a silicon-valley lawyer, a Stanford Professor of Engineering, and the director of the National Renewable Energy Lab. He currently works as the President of the Bullitt Foundation, where he developed the first 52,000 sq ft six-story building to be Net Energy Positive. The building creates more energy than it uses, and energy is not an expense - but a profit center! And the building was built in Seattle – the city with the least amount of sunlight in the United States.    Denis was named as The Newsmaker of the Day by the New York Times, The Hero of the Planet by Time Magazine, and was also listed as One of the 100 Most Influential Americans in the 20th century by Look Magazine.   Denis became the national coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970 after he dropped out of Harvard. That Earth Day mobilized millions of Americans and generated the momentum that led to the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the creation of The Environmental Protection Agency.    Listen to this episode as Denis shares insights into Earth Day, the “Sea of Energy” that surrounds us, the building that World Architecture Magazine called “The Greenest Office Building in the World”, the reality that we can overcome what seems impossible, and his hope for the future. Sign up for a free webclass to discover how easy it is to get ultra-efficient geothermal heating and cooling installed in your home – without the pain of emptying your savings account.   In “The Power Of Earth With Comfort” From Climate Master webclass, you'll discover the answers every homeowner needs to know, including:   How geothermal heating and cooling can draw energy from the ground beneath our feet (for pennies) Why homeowners everywhere are making the switch The secrets to securing utility incentives and tax credits to pay for a large portion of your new geothermal system   and much more…   If you tired of rising energy costs and want to save up to 70% on your energy bills, Go to www.AWESomeEarthKind.com and register now for this FREE special event that will show you exactly how to get geothermal heating and cooling installed in your home   We'd like to hear from you! Please help us understand how AWESomeEarthKind can help you achieve your clean energy goals – and you'll automatically be entered into a Sweepstakes for a Free LED Light Fixture:   SEND YOUR FEEDBACK TODAY   SuperNova #1. “If it has been done, it must be possible.” While everyone said it was impossible, Denis developed the first six-story 52,000 sq ft building to be Net Energy Positive – it creates more energy than it uses.   SuperNova #2. Most of the energy we need to do are simple – become super-efficient and let the forces of nature provide our power.    SuperNova #3. We live in a SEA OF ENERGY. If it wasn't for the sun, it would be hundreds of degrees below zero. The furnace just tops it up.   SuperNova #4. Utility scale “Solar On Demand” (Solar with batteries) is now the lowest cost power in the US.   Worst Clean Energy Moment: During the Arab Oil Embargo, Denis promoted that we do for solar energy what NASA and the Defense Department did for computer chips – buy in bulk and drive down prices. There was good and bad news.   Aha! Moment: “Energy is the capacity to do work.” Drying clothes outside takes as much energy as in the dryer, but we don't pay for the sun and air to dry our clothes.   Best Advice He's Ever Received: When you hit the wall with a complex problem – take a break. Go into nature, do something else. When you come back, you'll have the answer.   Personal Habit that Contributes to Success: Pessimism provides no survival advantage – it only leads to giving up. There is always hope – even in the face of incredible challenges (like Churchill in England during WWII).   Internet Resources: https://grist.org, The New Yorker cartoon page, and the Borowitz Report Satire.    WTF or F: Siberia in winter without a coat.   Most Energized About Today: The Green New Deal (now called “ called the American Jobs Plan”). The $3 Trillion Cares Act  was passed with only a few weeks' debate to avoid economic catastrophe. We CAN come together and decide that we are going to make the transition to a super efficient, renewable energy powered civilization.   Parting Advice: Even when everything is stacked against you – never give up.

In this special episode, Father - Daughter Trio, Ted, Sierra, and Skye Flanigan, hold an Earth Day Special on the origins and future of the sustainability movement, and what gives them optimism about ability to tackle climate change. Ted reflects on his conversation with Denis Hayes, Founder of Earth Day, and his personal experiences on past Earth Days. Skye then brings in a fresh take on what Earth Day now means to the youth, and shifts the focus on climate justice, a call to action, and accessibility to the environmental movement for all. 

