- Anybody else hungry?

[audience laughs] Apples, anything at the farmer's market, anything in that restaurant.

Wow, that was, and we can cook with solar power.

So that'd be great.

Great job, Michelle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We are moving into the discussion part of our screening and discussion tonight.

So let me first say thank you again for joining us in person or online.

My name is Frank Graff.

I'm the host and producer of "SCI NC," which is PBS North Carolina's weekly science show looking at science in North Carolina.

A couple of housekeeping items.

First off, thank you again to the museum for hosting us.

And while the museum staff is setting up our stage, got a couple quick housekeeping items.

First, if you wanna ask a question to the panel, 'cause it is discussion, raise your hand if you're in the audience, and we'll have, Chris is gonna be coming around with a microphone, and you can ask your question.

If you're online, thank you for being online and being virtually with us, wherever you are.

Type your question into the chat, and we'll have someone monitoring the chat, and we'll get the question that way.

So again, thank you for being here.

Let me call up our panel and introduce them while we're getting set up here, and then we'll get started.

First off, Kathie Dello is the director of the NC State Climate Office.

She's the co-director of NOAA's Carolinas Climate Adaptation Partnership.

Mary Alice Holley, she'll look familiar 'cause you saw her in the film, she is the associate director of the Conservation Trust for North Carolina.

Steve Kalland is the executive director of the NC Energy Collaborative.

He's at The Science House at the NC State.

Go Wolfpack in the Final Four, by the way.

There you go.

See, I knew he'd do that.

[laughs] Michelle Lotker, come on up.

She's the producer of the film we just watched.

And also, you'll see her work on "SCI NC."

So Michelle.

[audience applauds] Ajulo Orthow is the founder and CEO, she'll look familiar, too, of EnerWealth Solutions.

She's also an attorney and board member for the Center for Progressive Reform.

And Jacob Rutz is a lecturer of agroecology in the Department of Environmental Studies at Elon.

He is also a board member of The Utopian Seed Project.

And you heard about them in the film as well.

So again, please, we welcome your questions.

If you're in person, raise your hand.

We'll get a microphone to you.

If you are online virtually, type your question into the chat.

And we'll get started.

I think everybody is, as my teacher used to say, all in their places with bright, shiny faces.

[audience applauds] Alrighty.

Again, thank you, everybody, for joining us.

I really appreciate it.

Let's start off first with Michelle.

You put the whole show together.

It was awesome.

Thank you very much.

Your thoughts.

As you were working on it, what were you hoping to teach, to show, to demonstrate to people?

- Sure.

Thanks, Frank, and thanks, everybody, for being here.

It's so much more fun to watch this with all of you than alone with my computer in a dark room.

I think we hit that a lot at the beginning of this, just bringing solutions to light and giving people a little bit of hope in what can often be a little bit of an overwhelming topic.

Obviously, climate change is happening, and we need to do everything we can in all of these areas to help mitigate it and build more resilience to the change that's already occurring.

But being able to bring people a little bit of energy and hope around what's being done in their state already and ways that they can possibly get involved.

When they see things like land conservation or thinking about what they can grow in their own backyards, or if they can put solar on their properties.

I think just giving people a little information and education around what they could possibly be doing.

- Let's go from that.

Thank you.

Let's go from that.

Kathie, let me start with you.

The Fifth National Climate Assessment was recently released, and you worked on the Southeast Chapter of that assessment.

So the dreaded multi-part question here, I guess.

Where are we as a state and a region when it comes to resilience and climate change?

And I guess the second part of that is, where are we as just people?

I think everybody's realizing the climate is changing.

I guess where do we go from there?

- Yeah, thanks for that.

It's always embarrassing to be the person, the scientist who talks about the report after that beautiful piece of art we just watched, but.

- [Frank] I rolled the dice.

And yeah, so.

[laughs] - It is federally mandated, and it comes out about once every five years, and it was released last November.

And I worked on the Southeast Chapter.

And we took a slightly different approach to it, not starting off our chapter the way we always do.

The Southeast or North Carolina has been warming.

It will continue to warm, blah, blah, blah.

We said, "All those things we told you last time are still happening, and we need to adapt them."

But we also centered people and equity in the chapter, knowing that the people most harmed by climate change in the Southeast and in North Carolina, it's not a fluke why they're the most harmed.

It's decades and centuries of really exclusionary policies that put them in harm's way to flooding and risks.

So we talk about that.

But we also talk about the non-climate stressors that exacerbate climate change.

So this is a different North Carolina.

It will be a different North Carolina in 20 years, and it will be a different North Carolina in a century.

We have a lot of people moving here.

Our cities are growing very, very fast.

There are how many cranes in the skyline in Raleigh?

[no audio] [no audio] [no audio] One of our key messages, too, that there are some big challenges for agriculture.

But as we saw in Michelle's piece, there's a lot of hope.

So we tried to be a little bit hopeful in our messaging.

We tried to center people.

