From WXXI news I'm Jasmine Singer and this is Environmental Connections.

Today's environmental connection was made earlier this month when local leaders gathered at City Hall to demand urgent state action on climate funding.

Their message was clear without large scale investment, even our most ambitious local efforts risk falling short.

It was a moment that really underscored something that many in this community already know.

While climate change is global, its impacts and its solutions are playing out at the neighborhood level, from how we heat our homes to the stress we carry about the future.

The climate crisis is already shaping daily life in Rochester, and with the Climate Solutions Summit, it's just a matter of days away.

It's time to ask what are the most urgent climate issues facing Rochester right now and what's being done and what's standing in the way?

Today we'll hear from experts working on the front lines of climate action and from those tackling issues like mental health, transportation, land use and jobs, all of which are deeply intertwined with our changing climate in ways that aren't always obvious.

Joining me in the studio are Abby Matthew Griffo, executive director of the Climate Solutions Accelerator.

Welcome back Abby.

Thanks so much for having me.

And no pressure that the summit is just a matter of days away.

we've got Dave Sealy, who's the business services representative at Rochester Works.

Welcome to Environmental Connections.

Nice to be here.

Thank you.

Doctor Emma Nelson, clinical psychologist and executive committee member of the Climate Psychology Alliance of North America.

Thank you so much for being here.

Great to be here.

Such an important topic.

and Cody Donahue co executive director of Reconnect Rochester, welcome to Environmental Connections.

Pleasure to be back.

Yes I really appreciate all of you and the work that you're doing.

And Abby, I want to start with you because as we mentioned, the Climate Solutions Accelerator has been at the forefront of local climate justice efforts.

So from a big picture perspective, to kind of get us, you know, in the mood for today's discussion, what do you see as the most urgent opportunities for climate action in Rochester right now?

Well, I still appreciate that.

You framed it as opportunities, which, you know, so often we do focus on the problem and we need to focus on the problem.

But, you know, what I see is the important opportunity is for us to consider how we can address multiple problems at the same time.

Right.

So how do we take a multi solving approach not only to addressing the climate crisis, but also to improving quality of life and affordability and etc., etc., etc.?

And I think that's part of why I'm excited about today's discussion, because we're going to be bringing together a lot of those different threads, and for those who are unfamiliar, can you tell us about the Climate Solutions Summit coming up?

What's the goal and why now?

Yeah, so our theme for this year, it is an annual event is Co-creating Our Future, which of course, you know, addressing the climate crisis is key to having a better future.

But it's not just about climate change.

It's about how climate change relates to all these other areas of our lives.

So, I'm very excited about this year's event.

I think it's going to provide quite a bit of food for thought for attendees.

We're going to be exploring big questions, intersections of issues, trying to build the skills, knowledge and relationships that we need to successfully co-create a better future.

And and really trying to, you know, hear from each other about the complexities and nuances of these issues.

One thing we discussed in the last hour has been the fact that there's been growing concern about the state's stalled climate funding.

Can you briefly explain what that is and how that uncertainty is affecting your work?

Yeah.

So, you know, this is playing out in a lot of different ways.

So, you know, you would need a whole hour to really dig into the details.

but in short, you know, there are a lot of policy solutions that are kind of ready to go at the state level.

And it's just the, you know, awaiting the governor's signature, for example, on the cap and invest program.

And not having funding for climate solutions is certainly a major barrier to moving them forward, because there is, you know, in almost every area, there's there's going to be some kind of upfront cost, that investment that is needed.

Of course, also important to, you know, acknowledge and recognize there that that will more than pay for itself over time.

But yes, we are at a point right now at the state level.

And of course, the federal government, too.

We got all kinds of issues going on there, where funding for these issues is not coming through, and that is stalling our progress.

So what's your message to local leaders?

Oh, boy.

Just, like, sign the bill already.

I know.

no.

You know, we all need to be moving in the same direction in this, and I can understand right now.

You know, people are distracted, concerned of a lot of different issues.

but we need to continue to keep climate and the environment at the forefront of our intention, because, in fact, in order for our community to thrive and to address all the other many challenges we have, we do need clean air, clean water, relatively stable global temperatures.

These are fundamental to our ability to thrive.

so let's keep this, as a focus of our attention.