Each year, we celebrate Earth Day; and each year, our collective actions lead to more greenhouse gas emissions, more habitat destruction, and more species extinctions. It's hard for Earth Day not to feel like more of a superficial patting of ourselves on the back or a greenwashing opportunity for corporate sponsors than a serious call for transformative change. The first Earth Day, on April 22, 1970, was something totally different. With 12,000 events across the country and more than 35,000 speakers from every walk of life—young and old, scientists and preachers, liberals and conservatives—the transformative power of the first Earth Day, conceived as a teach-in rather than a rally or a protest, is hard for us to imagine in our contemporary era of stark political polarization, hashtag protests, and climate denial politics.Adam Rome is an environmental historian who digs deep into the historical record and emerges with profound insights about the first Earth Day and the origins of the environmental movement. His work reveals the vital importance of understanding our environmental history in order to forge a more promising environmental future.Adam Rome was my advisor many years ago when I studied environmental history and cultural geography in graduate school at Penn State. And now, I'm very happy that he's my good friend and colleague here at the University at Buffalo, where he's Professor of Environment and Sustainability. My conversation with Adam travels through history, long before and after the first Earth Day, from beaver hats in feudal Europe; to the post-WWII era of prosperity and suburban development; and up to the present, as he probes the business world's attempts to become more sustainable. You can listen on Substack, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and other podcast platforms.Please rate, review, and share to help us spread the word!Adam RomeAdam Rome is professor of environment and sustainability at the University at Buffalo. A leading expert on the history of environmental activism, his first book, The Bulldozer in the Countryside: Suburban Sprawl and the Rise of American Environmentalism, won the Frederick Jackson Turner Award and the Lewis Mumford Prize. His book on the history of the first Earth Day, The Genius of Earth Day: How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation, was featured in The New Yorker. He is co-editor of Green Capitalism? Business and the Environment in the Twentieth Century. From 2002 to 2005, he edited the journal Environmental History. In addition to numerous scholarly publications, he has written essays and op-eds for a variety of publications, including Nature, Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Wired, and The Huffington Post. He has produced two Audible Original audio courses: “The Genius of Earth Day” and “The Enduring Genius of Frederick Law Olmsted.”Quotation read by Adam Rome“The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.” — Rachel Carson, from Silent SpringRecommended Readings & MediaTranscription IntroJohn Fiege Each year we celebrate Earth Day. And each year our collective actions lead to more greenhouse gas emissions, more habitat destruction, and more species extinctions. It's hard for Earth Day not to feel like more of a superficial patting of ourselves on the back, or a greenwashing opportunity for corporate sponsors, then a serious call for transformative change.The first Earth Day on April 22, 1970 was something totally different. With 12,000 events across the country, and more than 35,000 speakers from every walk of life, young and old scientists and preachers, liberals and conservatives, the transformative power of the first Earth Day, conceived as a teaching rather than a rally or protest is hard for us to imagine in our contemporary era of stark political polarization, hashtag protests, and climate denial politics.Adam Rome is an environmental historian who digs deep into the historical record and emerges with profound insights about the first Earth Day in the origins of the environmental movement. His work reveals the vital importance of understanding our environmental history in order to forge a more promising environmental future.Adam Rome But mobilizing isn't organizing. And mobilizing isn't empowering. It doesn't take people new places, you know, and then you think about other you know, advertising isn't about teaching you anything. It's about getting you to buy, you know, something. Political messaging isn't about educating you. It's about getting you to vote for this guy or woman rather than that person. So, it's yes or no, you know, Earth Day, the original Earth Day was so much more complicated than that. It left it up to millions of individuals to say, what does this mean to me, what am I going to do? It didn't try to marshal them all in one direction, or to enlist them into a preexisting cause.John Fiege I'm John Fiege, and this is Chrysalis.Adam Rome was my advisor many years ago when I studied environmental history and cultural geography in graduate school at Penn State. And now I'm very happy that he's my good friend and colleague here at the University of Buffalo, where he's professor of Environment and Sustainability.My conversation with Adam travels through history long before and after the first Earth Day, from Beaver hats and feudal Europe to the post World War Two era of prosperity and suburban development, and up to the present, as he probes the business world's attempts to become more sustainable.Here is Adam Rome. ---Conversation John Fiege If you could just tell, tell me a bit about where you grew up, and about your relationship to the rest of nature when you were a kid.Adam Rome I grew up in West Hartford, Connecticut. The town itself is a couple 100 years old. But the particular house that I grew up in, was in a was built in the late 1950s. In what had been a golf course, for some reason, the golf course moved a mile away. And so, when I was growing up, the former golf course was being slowly developed. And in fact, I remember one day, I don't know how old I was maybe eight, seeing bulldozers come and knocking trees down on one of the nearby yards. That that was undeveloped still. And that I think was really crucial, even more than the wild are places that I used to hang out that a couple of friends and I would go in the wild parts, the still undeveloped parts of the old golf course. And back then parents weren't worried about their kids in the way they are now. So, my parents had a big cowbell on their front porch. And when it was, you know, 15 minutes to dinnertime, they would ring the cow bell, and I can hear it anywhere in the neighborhood and come home, and that's so idyllic. But it was a very typical 50s suburban neighborhood.John Fiege So, you, you went to college at Yale, and then you were a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, and then you landed in Kansas. Can you tell me the story of how you got to Kansas and what you did when you were there?Adam Rome Kansas interestingly, I'll answer your question in a second but, but I had a much much more overwhelming emotional response to the landscape in Kansas than I ever did to any place around where I grew up, you know, that that John FiegeWhy do you think that was? Adam Rome I think I I loved the vastness of the sky. I love the spectacular sunsets. I love watching clouds move through the sky. I mean, you know, there's there's no tall buildings even in the cities in Kansas, compared to the northeast. So, you could see forever. And another thing that I really loved was, especially in the Western two thirds of the state. Wherever there was a river, you could tell those 15 or 20 miles away, because that would be the only place there would be trees. Right. And I love that the landscape was so powerful a presence, everybody thought about it all the time.John Fiege So, you eventually landed at University of Kansas, studying environmental history under Dan Webster, who's one of the great minds and founders of the discipline. Tell me what you got what got you interested in environmental history? Had you done anything with that prior to graduate school? And how did you come with? How did you come to work with Don Wooster?Adam Rome Environmental history really didn't exist as a field. That or at least it was in its most infant stage. When I was in college, which was 1976 to 1980. I actually got introduced to Don's work and to one other really renowned, now renowned, environmental historian through this humanities project that I did, about the little-known historical places. One of them was a place that during the dustbowl years of the 1930s, when the great plains were decimated by these unbelievable windstorms that that made up, you know, parts of Kansas look like Cape Cod, the dunes on Cape Cod that I had seen as a kid, devastating dust storms. And the government tried to reclaim some of those lands, it was really a pioneering effort of environmental restoration or ecological restoration. And so, there was this Cimarron grasslands in the very southwest corner of the state. It was one of the little-known historical places that I wrote about. And the background work that I did for that involved Don Westers first prize winning book, which is just called Dustbowl, and that book blew me away, I never imagined that you could write a history that combined environmental history and political history. And it's really an effort to understand the dust storms not as a purely natural phenomenon, but it's something that had been partly, maybe even predominantly caused by human activity in the decades leading up to it. And I read that book and it blew me away. And then right after that, I discovered this one other book that had just come out by William Cronin called changes in the land, which is about Native Americans and English colonists in New England, and all the ways in which they changed the landscape that the colonists did. And it gave a new way of understanding why the colonists were able to supplant the natives. But it also had some brilliant ideas about basic ways that we think about, about nature.John Fiege  08:09Let's turn to your first book, which is the bulldozer in the countryside. And it's a powerful environmental history of suburbia in America and how after World War Two developers brought Henry Ford's assembly line concept to the production of cheap tract housing on cheap land, on the outskirts of cities across the country. I want to read a passage from the book, but first, could you talk about how the suburbs were created and give us a sense of the scale at which this transformation of the countryside took place?Adam Rome Well, first, you have to keep in mind that before World War Two, not counting farm areas, where homeownership was much more common. In cities, there never been a point where more than 40% of Americans owned their own home. And homebuilding in those decades. was was really a mom-and-pop kind of thing. I mean, it was it was a craft. It wasn't it wasn't an industry. A lot of home builders might only build one or two houses a year. So, after World War Two, most famously in Levittown, New York, and then several other Levittowns, but mimicked all across the country. People figured out a way to to turn to mass produce housing, and in order to do that, they also needed cheap land, and large tracts of cheap land. So, although some of these postwar subdivisions that were mass produced were within the boundaries of cities, most of them weren't because the land that was cheap and widely available was was outside the city limits, right and so on. and all kinds of new earth moving equipment, especially the bulldozer had come into common usage during World War Two. And it became possible to turn almost any kind of landscape, you know, a marsh, a steep hillside a forest, into a flat pad, that's like a technical term for building and then breaking down the construction process into, you know, I don't remember the exact number, but let's say 20 different components. So, you know, one crew would would just bring the wood for the roofing, you know, where another would just do the bathroom or, and they could do in the case of Levittown, you know, 17,000 houses in in, you know, a year or two, right. And, and so the new combination of the new mass production method of building houses, and then unbelievable pent-up demand for housing, because there'd been virtually no housing construction during the Great Depression in the 1930s. And then virtually no housing construction during World War Two, right, and then the baby boom after the war. So, you've got millions and millions of people desperate for places to live, they didn't necessarily want to live in the suburbs, but they wanted a place to live and an affordable place, it was often cheaper to buy a Levittown house than to rent an apartment in a city. So, these, and by the late 40s, early 50s 2 million homes a year are getting built, which is an astonishing number. I don't think it had ever been more than 400,000 in a year in American history up to that point. So, a territory the size of Rhode Island, basically, every year is getting turned into new subdivisions, mostly in suburbs. And that that was I write in my book that was in whatever else it was, it was an environmental disaster on the scale of the dust.John Fiege Right, right. Just clearing all that land. Yeah, I grew up in Greenbelt, Maryland, one of Eleanor Roosevelt's plans, communities. Yeah, from the 30s. From the 30s. There's kind of pre pre post war, suburban development, but it was right on the outskirts of Washington DC. And, you know, had a little bit more of a idyllic you know, communitarian feel to it than, than the later suburbs. So, with your book, let me let me read a quote you you quote, the writer, Margo Tupper. Oh, yes. Like millions of Americans moved with her family to the suburbs after World War Two in Maryland. Oh, really? Was that Maryland? Yeah, realize that. Oh, that's interesting. Well, let me read the quote. So, she might have been your neighbor. Yeah. Wow. I had no idea. So let me it's a kind of a long quote, but I think it's worth reading because it's so it's so rich. “At that time, our house was second from the last on the dead end street. Beyond were acres of untouched woodlands, which were a refuge for children, a place to play natural surroundings. Youngsters in the neighborhood would go there build dams or catch minnows and a little creek, gather wildflowers and pick blossoms from the white dog woods. They built tree houses, picnicked under the tall tulip trees, and dog Jack in the pulpits, wild Fern and Violets to transplant to their gardens. Then one day my little girl Jan ran into the house shouting, Mother, there's a bulldozer up the street. The men say they're going to cut down the trees. They can't do that. They're my trees. Where will we play? Please, Mother, please stop them. Jan ran frantically out the door shouting. I'll get Susan Georgie Sissy and all the other children. If they're going to take our woods away. We'll have to save all we can. The children returned several hours later, pulling wagons loaded with flowers and plants. Jan brought home a small dogwood tree and planted among the wildflowers in the South Garden. Indeed, the bulldozers did come, these huge Earth eating machines raped the woods filled up the creek, buried the wildflowers and frightened away the rabbits and the birds. The power saws came too and took part in the murder of the woodlands near our home. Dynamite blasted out the huge tree roots trucks roared past our house carrying the remains sections of murdered trees and tons of earth in which were buried vines, shrubs and flowers. Then the dozers came to level the earth and power shovels to dig grade holes in less than a month, the first of 200 look like closely set small all houses rose to take the place of our beautiful forest.” So, at the heart of your book is this great irony that the experience the experiences of suburbanites like Margot Tupper and her family, who witnessed the destruction, on the frontlines of suburban development firsthand out there, front windows, helped ignite the environmental movement. In the 1950s and 60s, the majority of women had not yet entered the labor force. And it was women in particular, who spearheaded the new environmental movement. Can you talk about what Margo is writing there? And how this played out?Adam Rome Yeah, so that book came out in 1965, as I recall, and at that point, there had already been, maybe I'd say, for six, seven years, mounting concern, for lots of reasons, but, but one of them was the destruction of places for kids to play. And, and yeah, there's a powerful irony that the house that she lived in, and in her daughter, and all the neighbors that her daughter played with, you know, that had been something wild too, before it was made into their house. And, you know, it might have been that, that an earlier generation would have cried about that, you know, earlier generation means, like a year or two before. And she herself was sensitive to that she doesn't, she doesn't want there to be no development at all. But she's part of a movement to try to imagine land saving ways of development, ways of having same number of people have places to live even single-family homes, but clustered together with much larger, open space that wasn't just yard but was truly Wilder. And that was, that's keeps getting rediscovered, by the way, you know, every, like, 10 years people, people realize, that's an interesting idea. It's never become the norm. But but, you know, my whole book is really about people coming to realize that what, and this is part of a broader story and world after World War Two, that, you know, we have all these amazing technological changes, and new products, new ways of doing things that, that seemed miraculous, they allow us to, to have comfort and convenience and, and wealth on a scale that we hadn't imagined before. But they turned out to also have incredibly bad, unexpected environmental costs. And so, my book is really the story of how people try to come to terms with that, how do they try to reduce the cost of suburban development? Without ending it, you know, that they weren't saying no development at all? No one was, but But trying to figure out ways of meeting the need. And, and even that's an interesting question, you know, what, what do we need and housing? What is a good house? But how do you do that at at much less environmental costs. And it turned out that, you know, I was really stunned. I didn't think anyone would have been thinking about that until the 1970s. After the first Earth Day, and after the, you know, the whole environmental movement is obviously roaring along. But in fact, I found that even in the midst of World War Two people were beginning to find fault with some aspects of this new way of building and with each decade, more and more of these horrid side effects come to light and some of them become only of concern to experts. But open space, in particular led to real grassroots activism, real grassroots protests, and a new language. You know, she writes about rape. And no one had talked like that before, not even John Muir, when he was talking about the destruction of wild spaces. He came close but but this was so much more intimate than, you know, some spectacular place in Yosemite Valley getting destroyed for a damn this, this was your backyard. This was the place your kid played. And people start putting the word progress in quotation marks, you know, that, that it's not obvious to them anymore that that that these new homes are, are just purely good. So that's something radically new.John Fiege Yeah, and you bring up property rights in the book and kind of relates So what you're saying about Margo tuber being part of this movement to have more land and common open space. And the new ecological thinking that emerged in this era began to challenge and redefine property rights. Can you? Can you talk a little bit about that, and how that became a central issue and the struggle to protect ecological health?Adam Rome Yeah, this was another huge surprise to me. That, you know, with pollution, it's obvious that the, the biggest polluters are businesses. And, and so challenging corporate polluters is part of a long tradition of trying to rein in corporate power. But there aren't, you know, billions of corporations or millions of corporations, there's, there's only hundreds of really big ones, with with property, millions and millions of people own property. And it had been part of American history, that owning property was easy here, which it wasn't in Europe, and ordinary people could own property. And they could do with it, whatever they wanted. That, you know, that was one of the great freedoms of America in the minds of many people that came here from Europe. And by the 1960s, people are coming to realize, not just with homebuilding with development of all kinds that the way you use your land, couldn't really be entirely private decision, because it had consequences beyond the boundaries of your property. And, and people talked about this in the 60s as a quiet revolution, the growing awareness, both in the courts and in state legislatures, and in national forums, that, that how you use your land, how you developed it, especially could have far reaching detrimental consequences to the public good. And that, therefore, the public ought to have some say in what you did, didn't necessarily mean that it would, that it would bar you from doing certain things, although people said that to you know, in the same way that you're not allowed to sell tainted meat, you know, you shouldn't be able to build in a wetland, if that's going to cause flooding somewhere else. Or you shouldn't be able to build on a hillside, if that's going to endanger people who own property lower down the hill, or, you know, any number of things of that kind, where how you use the land could have far reaching implications beyond your borders. And, you know, that idea then, eventually led to a powerful counterattack. People talked about it, as you know, the new regulations that come in the 1960s and early 70s, as a new feudalism, the opponents called it so Feudalism was, you know, pre capitalist way of thinking about rights and responsibilities that came with land ownership, and only a few people could use it. And they, you know, they had to use it in a way that serve the community, whether they wanted to or not. So that's part of the powerful cause the rise of modern conservatism part of the rise of Ronald Reagan, was this idea that, that among those who own property that that didn't accept that idea that it was really a matter of public interest. They wanted to go back to the days when they could do whatever they wanted with their land.John Fiege  23:36Right, right. Oh, that's so interesting. And I love the title of your book, The Bulldozer in the Countryside. It paints such a vivid visceral image. And and you mentioned somewhere that that echoes The Machine in the Garden, the book by Leo marks, can you talk about that book and how it relates to your work?Adam Rome Yeah, Leo Marx. I'm not sure if he's still alive. I did meet him. He was a professor for a long time at MIT. And I did meet him when I spoke there more than a decade ago. But he wrot e this brilliant book, it's one of the most famous books that any American scholar has ever written in the humanities, called the machine in the garden. And it's a study of the literary responses in America, although it starts with Shakespeare in The Tempest. So, imagining America to the spread of technology of development of modern civilization into seemingly pristine areas. And, and, and, and for much of early American history, people just thought that was great, you know, that was fulfilling a biblical injunction to subdue the earth to write to make to make the wild spaces into a productive garden. But by the time of Thoreau, and others in the, you know, 1830s 1840s 1850s people are starting to have at least a very elite, well-educated group of artists and writers, more mixed feelings about that they, they, they know it's part of America's destiny seemingly to transform the wilderness, but they also lament some of the consequences of that. And, and The Machine in the Garden in in Leo Marxs is the railroad, that that was the great symbol. Once the railroad came, everything was going to change. And and the railroad goes right through Concord, Thoreau could hear it. Nathaniel Hawthorne can hear it. So, I took that image. And actually, the publisher didn't like the title. I had to really...John Fiege Oh really?  Adam Rome yeah, John Fiege wow. Adam RomeIf it was, if it was a trade press, I would have lost they would have been able to title what they want, but because it was a university press, I won.John Fiege Great. Well, moving on from the suburbs. Let's talk about Rachel Carson, who's one of my heroes.Adam RomeMine too. John FiegeYou wrote an article about her legacy that began this way. “In the decades after World War Two, many Americans imagined that modern technology finally would free humanity from the constraints and burdens of nature. We would overcome disease, moderate the extremes of climate, travel great distances in a flash and enjoy abundance of all kinds. Detergents will get clothes cleaner than clean. Nuclear Fission would generate electricity too cheap to meter. Plastics, seemingly inexhaustible, and infinitely malleable, would end our dependence on scarce natural resources. Bulldozers would transform marshes and steep hillsides into buildable land. Soon we would live on a perfected Earth where everything was easy, comfortable, and safe.” And then enter Rachel Carson, and her nineteen's landmark 1962 book, Silent Spring. What did she bring to that mentality that was really dominant in the 50s, and 60s?Adam Rome It's, you know, because we live in a post Rachel Carson world, it's so hard in some ways to imagine just how gung ho people were, especially Americans, but it wasn't it wasn't unique to us. After World War Two, the idea that, that we that we could conquer nature, that we could overcome any natural limit. And, you know, because nowadays, we we all think we love nature. But we're never as honest as we should be about the fact that there are a lot of elements of nature that we don't love, maybe even hate. And, and a lot of those are limits. most obvious one is death, you know. But that was another thing that people thought they could conquer, you know, that they thought modern medicine might allow a kind of immortality almost. Right. So, there's this tremendous faith that in the 50s and 60s that we're bringing nature under control, and that we are, you know, incredibly rapidly overcoming all these natural limits. And, and Rachel Carson is probably the, I mean, lots of people began to have doubts about that. But I would say she is by far the most powerful voice. And it's so amazing. It's just this lone voice, this one woman, she had no institutional by the time she wrote Silent Spring, she's just a writer. John Fiege RightAdam Rome She has no institutional support. And she's taking on one of the most powerful industries in the country. And she's taking on even more powerfully, this whole way of thinking about what our relationship to nature should be, and saying, no, it can't possibly be conquest. You know, nature is bigger than us. We can't conquer nature. And when we try, we may get a lot out of it in the short run, but in the long run, where we're risking undermining the foundations of our life. And and her warning is about that they were specifically about the new chemical pesticides that came into wide use after World War Two like DDT, but but she was really attacking much more broadly a whole kind of technological hubris of thinking that we could change nature in any way and that it would just be for the good, you know, it would be better we could make a better nature than nature had made. And she said that preposterous. And ultimately, it threatens our survival. But even if it didn't threaten our survival, it also was you know, she had different adjectives for it an immature way of thinking, a brute way of thinking, an immoral way of thinking, you know, that, that she too was saying we could do better. That's not our best self, our best self would be finding a way to to thrive while everything else also thrives.John Fiege Right. But you do point out that despite the huge impact of Silent Spring, and the government regulation and pesticides that followed, you write, we use more pesticides now than in 1962. Adam RomeYeah. John Fiege And which makes me think, like, has the change been in our mentality and our actions? Or has it been in our messaging and our vision of ourselves? Like, have we covered things up, but not really dealt with the underlying problems that continue in different forms?Adam Rome So, so one of the reasons why pesticide use is up, it's not just up in the US. But lot of other parts of the world have developed industrialized agriculture that relies heavily on pesticides. And, and, and that's true about a lot of things, you know, our air is cleaner, our water is cleaner. But that's partly because we don't make stuff here as much as we used to, it's made in China or Vietnam or wherever. Yeah, their air is not cleaner. There, you know, we've exported, we've exported our pollution. Yeah, we've outsourced our pollution, as well as a lot of our manufacturing jobs. And, you know, I go back and forth about this, I have a split personality. On the one hand, I'm Dr. Earth Day. You know, so I, I've spent a lot of time thinking about environmental activism in the US in the last 150 years, and how much more powerful environmental activists have become than they were. And that's an inspiring story, you know, but then the other side of me is Mr. Apocalypse, you know, all the ways in which things just keep getting worse, or at least they're still incredibly threatening. John Fiege RightAdam Rome And, and I'm trying to understand why, you know, without understanding why we can't possibly hope to, to avoid those outcomes.John Fiege So that's a great place to jump to your next book, which is The Genius of Earth Day, with a subtitle “How a 1970 Teach-In Unexpectedly Made the First Green Generation.” Can you paint a picture for us of the state of the environment on the eve of the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970?Adam Rome Yeah, it's so hard to imagine now, just how much more polluted visibly polluted the country was in 1970. You know, every city was just full of smoke of all kinds. And, you know, smoke from, from burning trash from incinerators, folks, from utilities, from manufacturers, on and on cement places. The waters were just horrid. You know, you couldn't swim in most urban rivers and many, even rural ones. You couldn't eat the fish safely. You couldn't do a lot of other recreational things, you know that the waters would smell they'd be, they might be acidic, they might even burn you if you fell in. You certainly couldn't drink them. And there was no regulation of waste disposal of any kind, not just ordinary trash, but hazardous what we now call hazardous waste. That phrase hadn't been invented yet. There was no regulation of it. So people could just dump incredibly toxic stuff wherever they wanted. And even, you know, things you you can barely imagine when I was in Kansas, canoeing down the biggest river in the middle of the state, which in Kansas is called our Kansas, of course. You know, you'd see rusted hawks of cars on the riverbanks, you know, that people would take out the few valuable parts of the car that they could sell and, and then they just dump them on the riverbank, and they were sitting there decades later. So, you know, everywhere people were aware that this wasn't like news. You could see it every day. But what was missing was the will to do something about it, it had always been considered the price of progress. You know, as part of a booming economy, we had to put up with pollution, especially in cities. And finally in 1970, after, you know, growing discontent that leads to the modern environmental movement, and to the first Earth DayJohn Fiege On January 18, 1970, Senator Nelson's environmental Teaching Committee took out a full page ad in the New York Times, announcing the upcoming event for the first time, it read in large