We tried to center the stories of communities and the people in the Southeast, but we only got 10,000 words for 11 states.

So we love working with folks like PBS and the museum and other places that can take what we've done and build it out into bigger stories.

- Thank you.

You talked about the equity- - Mic's not working.

- Oh, they can hear you.

- Test.

Test.

Hello?

- There you go.

- Ah, there we go.

Thank you.

You talked about inclusion, about people leaving rural areas, about things like that.

Ajulo, that's an area you're certainly involved in, as we could see from the movie.

Why is that important for society, for resilience, for preserving rural areas, for agriculture?

- You know, one of the sort of through lines I think through all of the stories that we saw today, Michelle, was that there is hope in the connection, or the reconnection, that we have to our natural world, to the connection that we all create amongst ourselves.

Building more sort of connective fiber is part of our action, our adaptation to climate change, I believe.

And unfortunately, there have been systemic barriers that have created gulfs, created more divides.

And so when we think about equity, part of it is creating more opportunity for connection so that we can actually adapt to our changing world.

It's not just about sort of creating more seats at the table for its own sake, and that is certainly worthy, but I believe that our survival is actually gonna depend on our ability to reconnect and value that relationship amongst one another.

The other thing that I saw in the piece as it relates to equity is the distributed nature.

That things are really local.

They're happening smaller.

They're slowing down.

And that is part of, I think, our strategy for adapting to climate change.

The projects that I build are specifically designed to be small, distributed projects.

And obviously, you know, that creates more sense of resilience because when a central plant goes down, there's a huge impact.

But if our energy system is more distributed, that allows us to be more resilient and better able to adapt to climate change.

So only a neighborhood might go down, as opposed to all of us.

And likewise, if it's on a roof, then households are better able to adapt and be resilient in the face of climate change.

And from an equity perspective, we've gotta be sure that we don't create this energy divide.

Unfortunately, what we've seen is that the households that are most able to actually withstand climate impacts have been the ones at the front of the line getting the solar energy and the battery storage backup.

But thanks to some historic investments that are coming our way, that's opening up opportunities for folks who would not otherwise be able to access this technology.

- Quick reminder: If you have a question, Chris, I can't see you, unfortunately.

Oh, there.

Oh, hi.

Okay.

If somebody has a question, raise your hand.

We'll get a microphone to you.

If you are watching virtually, type it in the chat, and we'll get the question there.

I don't see any hands right now.

Hold on.

Oh, we're good.

Oh, yes.

Question.

- [Moderator] Think we have an online question.

- An online question.

Thank you, online person.

- [Moderator] Yeah, we have a online question.

Somebody asked, "This documentary only showed pilot, small-scale projects.

What examples of climate agriculture projects at scale are there in North Carolina?"

- [Michelle] Specifically about agriculture?

- [Moderator] Yeah.

- Jacob, do you have any ideas?

- Gonna say.

- Sure, yeah.

Check, check.

Hello, hello, hello.

Try one more time if I can.

- Have this too.

- Oh, there we go.

Thanks.

Oh.

- It was a short cord.

- There we go.

All right, cool.

Thanks.

Yeah, that is a phenomenal question.

I think, to address specifically the, you know, The Utopian Seed Project is focused on small-scale projects, and that's absolutely true, with the hopes that, as Chris noted in the film, that there would be a demonstration that those things could grow.

For instance, there's, you know, okra that is being, you know, worked on with The Utopian Seed Project for oil seed production.

And probably know that oil seed in the United States, so there's soybean, corn, oil, whatever, is an enormous, you know, cash crop that's necessary for, you know, so many products.

And if we can add, you know, one little piece of diversity into the food system, such as, you know, the species that is okra, that just has huge impacts in environmental resiliency, both in terms of the kind of heat stress that something like okra can take compared to maybe soybeans, which are, you know, more of a cooler season crop, as well as, you know, how it interacts with the soil, how much water it uses, and things like that.

Specifically though, projects that are going on right now, and I'm sure other panelists probably have some perspective on this, too, so I won't take the full stage to that question, are very much around, you know, regenerative agriculture or even, you know, very historic agricultural projects, where we're doing things to grow cover crops and put more carbon back in the soil, or cover the soil in all seasons through minimized tillage, or really adapt to, you know, a changing climate through temporal, you know, and spatial diversity in the landscape.

In many ways, you know, to try to tie it into some of the ideas in the film, the idea of, you know, intensive and thoughtful diversity brings resilience.

You know, there's this idea in ecology that's being recently applied to agriculture that's the diversity via, or resilience via diversity hypothesis.

That the more diversity we have within any system, and you can see the studies have have borne this out that the more diversity of crops, say, at a national level that a country grows, the more resilience you have over time to climate shocks and other shocks that we might experience as well.

Maybe geopolitical.

So it's worthwhile for projects, even those that are pilots, to really be developing and getting folks interested in and scaling up diversity initiatives.

- I'll just add, when I was in the field with Chris, I asked him about any larger-scale work that was happening and specifically related to taro or taro.