Thank you.

Abby.

Much more to come.

I have many more questions.

Cody, I know we'll be deep diving later into how our land use patterns shape all of this, but I do want to briefly pull you in here when you hear Abby talk about the urgency.

How does that square with what you see when it comes to transportation systems and sprawl in Rochester?

Yeah.

I mean, speaking of opportunity, I think, you know, we have an opportunity right now to seriously, critically, reimagine our development patterns and the way we've been we've been developing as a, as a North America for the last 50 years has been to keep expanding outward.

And that just places jobs, that places medical appointments, grocery stores, childcare, farther away from where people live.

And so I think with the intersections of climate equity issues and, a housing crisis, we have an opportunity right now to say we can build our neighborhoods differently, so that all of our needs can be met within.

Let's say, a 3 or 4 mile radius of where we live.

Okay.

We're going to get much more into transportation issues in a little while because it brings up so much.

But first, let's shift to green jobs.

Dave Seeley is here from Rochester Works.

Dave, can you start by explaining what qualifies as a green job in 2025?

Like, are we mostly talking about new industries or do traditional jobs count when they're focused on sustainability or clean energy?

It's a good question.

and it's it's a challenge we often have with that definition.

And the short answer, it's.

Yes, both.

when we talk about green jobs, generally it's any job that supports, any job that supports, helping the environment or restoring the environment.

And that can happen in direct ways, tangentially.

so when you think about green jobs, yes, there's some that are highly visible and more obvious, such as I am an installer of solar solar panels on homes.

But there's other other industries.

they definition of green jobs, cross cuts.

And you can think manufacturing, you can think construction.

You could think engineering.

so when we when we talk about green jobs, really we're talking about a lot of different industries that have elements, either in part or exclusively, that serve to lower carbon emissions, help the environment, help promote the transition from fossil fuel to renewable type energies.

So and because of that, you know, a lot of people are working in green jobs and may not even know they're working in the green job.

You can be, someone who works at an Hvac company and you're installing heat pumps, and you're just doing that because it's what you were trained to do.

And it's, providing a service to homeowners and businesses.

But really, that's helping to lower carbon emissions and utilization of fossil fuels.

So you can work in a manufacturing facility that makes component parts of, of some sort of green technology.

And yes, that's a green job because you're helping with that supply chain you might not go to when someone asks you what you do, you might not say, I work in the green jobs.

Yeah, we can clean energy.

And just so you know, you probably say you work in manufacturing, but in part you're part of that, broader ecosystem that makes up our green economy, which locally is projected to grow 10% next year directly.

There's about 38,000 jobs in our region, which we reconstitute as green jobs.

But if you look at that ecosystem of of industries that kind of touch upon or influencer impact, those, those green jobs, it rises to about 100,000.

So the short answer is there's opportunity.

And whether people know it or not, they are playing a part in this ecosystem that we call the green economy.

But really is is part of our everyday lives.

Well, you are starting to answer my next question, but I want to dig a little more in here because I want to know what kind of demand you're seeing for green jobs locally.

Are are employers stepping up or is the region busy playing catch up?

The the good news?

Here's the bad news.

The bad news is the green economy, clean energy, employers.

there is a substantial skill gap, meaning there's a disconnect between the supply and demand for labor.

There are jobs there, whether low, medium, higher, skilled at all ends of the spectrum that we just don't have a right, a workforce right now, that meets their needs.

The good news is, is join the club.

We've got jackets.

Every industry we work with at Rochester Works, from health care to manufacturing to construction to it faces the same skill gap.

What's unique about the clean energy sector, however, is it's a lot of newer skill sets that we have to, revise.

And in some ways enhance our training capacity to do so.

It's evolving technologies that are new, the applications of manufacturing, applications of construction, just new technologies that are are used by consumers.

so there are new skill sets we have to create.

And one of the one of the challenges that make sure our training infrastructure, whether it be, and our community colleges or other requisite training providers, is able to keep up in preparing people and filling those skill gaps.

So the short answer is, they're not just unalike any other industry, probably, but challenges.

Challenges are unique in some, some circumstances.

Well, sticking to that point, considering recent executive orders, shifting the political landscape towards climate denial, have you seen any rebranding of green jobs to, I don't know, economic opportunities?