font, April 22, Earth Day, and then it went on "A disease has infected our country, it has brought smog to Yosemite, dumped garbage in the Hudson, sprayed DDT in our food and left our cities in decay. The carrier is man”. Can you tell me the story of how earth day got its name? But how the idea of the teach-in that Senator Nelson had remained foundational to to the concept of what Earth Day was.Adam Rome So, Nelson. And he never wrote down anything about the aha moment when he had the seed of the idea that became Earth Day, but apparently, he was flying back to Washington and having gone out to California to see about six months after the devastation in the wake of the first unfortunately, only the first great oil spill in Santa Barbara. And he read about is a tactic that was used by people who were opposed to the Vietnam War called the a teaching, which was essentially a kind of politicized extracurricular, curricular activity on a couple dozen college campuses in the mid 60s, where opponents of the war and proponents of the war would come together and argue, was organized by the opponents, they were convinced that that would inspire people to to action that it would mobilize them against the war. And Nelson was he he was one of the first senators to oppose the war. That was one of his most courageous moves. But he was inspired by that he thought, you know, maybe the President has failed on this Congress has failed in this, maybe young people could could really carry the ball and make the environment a national priority. So, he, he promised in Seattle in September 1969, that he would organize a nationwide environmental teaching. And, and at first, he was only envisioning it as some small number of campuses, only on college campuses. But and he didn't know anything about how to do this, you know, he's at that point was a 53-year-old establishment figure. He wasn't some young Radster. And he rejected the advice that he got from a good friend that he did, he tried to make it a hierarchical top-down kind of thing. Instead, he decided basically, anyone who wanted to have a teaching could have it and they could do anything they wanted. And he just trusted that that would work out that that that would involve a lot of people, and they would do great things. And he was right. And quickly, this overwhelmed his staff, there was a lot more interest in it than he expected. And K to 12 schools got into it. And then people in communities wanted to have events that weren't tied to educational institutions. So, he hires this, this small number of 20-somethings who had been activists mostly and other causes in the 60s, to help him organize it. And, and, and they found this hipster ad guy in New York, Julian Koenig, who was willing, pro bono to come up with better names they thought environmental teaching sounded too academic. Even Nelson's adviser thought that but that he wasn't able to come up with a better name. And and Julian Koenig comes up with the name Earth Day and then this really blows me away this is part of Gaylord Nelson genius was he really he really didn't try to micromanage soJohn Fiege Right Adam Rome These 20 Somethings decide earth day is a much better name and they take out this ad and as far as I could tell they never asked him whether that was okay. They just did and then they changed the name of the of the you know, they weren't technically for this not for profit that Nelson set up called Environmental Teaching Inc. They couldn't legally change the name but they they changed the name on the stationery and everything else to environmental action. You know, again, they were trying to suggest that, that they were about action and protest and transforming America. But but the teach-in ideas still was very, very powerful. And most Earth Day events were places that people talked about these issues, it was an unprecedented discussion that involved, you know, potentially 20 million people. And 10s of 1000s of speakers, who had most had never spoken publicly about environmental issues. And these discussions were very intimate. Some of them were soul searching in the words of the New York Times, and the media to got into it. So, you have all this media discussion, unprecedented media coverage, and then you have these much more intimate settings where people are talking about these issues. And together, that was transformative. I think a lot of people thinking about these issues for the first time realized they cared about them a lot. And they were willing to do a lot to try to solve the problems and to keep doing it, often for decades.John Fiege And, you know, I'm really struck by, you know, you already mentioned this, but his willingness to let go, and the profound significance that had, and I just wanted to kind of revisit that, because particularly from today's today's perspective, it's almost impossible to imagine a US senator, starting something like this, and then just being like, Ah, I'll let it go have a life of its own. And I'll put the kids in charge. And hopefully, it's, it's a thing, but you know, I'm not gonna micromanage it like, that doesn't happen.Adam Rome No, no, I agree. And he didn't just let it go. I mean, he worked like hell, John Fiege right Adam Rome to publicize it, and to raise money for the staff and to, John Fiege right, Adam Rome you know,John Fiege But his, his ego didn't seem to get in the way.Adam Rome He didn't think of it as his thing. And I think, the way I've put it as he led by encouraging other people to lead, and that was brilliant. And, and you're right, especially in politics, that's so rare. You know, most people in politics want to be the center of attention. And, and he didn't. And in fact, you know, the New York Times, the day after day, the man of the man of the day was the 20, something guy that he had hired Denis Hayes, not Gaylord Nelson. But but it was actually Gaylord Nelson, that set the whole thing in motion. And so, I think that that modesty is so amazing. And that, that, that, you know, and I again, I don't know whether this was just a brilliant intuition on his part, or whether it was a little more carefully thought out, but, but I think he understood that it would be more powerful if a lot of other people could take ownership of it, if they could make it their own. And they did. And that was one of the biggest discoveries in the book for me is how many people all across the country had the idea to do this and spent months and months working on it. And, and those months and months were incredibly transformative for many of them. And they were not just an education on the issues, but people realized they had all kinds of skills they didn't think they had, or they had a passion they didn't realize they had. And and so many of those Earth Day organizers come away after Earth Day thinking, I want to keep doing something like this. And there were there were no, you know, books with hundreds and hundreds of eco jobs that you could just pick, you know, there were only a handful of things that were well established careers, and anything remotely to do with the environment. And a lot of these Earth Day organizers and many other people that just participated in Earth Day, they go out, they pioneer new career paths, they create new kinds of jobs and new kinds of organizations and new new ways of being, you know, an architect or a journalist or a professor, for that matter, to to continue to work on this and that that was only because they had already invested so much of themselves in the Earth Day.John Fiege Yeah, and the scale of the first Earth Day is amazing. It generated 12,000 events across the country and more than 35,000 speakers. And, and you write, that this first Earth they brought opposites together in powerful ways. Can you talk about how this big tent of unusual combinations of people gave us Earth Day?Adam RomeWell, it was a big tent and that too, is a almost inconceivable now in or was celebrated everywhere, right red states, blue states purple states. A lot of the places that I ended up writing about in the book are, you know, diehard Trump country now Alabama, you know, Montana, they had incredible Earth Day of events. And so part of it was that it was much more bipartisan than you can imagine. But I think one of the places where it brought people together was it combined the power of the establishment, you know, Gaylord Nelson could open doors, he could do lots of things, with the energy and the creativity of the grassroots. That was incredible. And that was so different than some of the other huge events of the 60s that were either more establishment or more grassroots than Earth Day, which was both. It also brought together young and old. And that was, again, something I didn't think about initially, but was hugely important, because that was a time, you couldn't take that for granted. I mean, a lot of old folks looked at college kids in thought troublemaker. And a lot of kids under 30 looked at old folks and said, can't trust them. You know, right. But Earth Day brought together intergenerational collaboration, all kinds of folks and again, at the national level, but also at the grassroots. And, and again, as I mentioned, a few minutes ago, I think this, it created this unprecedented debate about what people started calling the environmental crisis. And the debate didn't take place purely in the media or purely face to face, it was both. And I think that made it more powerful than it would have been in either of those places alone. And I think there's a lesson in that for our social media age, powerful as social media is it can't do some of the mobilizing, and the educating and the life changing things that the face-to-face conversation and the face-to-face planning of Earth Day. accomplished.John Fiege Right. So, I've always, to me, it's always been strange that the environment is such a political politicized issue, as if pollution and ecological destruction don't affect everybody. And I just when I read you talking about the kind of, you know, specifically democratic liberal intellectuals theorizing about this as like, is that part of the DNA of how we understand the environment, and therefore, it's so politicized in this country as a result?Adam Rome It wasn't, though in 1970. And in the same way, and and even conservatives, except for the most hardcore, you know, the John Birch are far far, far far right, folks, or the, you know, the totally southern segregationist forever, conservatives. Even most conservatives understood that pollution was a real problem, you know, there weren't deniers, then. They they disagreed sometimes with liberals. And as I said, there were liberal Republicans as well as liberal Democrats, right, about what to do about it. But there were a lot of conservatives that spent a lot of time in 1970, trying to figure out what would be a conservative approach? Is there a way to address these issues without big government? And, and so for example, there were people talking about global warming wasn't an issue, yet someone was talking about carbon tax, but there were people talking about pollution taxes, you know, that part of the problem was the market didn't force businesses to pay for the pollution that, but if they did have to pay for it, then they would reconstitute their way of doing things. So, they produced less pollution that was the market. Right. You know, there were conservatives talking about that, in 1970. And I think a couple you know, you there's a whole book about how the Republicans went from supportive to totally opposed, or almost totally opposed. But But I think the biggest thing that happened was, and this is another irony, you know, that modern environmentalism comes out of the prosperity of the post war years, right, and the prosperity is causing a lot of the problems, but it's also creating the political will to do something about them. And and then in 1973, more or less, the post war economic boom comes to an end and and the whole rest of the decade is full of economic turmoil, in fact, unprecedented, you know, high unemployment and high inflation which was supposed to be impossible, that the same, right and, and no one seems to be able to do anything about it. So, in that in that context, it suddenly becomes possible to have people argue again, what, wait a minute, we can't afford to keep going in this direction. Or, you know, these regulations are an onerous burden. By 1980, you know, you have Ronald Reagan saying he's going to undo all the environmental initiatives of the 70s. He doesn't, he can't. But he tries. And he has a lot of support for that that was inconceivable even five years before 10 years before.John Fiege Totally. You write: "Earth Day was an educational experience, as well as a political demonstration, that rare combination enabled Earth Day to have both long term and short-term impact". In the book, you tell this wonderful story of the San Mateo high school in California and its biology teacher, Edmund Home, who mentored students in the ecology club as they plan their Earth Day teaching. What happened there in those interactions between the teacher and his students? And what does it reveal about what the nature of the first Earth Day was?Adam Rome Yeah, so that's one of my favorite stories. I'm glad it struck you too. And that's the sort of thing Gaylord Nelson himself didn't envision, you know, he didn't originally envision high schools doing anything. But, but at this high school in Santa Monica, the teacher was a nature lover. But all the kids in the ecology club, most of them weren't, they were just interested in math and science. And they thought this was a cool thing. The way to be less nerdy was also something that appealed to some of the civic minded people in the school. So they're, you know, student body president, cheerleaders. You know, they met the teacher and the students over lunch, initially, just once a week for months, to talk about, you know, what, what would in environmental teach-in at their school be. And they had the total support of the principal. And, and those discussions in themselves, some of the participants told me were empowering, you know, that they weren't the kids weren't used to having an adult, listen seriously to their ideas about what they might do about anything. Right. And, and then, you know, they had to start doing the planning and figure out who might speak and what the activities were going to be. And you know, whether any of it was going to be funny, even though these were deadly, serious subjects, they decided they wanted humor. And, you know, they had to decide whether to address politically difficult issues, like population growth, which meant talking about sex, which you weren't supposed to do without permission. And, you know, they do all this interesting stuff. And as it gets closer to April 22, then they start, you know, the key organizer start meeting with, with the teacher at home every day. And again, you know, they he didn't tell him what to do. He had some suggestions, but it was their deal. But he, he nurtured them, he gave them the sense that they could do it. And so many people told me that not just the high school kids that I talked about a lot of the college and graduate school organizers to that, that it was empowering to work on this, that they they came away with it with this can-do sense that anything was possible.John Fiege It's so unusual. Adam RomeYeah. John Fiege To have an experience like that, that profound at that age. Adam RomeYeah. John Fiege So, you know, the institutional achievements in the wake of the first Earth Day are really remarkable. The formation of EPA and the passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970, the Clean Water Act in 1972, the Endangered Species Act of 1973, all under a Republican administration, no less. But in 1990, just after climate change, became a widely publicized environmental concern. There was a 20th anniversary celebration of Earth Day. It was also a huge event with more professional planning, better funding, and a more focused message than in 1970. But it didn't lead to an environmental decade that confronted climate change or any other environmental issues. And as the first birthday had, as you write, can you talk a bit about Earth Day 1990. And what it reveals about how remarkable and achievement the first Earth Day was, and what lessons we might draw from those differences.Adam Rome It's interesting. I often hesitate to talk about the personalities involved, but So Dennis Hayes, and he was the guy Dennis Hayes, who, who was the main force behind Earth Day 1990, the 20th anniversary. So, Dennis Hayes was was not Gaylord Nelson. And Denis Hayes, I think drew exactly the wrong lesson. And he's gone on to do incredibly interesting important things as an environmentalist. But the lesson that he drew was top down. And and so an Earth Day 1990 It had, you know, I don't remember the exact numbers, but let's say 20 or 30 times the budget of the first Earth Day, it had all these political consultants and Hollywood gurus and advertising mavens working pro bono, on their on their messaging and polling and tie in merchandise and getting celebrities involved. And, you know, so they made the mistake, I think of of hoping that they could just mobilize people. But mobilizing isn't organizing. And mobilizing isn't empowering. It doesn't take people new places, you know, and then you think about other you know, advertising isn't about teaching you anything, it's about getting you to buy, you know, something. Political messaging isn't about educating you; it's about getting you to vote for this guy or woman rather than that person. So, it's yes or no, you know, Earth Day, the original Earth Day was so much more complicated than that it left it up to millions of individuals to say, what does this mean to me, what am I going to do? It didn't try to marshal them all in one direction, or to enlist them into a preexisting cause. Earth Day 1990 Did Did those other things, it tried to get people to join groups that already existed, and they did. Environmental groups reached their new heights of membership in the wake of Earth Day 1990. And it certainly heightened the message that individuals what they consumed mattered. But I don't think, you know, when you go to a March, that's very powerful. But it's not necessarily life transforming, it's not right to change the way you think. And the same thing when you go into the voting booth. So, taking politics and marketing as your models, that was a mistake. And they got a lot of people involved way more even than the first Earth Day and they made it global. But they didn't understand that the deepest change comes from the empowerment, that's a much slower process and requires more give and take, you know, it's not just getting the message out, and then having people hear it and do something.John Fiege I want to turn to your most recent work, which revolves around business and the environment. With much of your recent writing, you're asking whether it's possible to green capitalism, and if so, what does that look like? you frame the question this way:  "At one extreme critics of capitalism dismiss all corporate talk of sustainability as greenwashing as a way to distract people from the fundamental destructiveness of the system. At the other extreme, the boosters of green business take for granted that sustainability is the inevitable next stage of the evolution of the market. Neither view is historically grounded". Why not?Adam Rome It's really definitional. So, if you can define capitalism, a variety ways, but some of the ways of defining capitalism make it just theoretically impossible that it could ever be green. So there, they don't they're not drawing on any historical data. It's a theoretical argument. The other argument, the booster argument, I'd say the historical record already clearly disproves. Capitalism is not just going to evolve, right, to a more sustainable thing. There are all kinds of reasons why, why the people that even that have tried the hardest to green, their businesses or their industries haven't been able to do it. So, if there's any chance of capitalism becoming green, the historical record, I would say so far, says it can only happen if there's powerful movement, a social movement, a political movement, that rewrites the rules that the change is what guides business. So that, that the default for business becomes doing the green thing rather than the exception.John Fiege Right. Let's talk about a specific example. You write about DuPont. And, you know, at some point in the late 80s, early 90s, DuPont kind of decided to start to lead the way in terms of environmental sustainability. And you really asked the question of how far can the company realistically go and how much can they truly fulfill this idea of, of sustainability, can you tell a little bit about the story of what happened with DuPont and what you drew from that?Adam Rome Sure. And so, it's 1989 that they have a new CEO, Edgar Willard. And he says, we need a new corporate environmentalism that's pretty much a phrase that he coined. And to think that they, they have to go in the phrase of the day beyond compliance. They can't just do what the law requires. That they they'll for all kinds of business reasons, they have to actually do better. They have to start thinking about how to green operations. And that's not just true for manufacturing firms, although it was manufacturers and particularly heavily polluting manufacturers that got the message first. So, I had already been thinking about what's the environmental impact of a company like DuPont, and how has it changed over time, and then I noticed that their CEO, Edgar Willard, becomes this national focal point, for an effort to try to create a corporate environmentalism and the next long serving CEO and board chairman of DuPont, Chad Holliday also becomes a national international leader in this movement. And for him, the key phrase was sustainable growth that he tries to envision to reorient the whole company toward some new areas that he foresaw as great needs if we were to become a more sustainable society. And both of them do real things that are, were hard. And in some cases, I would even say courageous. And they make dramatic improvements in certain ways. But in other ways, they totally fall short and the most egregious of their efforts that are non-efforts. Something that predated either of them that one of their iconic products at DuPont was Teflon —still is— and making Teflon involved a chemical usually just called C8, that they didn't make themselves three M made it and they bought it from 3M. But well before Willard comes into office. 3M begins to think C8 is not safe, or it could be hazardous in certain circumstances. They weren't DuPont. And DuPont has some serious internal debate about this. And they decide not to do anything differently than then. And and, and neither Edgar Willard nor Chad Holliday ever reconsiders that decision. In fact, they do the opposite when, when evidence of how dangerous it is to use C8 and and how C8 has escaped from their factory in West Virginia and is polluting the water and is polluting nearby land where they were dumping waste. They doubled down 3M eventually decides it's not going to make C8 anymore. And DuPont instead of finding an alternative builds their own C8 factory in North Carolina. And all of this is secret. This only comes out as a result of a miraculous series of circumstances, all of which could have easily not happened that allow an attorney Rob Billot to slowly build the evidence of how much DuPont knew, how great lengths they went to keep it secret, how they didn't make decisions that they easily could have made that wouldn't have even been that expensive, that could have avoided an environmental catastrophe. And the more interesting discovery in some way for me with DuPont was they they tried to create sustainable alternative to artificial fibers like polyester and nylon. And they tried to create a sustainable biofuel as an alternative to gasoline and for that matter, ethanol. And they put a huge amount of effort into it. And and they didn't get the results out of it, the financial results out of it that they hoped. And I think that's a key part of the puncturing of the balloon of the boosters, is that, you know, they make it sound like if people just had the will, they could create all these green new products and people would buy them and they'd make money. Green is Gold is the title of one book. It's not that simple. First of all, it's not always clear what is more sustainable product is and most companies don't have any expertise in thinking about this. So, they make mistakes but the market, the fundamental flaws of capitalism mean that greener products are always competing against things that are cheaper but dirtierJohn Fiege right, and then the public absorbs the costs, right? Environmental cost.Adam Rome Exactly. And, and some of those products can still find a niche, you know, like the Prius, or, you know, early on certain kinds of organic food. But a niche doesn't change the world, John Fiege RightAdam Rome and it and it also doesn't make enough money for big multinationals like DuPont that are publicly listed corporations to satisfy the shareholders... Right, and the shareholders rebelled. So, DuPont doesn't exist anymore. And part of what the part of what the shareholders the activist shareholders were rebelling against was the R&D Enterprise, which, which is crucial to sustainability. If you have to only think three months ahead, you're not going to be developing a lot of sustainable products, the things that DuPont was trying to do took a decade or more. And that's hard, even even if it's just a standard product, but especially if it's something that's trying to anticipate what would really be greener, 10 years from now. But, you know, the market doesn't reward that it rewards quick and dirty returns, not long-term farsighted thinking.John Fiege And you make this, this point that I think is really powerful that, you know, there, there are two different types of making business more sustainable, there are things like reducing waste, and being more efficient. And and using fewer materials, those things are all beneficial environmentally, they also make the cost of doing business less right there, they save money for the company. And companies have very enthusiastically taken that side of kind of eco thinking on and and often advertised how great they are for doing that. But there are other things that actually make the cost of doing business much higher, and things more difficult and more risky and less likely to to produce shareholder value. And those are the those are the things that companies haven't done well at all Adam Rome Right.John Fiege I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit more about that. And what you've seen with DuPont and otherAdam Rome Right, so those those win-wins, where it's environmentally better, and it's more profitable, are usually in the category of what's come to be called Eco efficiencies. And even those aren't always easy. That was another lesson for me and DuPont was Woolard pushes his scientists as researchers to find ways to reduce waste. And in their initial response is pushback. No, we can't do that. Are you crazy? If you know if we could do that we would have done it already. It's going to cost more or it's technically impossible. But a lot of times thinking outside the box, in fact, allowed these win-win solutions, these eco efficiencies. And sometimes the savings were gargantuan, really. John Fiege Right. Adam Rome And, and it's not all just in production processes. You know, Xerox, realized that it could take back copiers and use the parts in the copiers to quote remanufactured copiers. And that would save them a lot of money. And it was and then they realized it would save them even more if the copiers were designed from the beginning to be disassembled and reused like that. And that was, you know, hundreds and hundreds of million dollars a year of savings. But only, you know, someone had to prod them to do that. So, it takes leadership. But then there are all these harder things were in the current business model. They're not likely to to be as rewarding as the alternatives. And at the worst extreme, you know, there are incentives in the market right now, to make climate change worse, you know, there are lots of ways not just a fossil fuel, people can profit from some of the things that are going on, rather than trying to solve the problem. So, if your actual goal is a green economy, whether it's a capitalist one or any other kind of one, then the rules have to change fundamentally the way we understand what business is and what it does, and what its responsibilities are having to change fundamentally. Because we're never going to get to a sustainable economy. If some things pay, and some don't that are greenJohn Fiege RightAdam Rome Everything has to be paid to be green, or we have to get to a system where that's not the standard judgment anymore.John Fiege Yeah, yeah. You've also done some really fascinating work around fashion as a driver of consumption, environmental destruction. Could you talk a bit about the story of the Beaver, and kind of the the ascendant merchant class in Europe and the wide-ranging impacts of the fashion aspirations on on rivers, meadows, wetlands in North America, that kind of thing.Adam Rome The reason fashion looms so large for me was you know, there's only so much that you can eat or drink. No matter how wealthy you are, you know, there's, there's a biological limit. And, and that's true for a lot of other things that we consume, but, but fashion creates this potentially unlimited demand, that, that if something goes out of style, and you're no longer willing to use it, even if it's perfectly functional in every other way, and then you buy something new, that's, that's an unbelievable demand on resources, to have, essentially insatiable appetites. And it started with clothing, and especially with the beaver hat, that became a fashion item in Europe, and then and then in the US. But in the 20th century, it's expanded to lots of other things, you know, your, your smartphone is a fashion item, Apple is a fashion company, in many ways, you know, cars became fashion items, and were sold on style, as much as anything else. And so many other things have become like that, that that's become a major form of marketing is to get you to be dissatisfied with what you have, because it no longer is cool, right, and then to junk it and get something else and, and, and that cycle is incredibly destructive, but it starts with beaver. The poor Beaver, you know, their pelt happened to be really good for making hats better than wool, which was the alternative, you know, it was easier to shape, and it was water resistant, and it was easier to dye in it. And it was more expensive. So, it also therefore was more of a status object. And, you know, at the beginnings of modern capitalism, the rising merchant class wanted to have a way of showing that they were important and, and having stylish attire, and especially stylish hats was part of it. And as a result, all the Beaver in Europe is wiped out except for the very far reaches of Siberia, then the New World, new to Europe, at least, is opened up to exploitation. And there's lots of beaver in the northern US and in Canada. And over the course of the centuries, the Beaver is nearly wiped out in North America. All to satisfy this never-ending demand for stylish new hats.John Fiege It always struck me as kind of the perfect example of what environmental history is. Because not only did this fashion sense in Europe, originally, wipe out the Beaver for the most part in North America. But because beavers were no longer making dams, then it changed the dynamics of the rivers. Adam Rome Right.John Fiege and it destroyed wetlands. And it it changed the dynamics of whether there were meadows or not. And this, this very lofty idea of fashion and what people thought of themselves, in a, in a distant land in Europe, had these very real and immediate environmental impacts on the landscape in North America. And that, to me, that seems to be such a perfect encapsulation of the power of what environmental history is combining those two things.Adam Rome You're right, you know, that's part of the