I'm probably saying it wrong.

That is something they've roughly experimented with harvesting in the same way that you harvest potatoes.

So I think they've played with using the same equipment that harvest potatoes to harvest taro and had success.

It's not on any, like, huge scale yet, but that is one of the crops they're working with that could, if shown to be successful, work its way into a bigger commodity or food crop like that.

And the benefit of a crop like that, at least initially, is there aren't a lot of pests and issues that are in these fields where they've been growing potatoes forever.

So that's one interesting way that something they're working on could end up on a larger scale.

- Switch a bit from small-scale farming and things like that to small-scale and even large-scale, or small scale-power generation, things like that.

That's where you come in, Steve.

What are your thoughts?

What's out there for people to learn about and to take advantage of if there's programs?

- Well, it's a pretty fascinating time in the world of energy, period, right now.

We're kind of going through a transition.

I've heard it compared to, you know, some of the largest transition in the economy since the Industrial Revolution.

I think that person may have forgotten about the whole internet thing, but.

- Well.

- But it is a major transition that is happening.

And, you know, I can't remember if maybe it was the secretary that said that we have the technology now, we just need to deploy it.

Someone made that reference earlier today.

That's largely true.

There is always more to do on the technology side to get us more technology.

But we have a lot of the clean technology necessary, and we're continuing to improve those technologies.

And now we're seeing the cost curves for these technologies drop at an amazing rate, which is allowing us to get more of that technology out there.

I think the problem is that we still have a lot of work to do kind of in the policy arena and the financial arena to make it work for people.

Right now, we've seen this in North Carolina, there were some statutory changes a few years ago.

We used to have kind of a standard operating procedure in North Carolina of doing solar projects that were right around five megawatts.

They were about 50 to 70 acres per project.

We built hundreds of those projects in this state.

We became the number two solar state in the country.

The changes to policy have kind of taken away that threshold, however, and now we're seeing larger and larger projects.

That's not all bad.

We need to see a lot more solar energy and a lot more wind energy and all of these other renewable technologies in order to deal with the climate change problem as effectively as possible.

But it has made it harder to make the smaller kinds of projects that Ajulo was talking about in the video possible.

And so we need work to try and make things like community solar, which is a concept that is popular around the country, but is particularly hard to do in North Carolina right now, unless you're working with an electric cooperative or maybe a small municipal utility.

We just don't have a system that's set up for it right now.

There are other technologies that are coming down in the storage space, as was alluded to in the video as well, that are gonna give us a lot more flexibility to do different things with renewable energy.

And those costs are also coming down.

And so it's all very encouraging from the technology standpoint, and the economics are trending the right way, but we've got work to do to be able to better utilize these technologies in the framework of the market that we have here.

- Along those lines also, you know, land conservation obviously is an important part of the whole adaptability and resilience.

And a lot of people I think when they hear land conservation, it's, oh, stay away.

Build a fence around it.

Just save the land.

And clearly that's not what was in the film, and that's where you work.

But where are we for land conservation and usage of land we're trying to conserve?

- Gosh, I think we are on the right track.

So it is by no accident that the Blue Ridge Parkway park unit is one of the most visited in the country year after year.

It is drawing in between 16 and 20 million visitors a year.

And when I say no accident, it's because we have groups like Conservation Trust for North Carolina, local land trusts all across the western North Carolina region, who are working with local landowners, like Kit Trubey and Bill Carson, who are these kind of creative innovators, who see value in land.

And they say, "How are we gonna make sure that that is accessible to people?

How are we gonna bring tens of thousands of individuals to North Carolina to learn about this working apple orchard, to learn about agricultural land, and then to then take that back to their communities across the state to kind of reiterate that value of conservation?

We also talk about how North Carolina has more people moving here every day.

They're moving here because we have beaches, mountains, rivers, trail networks.

North Carolina is now the great trail state.

And that is all because there are conservation groups working kind of quietly or not so quietly behind the scenes, to make sure that that is an investment that is being made by our communities around the state.

And that's something we're really proud to be a part of.

- We touched on it.

I think this is a question to ask everybody.

We touched on it out in the lobbies.

We were chatting.

You don't just save, I mean, it'd be wonderful to just go save land, but there are criteria that you look at, I guess, when you're thinking about conserving land, I would imagine.

- Absolutely.

So we use a prioritization model.

So we look at a very specific criteria of data to think through, you know, we only have a finite amount of money.

We only have a finite amount of land that could still be conserved that has not been developed yet.

So the idea is, what are the priorities that are important to the communities of North Carolina?

And how can we show up as a really good effective partner to make sure that those priorities are being met?

And so at CTNC, our priorities are around climate resilience, clean water, clean air access to agriculture and recreation, but there organizations all over the state and country just like ours that have their own prioritization.

- Thank you.

- Frank, just real quick, if it's okay to mention a different land conservation organization.

- No, no.

- Never.

We're the only ones.