No, I don't think so.

I you look, I think there's there's fear and resistance.

But you know, the government's only one for second impact.

The green economy, consumers impact the green economy.

Companies through their practices impact the green economy.

Our desire to consume less energy impacts our green economy and save money on our utility bills.

But I will say it is.

And it is impacting probably some long term planning for some companies.

you know, you've seen companies perhaps, you know, being less bullish about their growth, which is, you know, disheartening.

But as of right now, I don't think you've seen anything direct impact because it takes obviously there's a lagging, force that that influences these things.

So for instance, with the Inflation Reduction Act, with the which was passed in 2001, a lot of the impact of that is still being realized.

So you've seen a lot of members, who might agree wholeheartedly with the president's, thoughts about climate change, but are also saying, oh, in my congressional district, they're building an electronic, vehicle factory or some clean technology that's going to employ hundreds of thousands, hundreds or thousands of people.

So I think it's a little nuanced.

And you see an inconsistency sometimes with what's said and what's actually happening at the ground level.

Nevertheless, it's not it's not good, though, an unbalanced it's not good towards the goals that we're trying to accomplish through, both addressing climate change, but as a, as a, as a good consequence of addressing climate change, these green jobs that are creating, how do we make sure the opportunities are equitable, reaching workers who have historically been left out of these conversations in a political climate that, you know, is portraying Dei as detrimental to our society?

Yeah, it's and again, and that's that's where it's unlike it's like every other industry we face.

And the need is really to reduce barriers.

And, you know, we at Rochester works, you know, we when some of these executive orders came out, we believe in the AI because it's good for our company and that our primary service populations are people with who are historically underrepresented in the workforce, which, by the way, is one.

I just use 3 or 4 words that you're not supposed to use, but it makes common sense.

They are underrepresented in the workforce, whether you're a person of color or someone with a disability, someone who has a criminal justice record, their barriers to employment.

some of those are tangible.

Some of those are circumstance of where you were born, what zip code you were born in.

And at the end of the day, our job is to remove those barriers and help facilitate a career pathway.

so that's how you create equity.

You level the playing field by reducing those barriers that often exist, to no fault of the person trying to seek a job and just sustain a, a good income for their family.

You mentioned earlier that one of the barriers is training, and you talked a little bit about education, educational institutions.

When it comes to preparing students, are our schools or colleges ready to meet the moment?

Well, will education department cuts impact green job readiness programs?

I hope not, I think my fear is in some instances access to you talk about Pell Grants.

Pell grants are enormously important, towards helping people finance education.

You know, Rochester works.

We offer training grants of up to $7,000 for people, pursuing an occupational, skill through a training program, whether that's at a community college or some other training provider.

But we also those students rely on Pell Grants and other sources of financial aid.

That's my fear.

It's it's not not perhaps our overall because I think it's nobody disagrees with the need to have a training program that provides skills to people.

I think everyone wants to have a skilled workforce.

I think we disagree.

Where we disagree is the pathway to get there.

And I think some people just believe that there's a fairy that waves a wand that will get people on a training program.

We know at Rochester Works.

It's not that simple.

If it was that simple, you wouldn't need, those supportive services that are so just important to people wanting to not just access a training program, but complete a training program.

Well, I've been wanting a wand for 45 years.

So if you hear of, anyone who has won, give them my number.

Cody, this ties into your world as well.

Not so much the wand, though.

Possibly that too.

We're going to dig into land use more fully in a little bit.

But I want to.

I want to pull you in quickly here to.

What's the link that you see between the way our region grows and the kinds of green job opportunities that exist or don't for Rochester reasons.

Well, reliable transportation is a barrier to, gaining employment, but also keeping employment.

you know, if if you're not, if you don't own a car and you depend on the bus schedule, getting you to work, you have to kind of work yourself around the, your schedule, you know, might end up being late, and not keep not retaining a job.

And, you know, the reality is 74% of Monroe County residents leave the town or the city that they live in to go work a job.

Most of the jobs are concentrated in downtown, southwest Rochester or Henrietta.

According to a 2018 jobs and Transportation Poverty report that was put together.

and, you know, low income workers are really everywhere, in the county.