Happy New Year, Awesome People! Welcome to 2022! The turning of the year provides the opportunity to stop, see where we are, remember the lessons of where we've come from, and determine our intentions and goals for the future. In the first AWESome EarthKind episode over a year ago, we interviewed Denis Hayes, the original organizer of Earth Day who then led the movement that made Earth Day the most widely celebrated secular holiday in the world, involving over 1 Billion human beings. In that interview, Denis spoke about how there is Always Hope. He recounts several turning points in history where the future was dark and bleak – and yet, despite the odds, people held onto hope and snatched victory out of the jaws of impending defeat. While today there is much to be rightly concerned about – there are also brilliant starbursts of light that ignite hope and show us a path forward. Here are some excerpts from the Good News Network (https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/) and various other sources: Despite a few national governments continuing to keep their coal and oil projects afloat, market demand and private entrepreneurship is driving what can only be described as a revolution in renewable energy. These latest achievements were basically unbelievable when global climate change was first being discussed as a serious threat. But today, each successive development of renewable energy generation, clean heating & cooling, and electric cars, makes new achievements cheaper and easier to scale. Solar for the Developing World A half-million people living in 3 of the Northern Congo cities are going to be supplied with reliable renewable energy by a trio of United Kingdom, French, and Spanish solar power companies. Citizens from that region suffer from the lowest rates of reliable electricity in the world. The solar power plants with battery storage will now resolve this problem. In West Africa, 2 Senegalese cities will find 60MW of solar power available to them in the coming months as a variety of institutions offer government financing for sustainable energy. Senegal is a heavy net energy-importer, placing enormous financial burdens on people for the importatino of coal and oil. In Nigeria, one of Africa's largest economies, the Solar Power Naija program will equip 500,000 homes with solar panels, generating electricity for 25 million Nigerians. Solar on Demand – the least expensive energy source on the planet The United States National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL) reports that solar and storage costs have fallen dramatically over the past decade. The price of residential solar was reported down from $7.53/W in 2010 to $2.65/W in 2021,; utility-scale solar was $5.66/W a decade ago to $0.89/W today. That was driven in large part by higher module efficiency and lower module cost.  The combination of low-cost solar farms and lithium-ion batteries has produced a dynamic new hybrid resource capable of providing energy from the sun after dark and reshaping America's power mix in the 2020s. The spread of these hybrid facilities has been fueled largely by plummeting solar-plus-storage prices, which have begun undercutting conventional fossil-fueled generation. Levelized solar energy prices - Adjusted for inflation over the estimated 30-year lives of the projects - are in the 2 to 3 cents per kwh range, according to a recent report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Just a few years ago, solar-plus-storage prices were more than triple today's going rates. Today, solar and battery storage provide the lowest cost energy on the planet. Last year, 3/4s of all new electric generation capacity in the world was built with solar.   The windiest on record   2021 was the single best year on record for wind turbine manufacturers with 93 new gigawatts (BILLION watts) being added—a 53% increase since 2020.  The 2021 Global Wind Report summary states:   “Through technology innovations and economies of scale, the global wind power market has nearly quadrupled in size over the past decade and established itself as one of the most cost-competitive and resilient power sources across the world.”   “Today, there is now 743 GW of wind power capacity worldwide, helping to avoid over 1.1 billion tons of CO2 globally—equivalent to the annual carbon emissions of South America.”   HOT ELECTRIC CARS   Data assembled back in March from Germany's largest automotive industry review produced a startling statistic - 1 in 5 cars made in Germany can be plugged in.   The Schmidt Automotive Research Center found that 74,000 of the 374,000 cars that left German assembly lines were either electric or hybrid electric vehicles.   On the demand side, things are just as rosy. Germany is the fourth largest auto market in the world, and electric car registrations grew from a 4% national market share in December 2019, to a whopping 26% market share just 12 months later.    This is just in the background of a global surge in EV purchasing that climbed 40% during 2020, when most markets were suffering from COVID-related issues. Bloomberg New Energy Fund “expects that EVs will make up 20-30% of sales in the United States, European Union and China by 2025, based on "proposed and confirmed rules" in those markets. President Joe Biden has set a goal for half of new passenger vehicle sales in the United States to be electric vehicles by 2030. And New York and others have banned the sale of gas cars by 2035. 2021 is estimated to be "yet another record year for EV sales globally," with 5.6 million sold. That is 83% higher than 2020 and a 168% increase over 2019 sales. And global momentum towards zero-emissions vehicles (ZEV) has "accelerated significantly," Bloomberg said. EVs will "capture a higher share of passenger vehicle sales, sooner than previously expected."   The green new pension   Since its green shoots 50 years ago, acceptance of ESG (environmental, social, and governance) considerations in institutional investing – especially at pension funds – has evolved with distinct shifts in investor preferences.   As the holders of the largest state-controlled pension fund on Earth, the South Korean monetary authorities released a statement in May that the $771 billion National Pension Fund will cease all investments related to coal power both at home and abroad.   The fund also announced that they would revamp guidelines for investment strategies to ensure a more sustainable pattern emerges in the future.   Worldwide, ESG (Environmental Social & Governance) assets surpassed $35 trillion in 2020 - up from $30.6 trillion in 2018 and $22.8 trillion in 2016 reaching a third of current total global assets under management, according to the Global Sustainable Investment Association.   ExxonMobil – long known for its anti-climate change positions - used to have bragging rights as the world's most valuable public company with $500 Billion of market valuation. Now, America's largest oil company is in steady decline. It's been kicked out of the Dow Jones Industrial Average and has less than half of its peak market value. Adios, coal: Spain hits 50% renewable milestone Back in mid-May, the Spanish legislature announced it would be phasing out all oil, coal, and gas production by 2042, and that all carbon-emitting vehicle sales would be banned by 2040.   In the short term, the Spanish lawmakers want 74% of the national energy consumption to be entirely renewable by the end of the decade. They are quite close to that goal already, as the month of May saw 50% of the nation's energy demand fulfilled by green energy.   Romania also joined the effort, alerting the EU that through its National Recovery and Resilience Plan the country would cease all coal production by 2032, at which time it plans to have installed 34% renewable electricity to take over the baton.   G7, the world's seven largest developed economies, all agreed to stop coal financing by the end of the year. Now that Japan is also on board, that leaves the African, India, and China as the last remaining holdouts.   In the US, 22 states now have carbon-free energy goals:   Arizona 100% carbon-free electricity by 2070 Adopted by order of the Arizona Commerce Commission in May 2021, extending and expanding the existing state RPS. Docket number RU-00000A-18-0284. California 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045 2018 legislation (SB 100) extended and expanded the existing state RPS. State agencies are required to submit implementation plans by January 1, 2021. Also in 2018, Gov. Jerry Brown's Executive Order B-55-18 set a goal of statewide carbon neutrality by no later than 2045, with net negative GHG emissions thereafter. Colorado 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050 for Xcel Energy A 2019 law (SB 19-236) codified a pledge previously made by Xcel, whose service territory covers approximately 60% of the state's load. It is mandatory “so long as it is technically and economically feasible.” Connecticut 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040 Governor Ned Lamont's 2019 Executive Order (Number 3) set a 2040 goal for carbon-free electricity and asked the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to develop a decarbonization plan for the power sector, in line with previous legislation to cut economy-wide carbon emissions by 80% below 2001 levels by 2050. District of Columbia 100% renewable energy by 2032 through the RPS The Clean Energy DC Omnibus Amendment Act of 2018 (DC Act 22-583) amended the existing RPS to mandate 100% renewable electricity by the year 2032. Hawaii 100% renewable energy by 2045 through the RPS 2015 legislation (HB623) made Hawaii the first state to set a 100% RPS for the electricity sector. Illinois 100% clean energy by 2050 2021 legislation (SB2408) established a goal of 100% clean energy by 2050, with interim targets of 40% by 2030 and 50% by 2040. Louisiana Net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 Governor John Bel Edwards' 2020 Executive Order (JBE 2020-18) established a Climate Initiatives Task Force to develop a roadmap and make recommendations. Maine 100% clean energy by 2050 2019 legislation (LD 1494) increased Maine's RPS to 80% by 2030, and set a goal of 100% by 2050. Also LD1679 sets an economy-wide goal of 80% cuts to greenhouse gases by 2050. Massachusetts Net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 In 2020, the Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs set a 2050 net-zero GHG emissions goal under the authority of 2008 legislation. The same goal was then included in a March 2021 climate action law (Bill S.9). A decarbonization roadmap was released at the end of 2020. Michigan Economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2050 Governor Gretchen Whitmer's order in 2020 (Executive Directive 2020-10) set a goal “to achieve economy-wide carbon neutrality no later than 2050.” It directed the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy to develop a plan by the end of 2021. Nebraska Net-zero carbon emissions from generation resources by 2050 for Nebraska Public Power District and Omaha Public Power District; 2040 for Lincoln Electric System Nebraska is the only state served solely by publicly owned utilities. As of December 2021, the three public utilities that serve the vast majority of customers have all adopted 100% clean energy goals. Nevada 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050 2019 legislation (SB 358) raised the RPS to 50% by 2030, and set a goal of a net-zero emission power sector by 2050. New Jersey 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050 Governor Phil Murphy's Executive Order 28 in 2018 set a carbon free goal for the power sector and directed the BPU to develop an Energy Master Plan, which was released in 2020. New Mexico 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045 2019 legislation (SB 489) requires a zero-carbon power supply by 2050, with at least 80% from renewables. New York 100% carbon-free electricity by 2040 2019 legislation (S6599) requires zero-emissions electricity by 2040 and sets a goal of cutting all state GHGs 85% by 2050. A Climate Action Council will develop a plan. North Carolina Carbon neutrality in the electricity sector by 2050 2021 legislation (HB 951) requires the North Carolina Utilities Commission to “take all reasonable steps” to achieve a 70% reduction in CO2 emissions from electric generating facilities in the state by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2050. Oregon Greenhouse gas emissions reduced 100 percent below baseline emissions by 2040 2021 legislation (HB 2021) requires investor-owned utilities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with the electricity they sell to 80 percent below baseline emissions levels by 2030, 90 percent below baseline emissions levels by 2035, and 100 percent below baseline emissions levels by 2040. Puerto Rico 100% renewable energy for electricity by 2050 2019 legislation (SB1121), the Public Energy Policy Law of Puerto Rico, set a timeline for reaching 100% renewable electricity by the year 2050. Rhode Island 100% renewable energy electricity by 2030 Governor Gina Raimondo's 2020 Executive Order (20-01) requires the Office of Energy Resources to “conduct economic and energy market analysis and develop viable policy and programmatic pathways” to meet 100% of statewide electricity deliveries with renewables by 2030. Virginia 100% carbon-free electricity by 2045 for Dominion Energy and 2050 for Appalachian Power Company The 2020 Virginia Clean Economy Act (House Bill 1526 and Senate Bill 851) requires zero-carbon utilities by 2050 at the latest. Washington 100% zero-emissions electricity by 2045 2019's Clean Energy Transformation Act (SB5116) applies to all utilities. The state Commerce Department started a rulemaking process in August 2019. Utilities must file implementation plans by January 2022. Wisconsin 100% carbon-free electricity by 2050 Governor Tony Evers' Executive Order (EO38) in 2019 directed a new Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy to “achieve a goal” of all carbon-free power by 2050. Natural Gas Moratoriums & Heat Pumps Dozens of cities, including San Francisco, Berkeley and San Jose in California; Cambridge, Mass.; and Seattle, Oregon have moved to ban natural gas hook ups in new buildings as a way to combat climate change. In Westchester NY, there has been a moratorium on new natural gas hookups since 2018.  And on December 15th, 2021 - New York City banned natural gas hookups for new buildings starting in 2027. Previously, Geothermal or ground source heat pumps were growing at a rate of  7% per year. Since geothermal is the most efficient form of heating and cooling – with 500% efficiencies from using the stored heat in the ground beneath our feet – it is expected that the growth in both air and ground source heat pumps will soon reach double digits.    Green oil All is not business-as-usual in the boardrooms of some of the world's largest petroleum producers.   In a landmark court decision, a judge in the Netherlands ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut emissions by 45% after 17,000 people brought a lawsuit that Shell's large greenhouse gas footprint merits a significant investment in CO2-slashing as a debt to society. Elsewhere in Europe, the Italian oil company Eni became the first European oil company to launch a corporate bond that is linked to sustainability. The €1 billion 7-year bond is linked to two key performance indicators: “Increasing renewable installed capacity to 5GW by the end of 2025; and cutting the net carbon footprint of its upstream business by 50% by 2024,” Lastly, Engine No.1, a shareholder group of ExxonMobil, managed to get two of their candidates elected to the American company's board on the argument that the company's long-term business strategy didn't take into account all of the value loss potential from climate change, both from shareholders jumping ship, and potential damages from extreme weather events. BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager with $8.6 trillion in private capital, ensured the Engine No.1 candidates got the positions by utilizing their vote as large shareholders. 100% Clean Energy On April 29th, 2021 over 29 million people in California got 95% of their power from renewable energy— and were contributing virtually nothing towards climate change as far as their electricity needs were concerned.  California follows another major population center, South Australia, which recently fulfilled 100% demand with renewables. “It sends chills down my spine. It's amazing,” said Elliot Mainzer, president and CEO of the California Independent System Operator, which runs the state's main power grid. “These types of transitions aren't always pretty. But we're getting a lot of renewable generation online, making a real dent in the state's carbon emissions,”  Mainzer recently urged the state to construct another 10,000 megawatts of renewables, an equivalent of one-eighth of the entire state baseload power, in order to cover the gaps in the grid. Covering gaps in renewables is important for two reasons. The first is that electricity is the only resource that must be consumed as soon as it's produced. That means projections of demand must always be just about perfect.  The second reason is that renewables most often have no form of storage, and the electricity they generate goes into the grid immediately upon production. To help navigate around these natural flaws in renewable energy, California has been a key leader in coordinating with other states in the west to share surplus power across state lines, creating a more robust grid, removing more need for fossil fuels, and taking advantage of other states' resources. For example, California is much sunnier than Wyoming, but Wyoming has the most consistent wind power of any state. Utility companies in each place can exchange their baseload power with the strengths of the other and reduce fossil fuel input and increase grid stability. This is the best method for protecting against blackouts and drops in supply due to changing weather until cost-effective and scalable storage technology become widely implemented. A Clean Economy = Healthier Communities Scientists at UC Berkeley are hailing the state's diesel engine standards for drastically dropping the amount of diesel particulate matter in the air, and reducing the cardiopulmonary deaths attributable to poor air quality. If you never saw the pictures of the city of Los Angeles before the Clean Air Act, they look like something out of the movie Escape from L.A. But encouraging shifts away from high-sulfur fuels, and replacing diesel ships with electric ones, has gradually scaled the horror show back. “Our analysis of mobile source DPM (diesel particulate matter) emissions suggests that many California sector-based policies have been highly effective,” write the authors of the paper published in Science. They found that from 1990 to 2014, the amount of DPM in the California skies fell by 78%, while cardiopulmonary and cancer deaths linked to diesel pollution dropped by 82%. These are just some of the many positive actions that have been happening around the country and globe. Obviously, there still much to be concerned about.  As I record this podcast, I have one son in Boulder Colorado whose former home community was destroyed by the recent wildfires.  Only 1 mile away from his current home, 100 mph winds created a blast furnace of destruction for thousands of homes. Thankfully, the massive snowfall has now contained that catastrophe. But my other son and his family were pummeled by 11 feet of snow on the way to their holiday vacation in Lake Tahoe. Don't Look Up  If you haven't seen the new comedy film “Don't Look Up” – it's worth watching.  While the insanity of ignoring science is pretty funny – the reality is that we can't allow ourselves to continue to be distracted by day-to-day petty politics and our ridiculous obsession with social media. We all need to join together, find a way to overcome our differences, and remember that our children's future is the one overriding priority that we all share.  Creating a sustainable planet is a huge task. But as the recently deceased Desmond Tutu once wisely said: “there is only one way to eat an elephant: one bite at a time.”  Figure out how to take your bite – and let's all keep moving forward, one small bite at a time… ---- Has your workplace conducted a Greenhouse Gas Inventory? Is there a clean energy plan to achieve sustainability goals? Schedule an initial FREE Consultation with EarthKind Energy Consulting to discuss how your workplace can save money and reduce your carbon footprint.  Contact us at www.EarthKindEnergy.com  Ron@EarthKindEnergy.com P: 845-266-3723 Wherever you are on your clean energy journey – we're here to help you take your next step. Please let us know what you need by going to AWESome EarthKind dot com and clicking on “Tell Us”.  When you fill out the online survey, you'll automatically be entered into a Sweepstakes for a Free LED Light Fixture worth $150.  Or… call just us at 845-266-3723 