- We have seen in the solar space a lot of work with The Nature Conservancy on trying to figure out how to bring the conservation of land with the conservation associated with clean energy.

And so things like scorecards for solar projects that can be constructed in a way that is in harmony with the surrounding community.

Things that bring in kind of smaller agricultural research opportunities around what they call agrivoltaics.

It's kind of a play on photovoltaics.

We see a lot of work, you know, in the sheep arena here with grazing.

There's even an American Solar Grazing Association.

Just further evidence that there's an association for everything.

[audience laughs] A lot of work with apiaries and increasingly with trying to figure out how to do small crops in conjunction with these projects.

And so a lot of synergies that we're trying to find so that solar projects are not viewed as the enemy in conservation conversations, but are actually viewed as part of the solution.

- Quick check on hands.

Any hands?

Oh, yes, we are.

Yes.

Very good.

Go ahead.

- Hi there.

Hi there.

That one works.

Hi there.

Will Freud here.

Question.

So climate change can be an incredibly nuanced topic, sometimes.

And it sometimes can be really hard to talk about some of the details on a large scale.

You know, things like a documentary, sometimes you have to kind of glaze over the science, of the nitty-gritty science.

And so my question, then, is kind of generally for the panel, is like, what are some of the common misconceptions that you get when you have these conversations around climate change that can be incredibly nuanced?

That when you are interacting with the community, what are some of the things that you kind of see that are common misconceptions in those conversations that you have?

- Kathie, go ahead.

- I guess the scientist title, I gotta stick up for this.

- I rolled the dice again.

- I wouldn't call them misconceptions.

I would say that lived experiences of the community members are very valid.

And if it's climate or weather or what I define it as, doesn't necessarily matter.

I would say that people in my field can sometimes dwell on things like uncertainty and models and things that we don't necessarily have to do when we're trying to work towards solutions with a group of people.

So, you know, we've gotten a little bit better at using terminology that resonates with folks.

If they don't want to say climate change, then we'll talk about drought and flooding and other changes.

You know, I would say that we are also pretty scientifically literate on the climate change topic 'cause we've been talking about it for 40 years.

And it's much less divisive than it used to be.

So about 70% of North Carolinians think that climate change is happening.

If I asked 70% of North Carolinians if the sky was blue, you know, I'd probably get about the same answer, so.

- It's red this week.

- Yeah.

So it was yellow.

- It was yellow.

Right, I was gonna say yellow a little bit ago.

- So actually, I don't worry too much about the nuances of the science.

- Very good.

Anybody else?

Thank you.

No, I think there was another question out there.

Yes.

And then we'll get to online.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

- [Audience Member] Yeah, I've heard a couple of times, and I know it wasn't the focus of the film, but animals and animal farming, and I'm curious how climate change in North Carolina is affecting particularly the animal farming.

Is it changing?

Are we seeing, you know, outmigration cattle farming or sheep farming?

- We're all looking at Jacob.

- Yeah, it's a little sideways to my expertise area, admittedly, so I won't comment too much, unless Kathie or others have anything specifically in your wheelhouse.

I mean, I know North Carolina, you know, we are still a major animal-producing state.

You know, mostly hogs and chickens are, you know, kind of a bigger part of our agricultural diet.

And, you know, your question was mostly about if it's leaving the state, or is it modulating climate change in the state?

- [Audience Member] Yeah.

- You know, my understanding is that it's such an economic driver.

It's very deeply embedded.

You know, when you think about the infrastructure to raise animals, you know, it's a long-term contract, usually.

Or maybe not a long-term contract, but the long-term investment in these kind of spaces.

Usually, you know, with the indoor kind of operations, it's not necessarily wildly changing.

You know, how we are growing the grain that's mostly feeding this animals is changing a lot in terms of, you know, whether it's salt water intrusion on the coast, where we grow a lot of corn to feed animals.

You know, might have to be trucked in from further distances.

How we deal with the manure lagoons that a lot of that waste, you know, is being held and kept.

And, you know, I know at NC State, go Pack, we've got a lot of research going on around these things in terms of whether it's thinking at the end stage of this lifecycle with turning, you know, animal waste into biofuels or gases, or thinking more further down the pipeline of maybe more systemic, you know, systems thinking approach about how we change, you know, whether it's the enteric fermentation, so the guts.

You might hear how cow, you know, burps and farts are causing, you know, climate change.

And there is some, you know, relevancy to that.

The methane emissions are significant.

So how we address that is absolutely, you know, a major, you know, research component in the state.

But in terms of degrowth or decline, I'm not familiar.

If anybody else has anything to share.

- I'll just say that cows don't like being hot.

And cattle heat stress is actually something that our office gets asked about all the time.

So we are working on kind of a thermal comfort index for cows and people and associated adaptations.

So I don't know if any cows are leaving because of this.

[audience laughs] - [Jacob] Cows don't like to be hot.

That is absolutely true.

- That's something cows and I have a lot in common.

We don't like being super hot.

I thought there was another hand out there.