And they're commuting to those kind of those job rich locations.

So, you know, where we see the link is ensuring that there's a robust public transit system, which is also a climate solution, ensuring that there's safe, but bike infrastructure that would allow people to, to, to make that four mile, on average, it's a four mile commute for for most workers in Monroe County.

It's very reasonable for to bike that if the infrastructure is safe, you'll see more people doing that.

So I think, you know, the connections that we see are ensuring that people have safe, reliable forms of transportation options that, enable them to thrive when they do get into that job.

And, you know, not necessarily relying on car ownership because, car ownership, especially the cost of insurance rates have doubled in the last couple of years.

And the triple A is, estimate for an average, person's, burden.

Financial burden for car ownership per year is up to $12,300.

Wow.

That's Kody Donahue, the co-executive director of Reconnect Rochester.

And we also were chatting with Dave Seeley, the executive director of Rochester Works.

All of this brings up some emotions in some of us.

So I want to talk to Doctor Emma Nelson, who is a clinical psychologist specializing in climate anxiety.

You must be very busy these days.

Yeah, it's not a bad time to be doing this work.

and I think your transition was great.

Jasmin.

The the main thing that comes up for me as I listen to you all speak is that living in this time feels like something.

It feels like something like falling in love feels like something.

Or like taking a walk.

Feels like something, of course.

Right?

But there are profound and intense emotions that come up as we try to do this work.

And of note, they're not all negative, right?

There are feelings of deep meaning and resilience and hope that come up for many of us doing this work.

And there are also increasingly feelings of terror, dread, depression, anxiety, fear, hopelessness, rage, betrayal.

Right?

These are not small experiences that many of us are carrying.

and the first thing I think that it's important to say about my work is that I'm often asked whether climate distress is a new disorder and know climate distress is inherently a healthy response and an adaptive one to a system in crisis.

Most often those feelings move us towards meaningful work, right?

Climate distress and involvement in climate action are correlated with one another.

So it's present even in this conversation, as I sit with folks who are engaged in our community, right.

And who all have presumably your own journeys with, trying to figure out what it means to live a meaningful life in this time.

I love that you have said that climate distress is, I think you put it this way, a rational response to a real threat and not a mental disorder.

Can you explain that?

Yeah, absolutely.

So if we take young people, for example, there's some recent research, huge study, 10,000 young people, ages 16 to 25 across ten countries.

This is from 2021. that research shows that 75% of young people in this demographic feel that the future is frightening.

that's the majority of young people, right?

So we can't call that outside of the normal curve.

It's actually right in the middle of the normal curve.

So this is the context that we're swimming in.

And because of that, we have to ask the question, what is our emotional, psychological or spiritual experience pushing us towards about what it might mean to be well-adjusted to the time we've been born into?

That's a challenging question.

It is a challenging question.

What is what's the answer?

I mean, I'm not the one who's the psychologist here.

So, fix it.

Emma.

Yes.

I would notice that instinct to fix right away.

It just is calling me out.

Yeah, it comes up.

That's true for so many of us.

How do we fix it?

my answer, I think, is dialectical.

And a dialectic means two seemingly opposing things that are true at the same time.

So the first one on one side, is that what you're feeling if you're living, listening to this and you're aware.

Oh, I have this.

I have climate distress.

You're healthy.

Right?

You're awake and there's a part of that that is asking you to listen, to pay attention, to ask how might this be pushing me to shift my life in a way maybe I wasn't expecting, but that I'm called to right.

So there's that piece.

And then the other side of the dialectic is that sometimes this can get challenging in a way that does require support.

So how do you know?

Right.

If you need support?

There's an interaction for many of us, all of us, I think between our experience of climate distress and our own personal stuff, whether that's cultural or intergenic, irrational or our own personal history.

So those two interact and they can interact in a way that makes it harder to do what we need to do.

For example, if we came from a family that doesn't grieve well, but we're feeling a lot of grief related to places in nature we're attached to that no longer function the way that we wish that they would, and we find it hard to process that because our families found it hard to process that.

Right.

So that interaction that is worthy of support and attention and that attention can come through therapy, through groups, through our own practices that we might do ourselves, through conversations with family and through our connections with the more than human world.