Happy New Year, Awesome People! Welcome to 2022! The turning of the year provides the opportunity to stop, see where we are, remember the lessons of where we've come from, and determine our intentions and goals for the future. In the first AWESome EarthKind episode over a year ago, we interviewed Denis Hayes, the original […] The post 2022 – New Hope for the New Year – with Ron Kamen, EarthKind Energy Consulting appeared first on AWESome EarthKind.

Children being born now will experience extreme climate events at a rate that is two to seven times higher than people born in 1960, according to a new study in the journal Science. The researchers compared a person born in 1960 with a child who was six years old in 2020. That six-year-old will experience twice as many cyclones and wildfires, three times as many river floods, four times as many crop failures and five times as many droughts. Read more about the study here. These extreme changes not only endanger the environment, they take a toll on our mental health. KNAU reporter Melissa Sevigny spoke with residents in Flagstaff, Arizona who are reeling from a summer rife with fires and floods. And NPR's Michel Martin spoke with two climate activists of different generations — Jasmine Butler and Denis Hayes — about their outlook on the planet's future amid new climate change reports. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Children being born now will experience extreme climate events at a rate that is two to seven times higher than people born in 1960, according to a new study in the journal Science. The researchers compared a person born in 1960 with a child who was six years old in 2020. That six-year-old will experience twice as many cyclones and wildfires, three times as many river floods, four times as many crop failures and five times as many droughts. Read more about the study here. These extreme changes not only endanger the environment, they take a toll on our mental health. KNAU reporter Melissa Sevigny spoke with residents in Flagstaff, Arizona who are reeling from a summer rife with fires and floods. And NPR's Michel Martin spoke with two climate activists of different generations — Jasmine Butler and Denis Hayes — about their outlook on the planet's future amid new climate change reports. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at considerthis@npr.org.