Yes, go ahead.

- Thank you.

It's another amazing day in paradise.

Thank you so much for this forum and for the movie.

Congratulations for what you produced.

It's beautiful.

And for all the people who participated in it.

I'm just curious about, a comment about policy came up.

And what kind of is just reverberating in the back of my head, and without having all the words to put it together, I guess the best question for me to ask is, why isn't Duke Energy or any of the other providers at this conversation sitting at this table?

Because I know that the state just approved, last year had approved Duke raising the rates on citizens.

If we're talking about, you know, the lack of equity and things of that nature, they're supposed to be trying to build some plant that may not be good for the environment.

We have so many different, especially here in Raleigh and knowing about all the gentrification that's happening, all the excessive development that is tearing down historical neighborhoods and buildings and structures and things of that nature.

I'm just curious as to why we're not asking or getting into conversations with either Duke Energy or developers or something, about asking them to try to find an alternative source of energy to power what they wanna build, so that we can not increase the damage that's happening.

I feel like this is beautiful and everything, but what's the real reality?

You know, what is the real reality?

So I'm not sure.

I know there was a question in there about Duke Energy, but there was so much other stuff that I said.

But thank you for letting me just speak my mind.

- Thank you.

I appreciate that question very much.

You know, one of the reasons why this is important to me is because we have the ability to make a material impact on people's lives.

Like, materially benefit everyday people with this technology.

And the more that we demand it, the more likely it is that we will actually see the policy shift.

Part of the reason why the policy has been stuck with Duke Energy, first of all, Duke Energy has benefited from this technology for more than a decade.

It is the cheapest source of fuel for them.

And somehow, our rates continue to go up.

And if I put it on my roof, all of a sudden, I'm actually producing for myself.

That is a threat.

I know I'm online, I know that I may be filmed here, but we have this narrow window of opportunity to actually benefit meaningfully from this technology, and particularly people who need that help the most.

We have to demand change.

Our utility has captured our utilities commission and our general assembly.

That is just a fact.

And they obviously do not want us to produce our own electricity, because they know it is the cheapest source of power.

But we have to demand it.

And it's really incumbent upon all of us to demand it.

I was in a room today where I heard about families, low-income, middle-income working people, paying 3, $400 a month in electricity.

Every single month.

And through energy efficiency, as well as their own generation, but just simply through energy efficiency, their electricity bills dropped to less than $50 per month.

What does that mean for everyday people?

It means now I can save for my kids' college.

Now I can eat healthier foods that might be a little more expensive than what the convenience store would offer.

Now I can begin to think about and maybe dream about opening that business that I was interested in, or resting instead of working two jobs.

This is the difference, and we have to demand this access to the technology that will actually result in meaningful benefit for everyday people.

We are all touched by the sun.

- I just want to check the numbers again.

From hundreds of dollars to 50 because of energy efficiency.

- Because of energy efficiency, because of insulation, because of high-efficiency windows, because of heat pumps.

Simply energy efficiency.

That's without generation.

Steve.

- I was gonna say, Steve, let's go over to you because that's... How can people tap into those programs?

- So there are lots and lots of new programs that are rolling out to support more energy efficiency for consumers.

There are some federal rebate programs that are gonna be coming online hopefully later this year that were part of the IRA.

There are tax credits for a number of the technologies, including solar and storage technologies that are already online.

And there are a number of utility programs out there that are designed to help consumers institute energy efficiency technologies in their homes, both at Duke and also at many of the co-ops and municipals.

I gotta say, I did not anticipate being the guy on the stage that was gonna, in any way, defend a utility tonight.

But I will say that, yeah, I did.

- Congratulations.

- It happens.

You know, Duke is doing a lot to try and drive the clean energy technology conversation forward.

Among other things, you know, we passed in this state a 100% carbon reduction goal that is gonna be effective by 2050.

And so we're the only state in the Southeast that has such a target out there that is legislatively mandated and placed to go.

And that has led to activity at the Utilities Commission to try and figure out the technology mix that's gonna make that possible.

And I guess what I would say is that everybody has kind of figured out that that's where we're going now.

You know, the fight about climate change, is it real, that fight's pretty much over.

The fight about whether renewable energy and energy efficiency and all of these new technologies are gonna eventually make it into the field, that fight's pretty much over.

The fight that's really going on now is how fast is it gonna happen and who's gonna own it.

And that gets back to some of Ajulo's comments.

You know, it is a struggle to try and find ways to do this at the small scale because the system, and this is not Duke's fault, this is the way that the market is set up and the incentives that are in it, they're just trying to do what they're supposed to do for their shareholders.

But we need to change the policy so that the market works differently, so that individuals, small farmers, small businesses, people like that can benefit from all of this.

The Feds have done a good bit now with some of these bills that have passed in the last couple of years that are gonna create these rebate programs, these tax incentives, but we have more to do in our state to try and make it easier for local people to really take advantage of it.

- Mm-hmm.