I love that I have six darling rescues, four dogs, one of whom is a fosters and two cats.

And I find so much solace in just being with animals.

And I know that there is a lot of there's a lot of studies that have come out about our relationship with non-human animals and how that can really alleviate stress.

Absolutely.

And I would say to that that's there's a climate psychologist who calls that level one of climate aware therapy, where we go to the more than human world for solace to receive something.

There is a level two where the relationship is more bidirectional, right in the more than human world asks something of us in turn, and that reduces our distress in a different way.

Right?

It asks us to transform to better meet the time that we've been born into.

So there's kind of a dual relationship there, right?

Where we're not just going into the woods to forest, bathe and feel better and then go back to our usual lives.

Right?

Yeah.

so I'll put you talk about direct impacts like PTSD after floods, but you also talk about pre traumatic stress, especially among young people.

What are you seeing most frequently.

Absolutely.

Thank you for bringing this up.

So this is incredibly prevalent.

It relates to the statistic that I just cited a little while ago.

There are similar statistics from that same study.

over half of respondents believe that they'll lose the thing that they most value.

Right.

That's an example of pre traumatic stress.

So this is a concept that means experiencing the symptoms of trauma.

So like hypervigilance negative alterations in your thoughts and your mood before something traumatic has actually happened.

Instead you're experiencing those symptoms because you're anticipating something really scary and stressful happening in the future.

And that happening is actually not a rational.

You're anticipating a real threat.

So pre traumatic stress was a term that was coined in order to talk about the increasing prevalence of this experience, particularly among climate distressed young people.

Has there been an uptick in this climate related stress other than other than mine, since the new administration came into office and set the climate change agenda back?

That is a wonderful question.

I haven't seen any research come out.

I don't think there's really been enough time yet to publish a study on this and to collect data.

I would be surprised if the answer was no.

And I would also maybe caveat that our nervous systems naturally will numbers out at a certain point.

So oftentimes I will see activists who come to therapy because they no longer feel anything.

They don't feel pre traumatic stress.

Instead, they feel nothing.

Right.

So our nervous systems are smart and they have a sense of when to pull us back when we're overloaded.

I would wonder if we're also seeing not only an uptick in fear of the future and preoccupation about it, the kind of anxiety family, but also an uptick in people who are just so dissociated and disoriented that they feel tuned out.

I have a giant question for you.

And as I'm hearing you talk, I realize we should do a whole show about this.

because this is I'm going to ask you to answer it in a succinct way, and that's kind of asking the impossible of you.

But how should parents be talking to their kids about climate and at what ages?

Oh, you're lucky, Jasmine, I have a pithy one over that.

this is my favorite.

It's helped me.

I'm a parent.

I have a young child, and it's my favorite short statement.

to orient us to how on earth we're supposed to parent in this time.

It is that you may not be able to protect your children from climate change.

And that's true.

And you might protect them from being alone with climate change.

You can certainly do that.

Wow, I love that.

Will you be my parent?

Just, for that matter, how should kids who are worried be talking to their parents about it?

There is actually a wonderful guide for, climate aware education that was recently published by the Climate Psychology Alliance.

I would encourage folks listening to Google that it's great for parents to for youth listening.

Really, it's the job of your parents or the adults in your life to hold a space for you through this.

Right?

So our youth are often told that you'll need to fix this for us, or now it's your generation's turn.

Woops, sorry.

Right?

That's a lot of pressure to put on a young person, and it makes sense to not feel validated or welcomed by that.

It's not your failing as a young person.

If you hear that and don't feel like the conversation was open to you.

So really, this is a question of how do we as adults prepare to receive the pretty profound and challenging emotions that our kids are bringing up and are going to continue bringing to us?

What about in schools?

I mean, how should teachers address it, especially when the president and probably many parents don't seem to believe it's happening?

Wonderful question.

I don't know that question.

We love that answer.

Yeah.

And I think that's maybe a function that things are changing so rapidly and intensifying so profoundly.

I often talk about psychological resilience in this, this context and what that might be.

We've thought about that historically as getting stressed out and then coming back to baseline.

If I can do that quickly, then I'm resilient.

I don't think resilience really means that right now.

Think instead it means something like our capacity to grow in response to increasing stress and then grow again and then grow again.