Good morning, it's Thursday, April 22nd and this is The Herald Review's podcast, the Daily Chirp. We're excited to bring you a closer look at top stories, events in the community, local history, sports, and more.    Today - Undocumented migrants were recently discovered hiding in Benson High School parking lot. Parents, law enforcement, and Benson Mayor Joe Konrad are speaking up.   Before we begin, some local history.   April 22nd began just like every other day in 1970, except that it wasn't like every other day. It was Earth Day! And it marked the beginning of the modern environmental movement.   Earth day was the end result of a yearlong idea by a junior Democratic Senator from Wisconsin, Gaylord Nelson. Nelson's idea was to infuse the energy of student anti-war protests with an emerging public consciousness about air and water pollution.    He enlisted the help of a conservation minded Republican Congressman, Pete McCloskey as co-chair and together they recruited activist Denis Hayes to organize college campus teach-ins about the environment.    But why April 22nd? It was perfect since it fell between Spring Break and Final Exams. They were hoping to maximize the greatest number of student participation.   The special day inspired about 10% of the population at that time, so 20 million Americans, to take to the streets, parks and auditoriums to demonstrate against all of what 150 years of industrial development progress had brought to the impact of health.   So today, don't forget to check out the Sierra Vista farmers market to join them for a celebration.   Today's history is brought to you by Benson Hospital. The team at Benson Hospital is always working towards building a healthier community. For example, when the Benson Food Pantry needed a new home, they worked with them to find one, and their staff even helped them apply for grants to support the mission. You can learn more about everything they're doing for our community by following them on Facebook at facebook.com/bensonhospital.   Also, The Daily Chirp podcast is giving away 5 Amazon Echo Dots - one every month now through July. You can enter for your chance to win twice a day! Today's code is SHOWERS and find the other codeword in our “Daily Chirp Podcast Alert” e-newsletter. To enter the sweepstakes go to myheraldreview.com, again today's codeword is: SHOWERS   -   Now, our feature story.    On Friday around 9:15 at night Benson police officers responded to a call. It involved undocumented immigrants who were hiding under cars in the Benson High School parking lot.    Police Chief Paul Moncada said that officers found a vehicle with a U.S. citizen and a passenger, along with three undocumented immigrants. They were detained. the chief said. Three other undocumented aliens immigrants north from the school.   That's when Benson Police officers and Cochise County Sheriff's Office deputies searched for the three who fled on foot. But according to Moncada they couldn't find them.   Border Patrol was contacted and said they'd be there in an hour.   But after the hour passed, they still weren't there. So they were contacted again and gave yet another one-hour ETA.   So Benson PD decided to reach out to a Border Patrol agent who was in the area instead. And that agent contacted a supervisor. Ultimately they were told that Border Patrol wouldn't respond at all. At that point, all three detained subjects were released.   It all started when a high school student discovered undocumented migrants hiding under his car. The student's parent sent out a warning on social media.   It said  -- quote “kids, after games, be safe. Watch your surroundings at all times. Illegals are everywhere now. The baseball team is aware of this. Pass the word to softball, track and tennis. Sadly, this is just the beginning of illegals in parking lots, neighborhoods, etc..”   Benson School District Superintendent Micah Mortensen also sent a letter home to parents, describing the incident.   The letter stated that as part of the school's safety protocols, coaches will remain with students until every student has safely departed campus.   Mortensen went on to ask that parents encourage their children to report all incidents or situations that make them uncomfortable, saying that we must all be vigilant in order to keep our children safe.   Benson Mayor Joe Konrad weighed in on the situation as well. He expressed concerns about what he described as “an escalating UDA problem” and its impact on border communities.   Konrad noted that it seems like Border Patrol's hands are tied, and citizens are going to have to be vigilant and take extra precautions to stay safe. He said that people need to call the police when they see something that seems out of place.   Konrad also said police officers aren't getting the support they need from federal officials. Especially once they determine they have detained migrants who are in the country illegally.   Police officers are sworn to enforce Arizona law, but have no jurisdiction in immigration matters.    To Konrad, this immigration issue is a huge problem, and it's only going to get worse if the border crisis continues. It's very disheartening.   You can learn more on this story by visiting us at myheraldreview.com.   - Thanks for listening, before we continue, a quick message from our sponsors, Prestige Family Living.    Next, we'd like to highlight Mike Frosco, Bisbee High School's retiring athletics director.    Today's episode is brought to you by ApexNetwork Physical Therapy. ApexNetwork Physical Therapy is the leading choice for individualized physical therapy in a warm and comfortable environment. They offer a wide range of services like Manual Therapy, Industrial Rehab, Dry Needling, Golf Rehab and more. To learn more, go to ApexNetworkPT.com.   What do you give a man who is retiring after 50 years of service to Bisbee High School athletics?   Well, the Bisbee High School Alumni Association has a great idea to honor retiring athletics director Mike Frosco — a plaque at Warren Ballpark dedicating the field to him.   It was alumnus Snoody Borowiec that presented the idea to the board of the Bisbee Unified School District.   And proud Pumas alumnus Don Bays said he met Frosco back in 1958 when the coach allowed newcomers to try out. Frosco was one of them.   Bays says that he was a senior when he met Frosco on the first day of practice. He described him as a frail, scrawny looking kid with a permanent, built-in smile. Bays said that he was very quickly proven wrong about Frosco's athletic ability. He was an outstanding player every year.    Bays noted that he doesn't think there's anyone more deserving to have his name attached to the field than Mike. Coach Frosco is Mr. Baseball.   After college Frosco returned to BHS as an educator and a coach. As a coach he was inducted into the Arizona Hall of Fame. He coached three state championship teams, had 23 state tournament appearances, was awarded 11 Coach of the Year titles and had 555 career team wins.   Then when he gave up coaching, he continued to be involved with the kids in the entire school district as director of athletics.   Frosco also has been involved in getting funds to improve Warren Ballpark.   Ultimately, the school board's decision to honor Coach Frosco would be a tribute to a man who touched many young men's lives.   The final decision to follow the recommendation of the alumni to dedicate the field to Frosco will be made at the board meeting on May 11th.   Next up the Community Food Pantry of Benson has added something new to its list of services. brought to you by our sponsors, Sulphur Springs Valley Electric Cooperative.   [New sponsor audio message]   The Community Food Pantry of Benson has added something new to its list of services.   As part of its monthly cooking class, they now have community resource presenters. The presenters will inform residents about different services they might need.   The cooking class is the third Friday of the month, and last Friday they had two representatives from SEAGO - SouthEastern Arizona Governments Organization - who talked about how to access programs for caregivers and seniors.    Because of COVID, Friday's presentation was their first in-person outreach session in over a year.   This was a very welcome change. Throughout the pandemic outreach has been hard for the organization. Some seniors and caregivers were faced with computer literacy barriers and struggled with devices and the internet.   But they overcame the challenges and built a program called Trualta that they're rolling out soon.   It's a skill-based online learning portal designed for families and caregivers. It'll include articles, videos and professional-level training.   Ultimately SEAGO's goal is to support seniors and people with disabilities so they can maintain their independence safely at home.   Finally, today we're remembering the life of    John Michael Donnelly. He was born in San Diego, California, the youngest of 5 children. He was a “surprise” child - 19 years younger than his older brother, Donald. He grew up in San Diego and graduated from St. Augustine High School. John made the decision to enter the Carmelites and conducted his initial studies in the San Francisco Bay area. Later, he studied in Ireland and in Rome for the priesthood, where he earned a master's degree in Theology. He took the Sacrament of Holy Orders in 1967 in Rome, and took the name Kevin, which is the name many people knew him by as an adult.   In the early 1970's, Reverend Donnelly met Susan Mullaney and made the decision to leave the priesthood to marry, in the sincere belief that priests ought to be allowed to marry and in the hope that it wouldn't be long before that change occurred. Susan brought three children into the marriage, Lisa, Laurie and Bruce. And together they had a son named Kevin. When Susan's health began to fail, they made the decision to move from northern California, where they met, to southeastern Arizona, where Susan lived as a child. They were married for 43 years.   In 1987, John was accepted into the Episcopal Church as a priest. After several years in pastoral ministry at St. Alban's in Tucson, and the Church of the Transfiguration in Apache Junction, John served as a chaplain for the Arizona State Prison at Douglas, ministering to an inmate population of over 2,000 individuals for 20 years.    He loved to sing, and played the piano, guitar and cornet. He was well known for his gentleness, being very approachable and humble, with a wry sense of humor. John spoke French, Italian, Spanish, Latin and was conversant in Irish Gaelic.   After his cherished wife, Susan, passed in 2016, John reconciled with the Catholic Church. The day before his death, two Carmelite friars visited him, and he renewed his vows as a Carmelite.    His son Kevin commented that his dad was glowing with happiness at renewing his vows. By the next morning, Divine Mercy Sunday, John was on his way to sing with the angels.   Thanks for tuning in to the Herald Review podcast today, join us again on Friday! And remember, the Herald Review is here for you with local news you can trust. For more information on any of the stories you heard about today, visit us at myheraldreview.com. Right now you can become a member starting at just $1.99 per week. We also encourage you to rate and review our podcast on Apple Podcasts! Support the show: https://www.myheraldreview.com/site/forms/subscription_services/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Denis Hayes, chairman of Earth Day 1990, believes that it's time for people to integrate environmental values throughout their whole lives. An archival program. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In this episode, seniors Emma Hutchinson, Caroline Wilburn and junior Christi Norris discuss the history of Earth Day. Started in 1970, Earth Day began as a way to educate students about the planet. Senator Gaylord Nelson with help from young activist Denis Hayes started the movement. Earth Day began as an educational movement and has continued as it's grown to a larger more public event. The event has led to several laws being passed to protect the environment and is now celebrated in 193 countries. Topics Covered: Earth Day Senator Gaylord Nelson United Nations Earth Summit Pete McClosky Denis Hayes earthday.org Gabon, Africa Rachel Carson