And I'll just say again, you know, it's dramatic when I go across the country, and I say, "Hey, you know, North Carolina is second in terms of install capacity for solar."

And people are like, "What?"

[audience laughs] North Carolina?"

Yeah, because it actually works.

It's cheap, it's reliable.

It's good technology.

Now it's time for all of us to benefit from it.

- Very good.

Apologize to the folks online because we've had some questions in the audience.

But we do have a couple of questions online.

Go ahead.

- [Moderator] Yeah, so the first one, bouncing off from the conversation to have, somebody asked, "How do we know these systems, the film showed alternative energy sources under ideal circumstances.

How do we know these systems will hold up and function during an energy crisis?

Would they be destroyed during tornadoes, blizzards, hurricanes, et cetera?"

- There is that reliability question.

Yes.

- Yeah, I would say that.

[audience laughs] Oh boy.

- Do that in slow motion.

- Those apply.

I'm curious.

- I'm so glad the speaker is here.

- Yeah.

The good news is that we do have a pretty good sense of that.

Because these systems are, they've been around for a lot longer than you would guess.

A lot of these systems were actually designed to provide power in outer space first.

You know, this was the way we couldn't run extension cords to satellites.

And so we had to come up with a way to do that in the 1950s.

And so these technologies were, you know, designed to be very robust to start with.

Then we've had a lot of experience with, you know, situations where renewable energy systems have been installed in the field and natural disasters or other things have happened.

And we've seen that the people that get to host the neighborhood party after, you know, the lights go out in the neighborhood are usually the people with solar on their roof.

And so we see that technology being robust and ready to respond to those disasters.

And even after the fact, we see groups like FEMA and other agencies that do disaster relief bringing in renewable energy and batteries, you know, as part of the remote power in a place where something bad has happened, so that they're set up to be able to do the work that they need to do.

And again, those technologies just keep getting better and better and smaller and easier to move around.

And so we're seeing more and more opportunity to do more.

You know, these days, the big push is actually in something called microgrids, where we take, you know, instead of having this large hub and spoke system with a big centralized power plant, and then it kind of works its way out from there and gets to smaller and smaller lines, we're seeing places where it's important that they have power be able to isolate their grid.

So that if there's a problem somewhere between the central station power plant and a hospital or the central station power plant and a military base, that they can actually disconnect, and using resources that they have, operate for some period of time independently.

So all of these technologies are really set up to improve the resiliency, improve the reliability of the energy grid and the availability of energy to everyone.

And so, yeah, I think renewable energy is actually part of the solution to that question.

- And the more distributed the generation, the more resilient.

So if every neighborhood, every block, every few blocks had its own source of power generation, then you become more resilient.

- Sure.

Another question.

- [Moderator] Yep.

All right, switching the gears a little bit.

Are there any concerns surrounding the introduction of tropical plants to NC that may become invasive species that may compete with native vegetation?

- Yeah, definitely a very fair question.

Yeah, something like taro, you know, and if folks caught the terminology on the film, the root or the corm it's sometimes called, referred to as the mother.

So they're like, "Yeah, we're gonna cut up the mother and eat it."

Language is a little funny.

But that root's kind of spreading like a potato.

You know, it spreads, you know, primarily through human, you know, intention.

I think Chris also noted on the film that, you know, these crops have been developed for thousands and thousands of years.

You know, many of them are these very ancient things that have been utilized by other humans, you know, in other parts of the world.

So in terms of their invasiveness, I'd say it's like a yes and no question.

Yes, because we have developed them to be really, you know, high performing and strong and virulent.

But no, because we do also have a really strong, you know, USDA and other services that will check the, you know, crops coming in.

Whether they have, you know, a disease and trying to avoid things that happened like the chestnut blight 1,000 years.

Or 100 years ago when we, you know, inadvertently, you know, poisoned the American chestnut across, you know, all of, you know, Appalachia and into the eastern coast of the United States.

That's 100% a legitimate concern.

And groups like The Utopian Seed Project are primarily utilizing things that have been brought here already, many, many years ago, whether it's, you know, 10, 20, 30, 100 years ago, but they're in really small micropockets.

Kind of getting back to the point about diversity, you know, we have Hawaiian folks or we have folks from Indonesia that have been growing taro in parts of, you know, Florida and California for over 100 years.

They just haven't really expanded beyond some of those cultural enclaves.

And that's one of the beautiful things about a project like that, is that it really, you know, spreads both the human cultural diversity alongside the agricultural diversity.

And as, you know, we have climate refugees and people, you know, moving out of the equatorial regions because of the, you know, the challenges of climate change, having those crops, you know, growing and integrated into, you know, the wider supply chain and culture, you know, that supply and demand side at both times, is a really exciting facet to be able to lean into with some of these, you know, sort of lesser-known but definitely present crops in the country.

- And I would imagine also that's where land conservation comes in.

Not so much, you know, protecting invasive species, but protecting native rare species and, you know, preserving the species that are here, the plants that are here.

- Absolutely.