So perhaps that's what's being asked of educators in this time, to continue stretching, to hold the jobs that they're doing.

So much is asked for of our educators.

It just seems to keep becoming more and more.

You've mentioned balancing action, emotional engagement and self-care.

So just to I'm taking notes.

What does that actually look like for people in their everyday lives?

Because we hear that self-care hashtag self-care.

But what is it?

I mean, how do we take care of ourselves in this moment?

Yeah.

And I'll just say before entering this that we're socialized into an individualistic culture.

So this idea that it's my climate distress and it's my thing to manage even that is not quite the right frame for what we're talking about.

It's not really anything that any of us can carry alone.

At the same time, it's not like you can't structure your life to better contain what you're experiencing.

Well, you do have agency here.

So that's what I mean when I talk about balancing action, emotional engagement and distancing.

What that means, for example, in somebody's life, is that you want to have spaces where you can feel what you feel, that can look like anything really, that helps you keep emotions flowing.

Healthy feelings flow, so can look like talking about it can look like going to therapy can look like meditating, it can look like journaling, whatever.

Stay engaged with what you're feeling.

It will stop it from calcifying and you'll prevent burnout.

That way.

action.

At the same time, emotional engagement is not enough.

You have to get your hands dirty.

Otherwise you kind of spin in circles, right?

So we can get stuck there to action again, is what you're good at.

What brings you joy, what the community needs.

That's important to making space for climate distress in your life.

If you do just those two alone, though, you'll be really tired.

So the third one is distancing.

It's living your life in a way that's meaningful, that's joyful, it's taking breaks.

It's staying connected to the reality of what you're doing in your life right now and balancing it with the other two.

That's really great advice.

I know that this issue seems like such a huge crisis to so many of us, but inexplicably, so many others don't seem to even know it's happening.

So how do you explain the don't Look up syndrome?

yeah.

I've actually been finding myself talking about this a lot with clients and groups, particularly within families or within organizations where people have different ideas of what's happening for us collectively and what the future may look like.

So I don't have any easy fixes on this.

I think it's really complex and that the work is fundamentally relational.

It's about how we talk to each other and whether or not we're capable of saying to people we're often really close to, you know, this is what I think the next 20 years are going to look like.

What do you think?

How do you think about it?

That's a scary conversation for many of us to begin.

And just my final question for right now, bringing it back to the summit, I know that the Climate Solutions Summit, which is next week, has a self-care track.

What will that offer to folks attending?

Yeah, the third session that I'm doing in that track actually is about what we just talked about.

It's called connecting across multiple visions of the future.

I'm working with a psychiatrist, Doctor Janet Lewis, who is a futures thinking expert, and she and I have put together an experiential that gives folks an opportunity to actually get in touch with, well, how are you thinking about the future and all the multiple ways that you might be caring just inside one person?

And then how do you start talking about it to one other human being?

So there will be that there will also be around 45 minutes of experiential grief work.

So that falls into this emotional engagement category of figuring out how do I keep things moving through so that I can stay engaged in a way that's meaningful to me?

And then the first, workshop that I'm doing is just an introduction to climate psychology.

So it's a place to come if you're curious about these questions and becoming aware of how it's coming up for you and maybe wondering where to go from there, and just real quick, Abby, how can people find out more about the summit?

Yeah, so it's on our website climate gfl.org/summit and registration does close on Monday.

So if people are interested in attending now is the time to get registered.

And it's the fourth and fifth, fourth and fifth, you can register for either one day or both.

We're going to take a short break.

When we come back, we're going to be chatting with Cody.

Finally about Rochester's built environment and how our zoning, our land use and transportation systems shape both our emissions and our resilience.

So stay with us.

There's more environmental connections after this.

I'm Evan Dawson, Monday and the next connections.

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If you're just tuning in, I'm Jasmine Singer and this is Environmental Connections.

Today we're exploring Rochester's most pressing climate issues, from jobs and mental health to transportation and land use with Abby McHugh, Griff and Dave Seeley, doctor Emma Nelson, who just gave some great advice, and Connie Donoghue, who we're going to be chatting with.

And speaking of chatting with, if you want to be part of this conversation, take advantage of some of these incredible experts who are on the panel today.