In this Earth Day/Climate Action special of Flanigan's Eco-Logic, Ted interviews Denis Hayes, the coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970 and the founder of the Earth Day Network. Ted also releases the fifth part of a 10 part series on microgrids, discussing critical loads. He highlights corporate executives around the country pushing for climate action, as well as other climate action related stories on repurposing power plants, constructing the loop in Vegas, microbial soil sequestration, and Helsinki's offshore thermal energy storage concept. 

As we continue with Earth Day, did you know that Earth Day's date was chosen to appeal to college students? It was intentionally by Senator Nelson and grad student Denis Hayes. They strategically selected April 22 in order to attract more college students, who were known for being politically active during that era of protest. The date fell between spring break and final exams.

Sustainability visionary Nina Goodrich expounds on insights from Earth Day founder Denis Hayes, the implications of the US rejoining The Paris Agreement on climate change, using carbon as a uniform measurement (or not), and an exciting program for SPC Impact 2021, happening now.

In this issue of Flanigan's Eco-Logic, Ted interviews Denis Hayes, the coordinator of the first Earth Day in 1970 and the founder of the Earth Day Network, perhaps the largest secular movement in history. What a time of strife... Vietnam, Cambodia, Nixon, overlaid with air and water pollution. Appointed by President Jimmy Carter, Denis discusses his work at Solar Energy Research Institute, now NREL, and brings us up to date with his current regional work promoting sustainability at the helm of The Bullitt Foundation in Seattle.

Quantum Quote: “If it has been done, it must be possible.” – Kenneth Boulding Have you ever been told that what you’re planning to do is impossible? Are you concerned about the future, but feel that the climate crisis is too large an issue for you to do anything about?  If these questions resonate with […]

The post Podcast | Creating Super Green Cities with alumnus Denis Hayes appeared first on Clark College Foundation.

The post Podcast | Creating Super Green Cities with alumnus Denis Hayes appeared first on Clark College Foundation.

Denis Hayes dropped out of Harvard in 1970 to become the national coordinator of the first Earth Day– and expanded Earth Day to 180 nations where it is now the most-widely-observed non-religious holiday in the world.   SuperNovas: “If it has been done, it must be possible.” While everyone said it was impossible, Denis developed the first 6 story 52,000 sq ft building to be Net Energy Positive– it creates more energy than it uses.  Most of the things we need to do are simple– become super-efficient and let the forces of nature provide our power. We live in a SEA OF ENERGY. If it wasn't for the sun, it would be hundreds of degrees below zero. The furnace just tops it up. Utility scale “Solar On Demand” (Solar with batteries) is now the lowest cost power in the US. Worst Clean Energy Moment. During the Arab Oil Embargo, Denis promoted that we do for solar electricity  what Nasa & the defense department did for computer chips– buy in bulk and drive down prices.  There was Good & Bad News. “Ah HA!” moment. “Energy is the capacity to do work.” Drying clothes outside takes as much energy as in the dryer. But we don't pay for the sun and air to dry our clothes.  Best Advice Ever.  When you hit the wall with a complex problem– take a break. Go into nature, do something else. When you come back– you'll have the answer. Personal Success Habit. Pessimism provides no survival advantage– it only leads to giving up. There is always hope– even in the face of incredible challenges (like Churchill in England during WWII). Internet Resources. Grist.org, The New Yorker cartoon page,  & the Borowitz Report satire WTF or F. Siberia in winter without a coat.  What Energizes Today. The Green New Deal. The Cares Act $3 Trillion was passed with only a few weeks debate to avoid economic catastrophe. If we can come together and decide that we are going to make the transition to a super efficient renewable energy powered civilization.  Last Advice. Even when everything is stacked against you–never give up. Sponsors. Entrepreneurs on Fire.  AWESomeEarthKind.com/eofire

This week I talk about the 50th anniversary of “Earth Day” and feature its architect, Denis Hayes. The Big Interview is with Diane Muntean, who I worked with to help training 1200 people in Steamboat Springs CO last September. In the C-Block I talk about the first Earth Day in 1970, where my idealism was…

DC's call-in show about worker rights: those you have, those you don't, how to get them and how to use them. Hosted by Chris Garlock and Ed Smith This week's guests: ANTHONY RANDOLPH from UNITE HERE LOCAL 23; Tens of thousands more laid off workers filed for unemployment assistance in the DMV last week, for a total of nearly half a million claims over the last five weeks. A small fraction of those workers are lucky enough to be members of a union, and at American University that membership might literally mean life or death. When Compass Group, an American University subcontractor, laid off campus food service workers, UNITE HERE Local 23 sprang into action to ensure members continued to get pension and medical benefits. Without those medical benefits, laid off workers would have little means to access care if they got sick. WPFW reporter Chris Bangert-Drowns spoke with AU employee and UNITE HERE 23 member Anthony Randolph on Monday to get the details. JOE UEHLEIN with the Labor Network for Sustainability on Earth Day at 50; labor and the environmental movement. The first Earth Day in 1970 had very significant support from the United Automobile Workers and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which included money, staff time, printing, and other related resources. Denis Hayes, organizer of the first Earth Day told Labor Network for Sustainability President Joe Uehlein that the first Earth Day would not have happened without labor support. Some of the larger Earth Day planning retreats/meetings were held at the UAW's Black Lake training center in upstate Michigan. JACK KELLY: "The Edge of Anarchy: The Railroad Barons, the Gilded Age, and the Greatest Labor Uprising in America” At the peak of the Gilded Age a conflict in one of America's largest factories exploded into the most extensive and threatening labor uprising in American history. The Edge of Anarchy tells the story of this epoch-making event. The book transports the reader from the fabulous White City of the 1893 World's Fair to the nation's industrial heartland, where unprecedented hard times are brewing rage across the continent. In the summer of 1894, more than half a million desperate railroad workers went on strike. Riots broke out in Chicago and other major cities. The nation's commerce ground to a halt—famine threatened isolated towns. The U.S. Attorney General declared the country to be on “the ragged edge of anarchy.” Music: You Can't Giddy Up By Sayin' Whoa: The U-Liners (with Joe Uehlein). Produced by Chris Garlock; engineering by Michael Nasella and Shepsu Baker

Today marks the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. To celebrate this milestone, Kristin Kinder, VP of Research and Waste Stream Sustainability at Wastequip, sat down with Earth Day co-founder Denis Hayes to discuss Earth Day then and now. It's a fascinating millennial versus boomer perspective. #NothingWastedPodcast

Denis Hayes - Founder of the Earth Day Network and coordinator of the first Earth Day - joins the podcast to discuss the history and future of environmentalism.