So I mean, as we're thinking about native plants, animals, wildlife, they are also having to adapt to our changing climate, to increases in temperature.

And so when we talked on the video about the importance of connected conserved lands, we're giving them a place to go.

So as the temperature is changing, we can find places that are gonna stay cooler for longer.

Or we're gonna create that connective kind of tissue that they can migrate and move back and forth to make sure that they're finding the resources they need to continue to thrive as they need that extra time to adapt to the changes that are coming.

- We have time for one more question.

I think we have one out there, Chris.

- One more.

- [Audience Member] Hi, good evening.

Thank you so much for being here.

We are from a rural county, and we've had community members who have tried to bring solar into the community, and they've been knocked down.

And we've had land turned over that was highly conserved and made highly industrial with one fell swoop.

And so I'm just wondering from the panel if you have any connections that we might be able to take back to our community to share.

To, say, reach out to this group or this organization to help us to grow stronger, to bring these things into our area.

- I would start with the North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association, NCSEA.

They have a lot of great resources, along with the North Carolina State Clean Technology Center, has particular resources for landowners.

So.

- Yeah, it's funny that you ask.

As a matter of fact, we just got word at NC State last week that we won a new grant from the Department of Energy to do this kind of work.

To put together information for local communities, decision makers, landowners, community members, to help kind of separate the, somebody alluded to the myths out there.

To kind of separate myths from reality.

There are many, many concerns and issues that communities should be thinking about when solar projects are brought to them to consider moving into their neighborhood.

But there's also a lot of issues out there that you can find on the internet that are probably not really issues.

And so one of the things that we're gonna be doing with this grant starting this summer is working with communities across North and South Carolina to try and help answer those questions.

We're doing the grant in conjunction with North Carolina Cooperative Extension, along with the Southeastern Wind Coalition, the Center for Energy and Education up in Halifax, C4EE, and the state energy offices in North and South Carolina.

So a lot of new opportunity to get information out there coming once we get our contract negotiated with DoE.

[audience laughs] - Is there anything about land conservation they should know?

- I'd say the most important thing is for the folks in this room and online to understand that land conservation is one of the greatest tools we have for our changing climate, especially when we think about flooding, fire risk.

That conserving land, keeping it in its natural state, it's gonna help us store flood water.

It's gonna help protect people in place across the state.

And our local and state elected leaders are working really diligently to appropriate, designate public dollars to be able to invest in future conservation projects, to make it more financially accessible for farmers to put their agricultural land into a specific kind of protection.

So yeah, I think it's about talking to your local and state leaders about how important conservation is, how we need money to continue doing it.

And we need landowners who are excited about participating in that process.

- All right, we are, as the saying goes, out of time.

Was there- - I just wanted to say one thing.

I don't want the evening to go by without thanking everybody.

Of course, everybody that's on stage with us.

I'm sure Frank was about to do that, but I'll jump on it and say thank you all- - I'll do it again too.

- for being the experts.

I just get to talk to amazing people all the time, and I'm not an expert, so it's so great to have all of you here to answer people's questions.

But I also just wanna say thank you to everybody that was in the film because it's a big chunk of time that each of them gave us.

Some standing out in freezing cold winds in November.

And everybody was just really so gracious and generous and willing.

And it's a big deal to be in front of a camera and talk about your story.

So big shout-out to everybody in the film and, of course, my incredible cinematographers, Rob Nelson and Miriam McFadden, who filmed this while I just sit there and watched them create all those beautiful imagery.

And I know how hard it is.

So big shout-out to everybody.

- Very good.

And thank you again to everyone in the panel.

I just wanted to give you a quick minute final thoughts before we wrap it up here.

Kathie, we'll start with you.

Roll the dice.

Start with you again.

- Yeah.

I mean, this can be really overwhelming.

Every month I get an inquiry from a reporter that says, "Kathie, this is embargoed.

We broke another global temperature record."

Like clockwork.

We can't explain the heat from 2023.

It was that overwhelming.

The hurricane forecasts are out.

It's big.

But I wanna say there is a lot to love about this state, there's a lot that we do love about this state, and there's a lot worth saving.

So we just need the courage to implement some of these solutions that my fine colleagues talked about.

And I know we can do it.

I know we will do it.

- Additionally.

- Yeah.

- You're good.

- Good.

- Thank you, Heather.

- The title of this series is Seeds of Hope, and we've talked a lot about how the climate change conversation has changed so much over the last 30 years.

I think the hope that I see is this groundswell of support from North Carolinians who love our state, and they want to invest in what we know is going to make it great and resilient.

And that's land conservation, that's investment in clean and renewable energy.

It's investment in our agricultural businesses.

We see support from corporations, businesses, local elected leaders, nonprofits, scientists, and universities.

And that gives me a lot of hope to come back to work every day and continue to work on this mission, knowing that we have a bigger group of people working toward it every day.

- Steve?

- Yeah, I just wanna, I guess, say the same thing I said earlier.