Give us a call 844295825 5 or 5 852639994.

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All right, so Cody, let's talk about how our built environment contributes to the climate crisis.

Reconnect Rochester has been digging into.

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't even realize what a bad pun that is, but we have been digging into land use and transportation, so can you start by explaining the connections to us?

Yeah, of course.

And, you know, reconnect.

Rochester has been around for about 15 years, and we try to inspire people to, you know, diversify their modes of transportation on the personal level, but also on the policy level to adopt policies that, you know, give people more freedom in their choice of what they how they get around.

and I already said, you know, that our region is interesting because we we have relatively short car commutes.

We have, you know, about four miles is the average, the average, commute to get to work.

but, you know, the climate tie in is that, according to the Monroe County, community wide climate action plan that was adopted, last year, transportation accounts for the second largest share of emissions.

And so we do need to work on that as, as a community.

people think with cars, people think about, gas, obviously, and oil and, emissions.

but there's also a very disturbing, relatively new finding that, car tires shared about our, they account for about one quarter of all microplastics in the environment.

So those microplastics appear in the food we eat and actually appear in, in samples taken from humans.

so, you know, there's a lot of reasons that that we think, diversifying our, our trips, with different modes of transportation and having that freedom is, is important.

and when we look at, land use, it was, it was we asked ourselves a lot of questions around land use last year because it seemed like everything kind of came back to it.

Ultimately, you need to get from point A to point B at your house, to work your house to the to the grocery store, etc.

and when we were doing the research, you know, it really pointed back to around the 1950s in North America.

the we had space and we started to grow and spread out, the car suddenly and around that time postwar, the car became fairly ubiquitous and almost every family owned a car.

And so you started to see the first plazas being developed in, suburban zones.

Then the first suburban housing developments.

So we spread out.

And in Monroe County, we definitely did that.

We our population growth in the county has been about 17% since 1970, but we've doubled our urban area.

So the space that we occupy, the development that we occupy has has doubled.

And it's really spread out.

but at reconnect, we we've been thinking a lot about what are the opportunities where we're we're also very hopeful and optimistic folks.

So, you know, we've been we've been thinking through this concept of transit supportive development patterns.

So we have different nodes of density and population around the county.

Be at our towns and village centers with the city of Rochester downtown.

And we have certain core transit corridors that really do support kind of they're very dense.

They have a lot of destinations, and they really do support, transit.

So, you know, you think of Lake or Dewey or East Main or Genesee Street, for instance, and, and Arts, you know, runs 15 minute frequency on, on those in those areas.

and we think the opportunity is to for local development and, and government to incentivize, investing in those, in those transit rich corridors so that we can build out more density and, the that the there are more destinations for the bus routes to serve.

And I think, you know, a good example of that is what's going in at Bull's Head on West Main.

They're redeveloping the whole area 800 units.

There's going to be an ESL branch.

There's other there are other plans that are in the works for, for really a transit oriented development kind of area.

so I think, you know, I think ultimately, you know, where this gets, even more wonky is in the zoning code, in Rochester is going through a zoning alignment project currently.

So they, they set some, some targets to be a more walkable and, bikeable city, less car dependent city in their comprehensive plan.

And now the zoning, has to kind of come and align to do that.

And, we, we, we've, you know, we hear that the latest draft will probably be out in the summer sometime.

But, you know, from our perspective, the number one most impactful thing that the city of Rochester could do, Buffalo has already done it.

New York City just did.

It is eliminate parking minimums, because when you eliminate parking minimums, you're no longer required to build, you know, 30 at $30,000 a space, a parking spot, and you can choose, you know, in Buffalo, they're still developing on I think 80% of the projects still have a lot of parking associated to it, but they were able to develop a thousand units that would not have been, able to be built in the urban core if it weren't for the elimination of that parking minimum.

So you mentioned that our region has doubled its footprint in the past few decades without adding population.

Do I have that right?

Yeah.

So what are the environmental and fiscal consequences of that kind of sprawl, the environmental consequences, you know, really, we have to build more roads.

We have to maintain more roads, asphalt.

that goes into that, the car trips, we also have to build and maintain water and sewage infrastructure.