April 22nd, 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, when some 20 million Americans peacefully rallied for protecting the planet. Denis Hayes, coordinator of that very first Earth Day, discusses with Host Steve Curwood how this year's grand Earth Day plans have adapted to the coronavirus disruptions. Earth Day at fifty, and beyond, in this episode of Living on Earth from PRX. LEARN MORE about these stories and everything in our decades of archives at loe.org. We've got audio, transcripts, links, photos and more! . . . PITCH IN with your tax-deductible contribution at https://loe.org/about/donate.html. Thank you for your support! . . . FOLLOW US and join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. . . . Music in this episode: Blue Dot Sessions, "Walking Shoes", Skittle

Dangerous Heat in the Gulf of Mexico / Beyond the Headlines / Earth Day Turns Fifty / Springtime Birding with David Sibley April 22nd, 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, when some 20 million Americans peacefully rallied for protecting the planet. Denis Hayes, coordinator of that very first Earth Day, discusses how this year's grand Earth Day plans have adapted to the coronavirus disruptions. Also, on Easter Sunday, dozens of tornados tore through the southeast United States, resulting in the deaths of over 30 people. These deadly storms came as water in the Gulf of Mexico was three degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the long-term average. Why warmer Gulf water fuels strong tornados, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. And now that the seasonal great avian migration is underway, wildlife refuges provide the perfect place to listen and watch for birds on a fine spring morning. Springtime birding with David Sibley and more, in this episode of Living on Earth from PRX. Find this week's transcript here: https://loe.org/shows/shows.html?programID=20-P13-00016. . . . LEARN MORE about these stories and everything in our decades of archives at loe.org. We've got audio, transcripts, links, photos and more! . . . PITCH IN with your tax-deductible contribution at https://loe.org/about/donate.html. Thank you for your support! . . . FOLLOW US and join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. . . .

Dangerous Heat in the Gulf of Mexico / Beyond the Headlines / Earth Day Turns Fifty / Springtime Birding with David Sibley April 22nd, 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, when some 20 million Americans peacefully rallied for protecting the planet. Denis Hayes, coordinator of that very first Earth Day, discusses how this year's grand Earth Day plans have adapted to the coronavirus disruptions. Also, on Easter Sunday, dozens of tornados tore through the southeast United States, resulting in the deaths of over 30 people. These deadly storms came as water in the Gulf of Mexico was three degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the long-term average. Why warmer Gulf water fuels strong tornados, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. And now that the seasonal great avian migration is underway, wildlife refuges provide the perfect place to listen and watch for birds on a fine spring morning. Springtime birding with David Sibley and more, in this episode of Living on Earth from PRX. Find this week's transcript here: https://loe.org/shows/shows.html?programID=20-P13-00016. . . . LEARN MORE about these stories and everything in our decades of archives at loe.org. We've got audio, transcripts, links, photos and more! . . . PITCH IN with your tax-deductible contribution at https://loe.org/about/donate.html. Thank you for your support! . . . FOLLOW US and join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. . . .

Dangerous Heat in the Gulf of Mexico / Beyond the Headlines / Earth Day Turns Fifty / Springtime Birding with David Sibley April 22nd, 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of the first Earth Day, when some 20 million Americans peacefully rallied for protecting the planet. Denis Hayes, coordinator of that very first Earth Day, discusses how this year's grand Earth Day plans have adapted to the coronavirus disruptions. Also, on Easter Sunday, dozens of tornados tore through the southeast United States, resulting in the deaths of over 30 people. These deadly storms came as water in the Gulf of Mexico was three degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the long-term average. Why warmer Gulf water fuels strong tornados, thunderstorms, and hurricanes. And now that the seasonal great avian migration is underway, wildlife refuges provide the perfect place to listen and watch for birds on a fine spring morning. Springtime birding with David Sibley and more, in this episode of Living on Earth from PRX. Find this week's transcript here: https://loe.org/shows/shows.html?programID=20-P13-00016. . . . LEARN MORE about these stories and everything in our decades of archives at loe.org. We've got audio, transcripts, links, photos and more! . . . PITCH IN with your tax-deductible contribution at https://loe.org/about/donate.html. Thank you for your support! . . . FOLLOW US and join the conversation on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. . . .

The first episode of The Overstory's second season was originally intended as a celebration of the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. As the pandemic unfolded, we pivoted to consider what social activism will look like in this season of social distancing. Hear from Denis Hayes, founder of the Earth Day Network; Zero Hour founder Jamie Margolin; author and artist Jenny Odell; and the Reverend Lennox Yearwood, Jr. Plus also: Ms. Green explains her investigation into PFAS in menstrual underwear.

Denis Hayes, chairman of Earth Day 1990, believes that it's time for people to integrate environmental values throughout their whole lives. An archival program. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Earth Day Special | Radio Talk by Mr Vandhan | To solve climate change | To end plastic pollution | To protect endangered species, and to broaden the education about it. Earth Day is an annual event celebrated on April 22. Worldwide, various events are held to demonstrate support for environmental protection. First celebrated in 1970, Earth Day now includes events in more than 193 countries, which are coordinated globally by the Earth Day Network. On Earth Day 2016, the landmark Paris Agreement was signed by the United States, China, and some 120 other countries. This signing satisfied a key requirement for the entry into force of the historic draft climate protection treaty adopted by consensus of the 195 nations present at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris. In 1969 at a UNESCO Conference in San Francisco, peace activist John McConnell proposed a day to honor the Earth and the concept of peace, to first be celebrated on March 21, 1970, the first day of spring in the northern hemisphere. This day of nature's equipoise was later sanctioned in a proclamation written by McConnell and signed by Secretary General U Thant at the United Nations. A month later a separate Earth Day was founded by United States Senator Gaylord Nelson as an environmental teach-in first held on April 22, 1970. Nelson was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom award in recognition of his work. While this April 22 Earth Day was focused on the United States, an organization launched by Denis Hayes, who was the original national coordinator in 1970, took it international in 1990 and organized events in 141 nations.

On April the 22 1970, 20 million Americans came out on to the streets to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment in the first so-called Earth Day. Mass rallies were held to highlight concerns about pollution and the destruction of America's natural heritage. Some see it as the birth of the modern environmental movement. Farhana Haider spoke to Denis Hayes, the organiser of that first Earth Day. Photo credit: Robert Sabo-Pool/Getty Images

In honor of Earth Day, today's show is a replay of the interview with the original Earth Day lead organizer Denis Hayes. Denis Hayes talks about a lifetime of work in environmentalism - the challenges, successes, the changing environmental problems since the 60's, and how he has endured numerous political changes in Washington. Denis was the organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970, headed the Solar Energy Research Institute under President Carter, and is now president of the Bullitt Foundation. In 1999 Time Magazine named him Hero of the Planet. In this episode we go through his early life in a polluted Washington paper milling community to how he became an environmental activist. We also discuss the creation and organization of the first Earth Day in 1970 and how the scope of the environmental problems have changed since then. Learn more about Denis at permaculturevoices.com/cd3.  

It’s an Earth Day extravaganza! Earth Day Co-Founder Denis Hayes and climate change icon Bill McKibben visit America Adapts.  This episode is coming out on the same day that President Trump rescinded the climate change rules established under President Obama. Take action by listening to Bill and Denis share their experiences, as they offer advice on what to do next. Donate to America Adapts (We are now a tax deductible charitable organization!) Subscribe/listen to podcast on Apple Podcasts.Now on Spotify! https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/america-adapts-climate-change/id1133023095?mt=2 Listen here. On Google Play here. Please share on Facebook! On Twitter: @usaadapts Denis Hayes, Co-Founder of the original Earth Day and CEO of the Bullitt Foundation HISTORY OF EARTH DAY – Denis describes the original Earth Day in 1970 and the political environment at the time. Denis describes the bi-partisan nature of environmental issues before President Nixon executed his southern strategy, which further split the parties. ENTER CLIMATE CHANGE - Doug and Denis discuss the unique challenges of climate change and how it might have been dealt with on the original Earth Day. Denis explains how climate change was not yet an issue at the first Earth Day, but then through the 70s, a consensus developed among scientists that it was a growing problem. FROM CARTER TO REAGAN - Denis describes working for President Carter running the Federal Solar Research Institute.  Denis describes how science and facts were not as controversial as they are today. Denis describes an ambitious effort to reform the energy sector that was ultimately scrapped when Reagan came to power. EARTH DAY 2020 – Denis and Doug talk about the upcoming 50 year anniversary of Earth Day. THE EMERALD CORRIDOR – Denis talks about his work at the Bullitt Foundation, which seeks to create a sustainable urban corridor in the Pacific Northwest. Doug and Denis discuss adaptation and challenges of planned retreat. In the second segment, I talk with climate change legend, Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org.  BILL MAHER AND CLIMATE CHANGE – Bill discusses his recent appearance on HBO’s Bill Maher show and how these unique opportunities create opportunities to reach a large number of people (and Bill was quite funny on the show). PRESIDENT COAL – Bill discusses what the election of Donald Trump means for progress on climate change. Bill doesn’t spin the situation:  his administration is a pretty devastating development. BIPARTISAN SOLAR – Bill describes the opportunity for legislative agreement through solar power, which polls extremely well in both parties. ADAPTATION AT 350 – Doug and Bill talk adaptation and if it takes away from society needing to focus on carbon mitigation.  Bill says, ““Adapt to that you can’t prevent...but prevent at all cost, that, which you can’t adapt to.’” THE CLIMATE MARCHES ON - Bill discusses the upcoming climate change march on April 29th in locations around the world. We talk about how climate march compliments the science march. YOU AND CLIMATE CHANGE - Bill gives advice on what an individual can do to affect change and how collective action will be the only effective response. . Links in episode: http://www.billmckibben.com/ http://www.bullitt.org/about/staff/ Bill McKibben on the Bill Maher Show https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V69l7zbFeAk https://350.org/ Twitter: @billmckibben @350 Coming up next week on America Adapts, Judge Alice Hill, of the Hoover Institution. Subscribe now to get this in your podcast inbox! America Adapts also has its own app for your listening pleasure!  Just visit the App store on Apple or Google Play on Android and search “America Adapts.” Finally, yes, most of your favorite podcasts are supported by listeners just like you! Please consider supporting this podcast by donating through America Adapt's fiscal sponsor, the Social Good Fund. All donations are now tax deductible! For more information on this podcast, visit the website at http://www.americaadapts.org and don't forget to subscribe to this podcast on Itunes.   America Adapts on Facebook!   Join the America Adapts Facebook Community Group. Check us out, we’re also on YouTube! Subscribe to America Adapts on Itunes Doug can be contacted at americaadapts @ g mail . com .

We talk to Simon Cocking of Irish Tech News on Digital Publishing. David Hayes of Company of Huskies talks Chatbots, Messenger Apps and Disruption. IRDG MD Denis Hayes tells us about the upcoming Unleashing Innovation conference.

In honor of Earth Day, today's show is a replay of the interview with the original Earth Day lead organizer Denis Hayes. Denis Hayes talks about a lifetime of work in environmentalism - the challenges, successes, the changing environmental problems since the 60's, and how he has endured numerous political changes in Washington. Denis was the organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970, headed the Solar Energy Research Institute under President Carter, and is now president of the Bullitt Foundation. In 1999 Time Magazine named him Hero of the Planet. In this episode we go through his early life in a polluted Washington paper milling community to how he became an environmental activist. We also discuss the creation and organization of the first Earth Day in 1970 and how the scope of the environmental problems have changed since then. Learn more about Denis at permaculturevoices.com/cd3.

Renowned environmentalist, Denis Hayes, talks to us about how we should reduce our meat consumption for the good of the planet, while former General Motors exec, Nicholas Kachman, tells us the real cause of GM's 2008 bankruptcy and also discusses with Ralph how GM should have been a good corporate citizen and warned the people of Flint about the lead in the water.  Plus, Ralph grills David about  - of all things – music.

Denis Hayes joins us for our Harvest Family Service on Sunday 20th September 2015 AM.

Denis Hayes talks about a lifetime of work in environmentalism - the challenges, successes, the changing environmental problems, and how he has endured numerous political changes in Washington. Denis was the organizer of the first Earth Day in 1970, headed the Solar Energy Research Institute under President Carter, and is now president of the Bullitt Foundation. In 1999 Time Magazine named him Hero of the Planet. In this episode we go through his early life in a polluted Washington paper milling community to how he became an environmental activist. We also discuss the creation and organization of the first Earth Day in 1970 and how the scope of the environmental problems have changed since then. Learn more about Denis at permaculturevoices.com/cd3.