You know, the technology that we need for the energy piece of this puzzle is there.

You know, we have a lot of those pieces now.

They will continue to get better.

They will continue to get more robust.

They will continue to get cheaper.

But what we really need to do is put the pieces together around that.

You know, and that includes not just the policy things that we've talked a little bit about tonight, but it includes trying to figure out ways to fit the agricultural discussion, the land conservation discussion, the bigger picture of sustainability into that discussion.

We have to do all of these things simultaneously, 'cause if we solve one problem and create three others, then, you know, what have we got?

So, you know, we've gotta figure out how to put the pieces together.

Thank you.

- I'm gonna jump in again.

[laughs] Well, I just wanna call back to the awesome question that was asked.

You're in the bright light for me, but in the back of the room.

Just the power of this kind of storytelling and sharing stories can really activate people and inspire people to do things, and that's why I do what I do.

So I'm very glad you all are here tonight.

But hopefully you can share this content.

And there's a lot of other amazing content on our free video portal, free video app where you can watch a ton of earth-related content, not all about climate change.

So just check that out.

And please share this.

Share this with people, you know, that work at Duke Energy or who might know people that work there.

Hopefully this spreads out from this room and continues to create conversation.

- Thank you.

- Since you'll be sharing with people who work at Duke Energy, [audience laughs] let me just say that there really is no solution without our utilities.

They are a critical, critical part of this mix.

And we have to be in partnership to make this happen together.

And there's hope.

The electric cooperatives are doing amazing, innovative work around community solar.

They are looking at ways to reduce the load and help folks at the same time that they're helping the grid.

So there is a lot of innovation there, and we will need to lock arm in arm with our utilities to move forward together.

And I'm so grateful for the opportunity to talk about this work.

Thank you so much.

- And you were so awesome in the video.

- Freezing out in the field there.

Yes.

Jacob, go ahead.

- Yeah, I guess I'll just wrap up by saying, you know, small is beautiful, y'all.

And in agricultural space and kind of, you know, bringing it back to us here in the audience, online, and, you know, and in person, that, you know, our own contributions, you know, can still be a beautiful equitable change.

You know, anything from embracing that, you know, food diversity.

Trying the Ethiopian restaurant you've always wanted to because they're using grains and greens you never heard of before.

That can drive a farmer to grow more of those and share them with their community.

Or getting on a local school board and investing in buying more local food through the procurement policies.

You know, there's so much we can do that emphasizes the role of, you know, of smaller-scale agriculture that then, you know, scales up to a much larger agriculture.

But really starts with us, you know, investing.

And investing, you know, in each other and, you know, in those kind of localized, you know, personable solutions.

So that's where I wanna end.

- Very good.

A couple of quick thank yous.

First off, thank you to all of you who have attended tonight.

Thank you to everyone online who's been watching.

Again, thank you to this fabulous panel.

Everyone was really excited when I asked them to join us, so I really appreciate that.

This is our third year for our State of Change project.

So I have a couple of thank yous to why this has kept going and has grown larger and larger as we've kept going.

Thank you to the museum for the facility and for helping us put this online and put this out there.

Thank you to Secretary Wilson and the Department of Natural and Cultural Resources for their support of this whole project.

Thank you to the Pulitzer Center who got us off on this, you know, this project with an initial grant.

And they've kept it going.

And so really thank you to the Pulitzer Center and their Connected Coastlines project for doing that.

And a quick programming note.

"State of Change: Seeds of Hope" is on TV.

It will premiere on Earth Day, Monday, April 22nd at nine o'clock on PBS North Carolina.

You can stream it online on the PBS app as well.

And there is also a lot of PBS-related climate change programming that is on the web as well and on TV.

You can visit the PBS climate engagement website to find more about that.

You all will be getting an email in your box saying thank you.

It'll also have a link to this discussion tonight.

It'll have a link to the show, if you wanna watch it again.

So don't delete.

[audience laughs] Click and read and watch.

And again, thank you to everyone watching online, to everyone here.

Thank you to the panel.

And now for the folks in the audience, my colleague Joy Potts has a- - [Joy] Chris is gonna announce.

- Oh.

Well, Joy is going to hold the package, there we go, while Chris announces.

[laughs] - [Chris] I get the pleasure and privilege of announcing who won the raffle, the giveaway, for the lovely prize pack for signing up for the PBS NC newsletter.

That person is- - Drum roll, please.

- [Chris] Caroline Lancaster.

- [Panelist] Yay.

[audience applauds] - [Chris] Fantastic.

- All right, here we go.

[audience applauds] All right, again, thank you, everybody.

Congratulations.

Be kind to each other, be kind to the planet, and happy Earth Day.

And thank you for joining us.

[audience applauds] - Don't forget to grab a seed packet on the way out from a project you might recognize.

- [Participant] Can we get a picture of everybody?

- Yeah.

- [Panelist] We'll stand up.

- Yeah.

- Move the legs.

[audience chattering] - [Participant] Yeah.

Thank you.