We have to build and maintain electricity infrastructure.

so, you know, all of these pieces, you know, it's particularly concerning from a fiscal perspective.

but, you know, kind of occupying more space.

You just don't get the economies of scale when it comes to, to to the emissions, you know?

Yeah.

So, so the per person kind of that density lowers when you have everything kind of closer together.

What is the potential impact if we get zoning and land use.

Right.

Like how could smarter development and better planning actually improve neighborhoods and make daily life better for residents?

Yeah.

I mean, my vision is, is that, you know, you have everything that you need within a 3 or 4 mile radius that, you're able to hop on the bus to, for a couple of trips and, you're, you're, you know, you're you're able to really live in your neighborhood and work in your neighborhood, or, you know, if you have to if you have to leave the neighborhood, there are options to get you there.

you know, unfortunately, our city recently lost a lot.

A lot of pharmacy, coverage.

We're in a pharmacy desert and a lot of places.

and in my neighborhood, in the 19th ward, we lost, two Walgreens and, Walgreens around the city also left, you know, and so, you know, you start to see divestment from, from those neighborhoods going, going out to, you know, often to the suburbs and, you know, there's an economic piece.

I would love to talk to somebody about it who understands it better.

Like, why is it cheaper ultimately to build a brand new grocery store?

I'd like to build, for example, at Aldi's than it is to, you know, retrofit a building and, you know, those economics, unfortunately, often don't work out unless you have some kind of state subsidy.

And, you know, I'm glad glad to see that there is more investment from the state.

in order to do that.

Well, would you say that the political shift towards deregulation, making these zoning, is making these zoning plans harder to accomplish?

I would I would say zone, you know, zoning, codes, they don't get, updated that often.

And when they do, it's often pretty conservative.

There's and there's a lot of community forces to keep zoning codes the way that they have been.

and there's, you know, a lot of stated reasons for, for for why that is.

So I, you know, I think the I think the zoning code, the zoning codes we have now reflect a world that hasn't existed in 30 or 40 years and really needs to be updated.

Should we be anticipating population growth and and more people waking up to the Great Lakes region being relatively favorable for the climate?

I moved here for climate related reasons from LA by way of Manhattan.

And if if we should if we should be anticipating more population growth, how do we accommodate that growth without leaving our current vulnerable populations behind?

Yeah.

I don't know the answer to that.

I, I'm also an Angelino from, from birth.

And my, my grandparents house luckily didn't burn, in the, in the fires, that that neighborhood was spared.

but, I, I'm certainly hearing that anecdote quite a bit, and I think, I think the concept of transit supportive development says that you can build denser, and more mixed use in those transit rich corridors, kind of looking at downtown and say, you know, we can we can have more units of housing and more density.

When I say density, it's not eight story tall buildings.

you know, we're just talking about a variety of housing options and a variety of uses.

and I, I think that, there's already, you know, that there's already a housing crisis with the current population.

So we need to be resolving that now.

and if we do anticipate more population growth, and heck, if we want to attract people to come here because that's good for our economy, then we ought to be thinking about those more denser and mixed use, walkable neighborhoods.

That is Cody Donahue, the co-executive director of Reconnect Rochester.

I want to switch gears for a bit and go back to Abby McHugh.

Griff, the executive director of the Climate Solutions Accelerator of the Genesee Finger Lakes region.

I know, Abby, you've been very busy lately planning the upcoming summit.

I have a question for you.

I was when I was researching, all of the articles that you have on your website, I saw that a recent Rochester Business Journal article talked about climate change denial being more of a spectrum than an on off switch.

Are you seeing that locally, and how do you deal with that?

How do you engage with folks who aren't all in on climate action?

Yeah, so this is definitely how I'm thinking about it these days, right?

We have historically thought of climate deniers as like that small group of fringe people over there who say it's a hoax, right.

But what I see is that they're, you know, they're the people like me who are deep in this work and do need to as as Emma said, keep a little bit of emotional distance from it.

You know, I give I thought about, you know, full kind of fully leaned into my feelings about climate change all day, every day.

I would never get out of bed in the morning.

Sure.

So so I need to keep a little bit of space and, and I would call that a form of denial.

Right.

So I at this point identify as a climate denier to a certain extent.

Right.

But then there's all the folks in the middle who I think, you know, will say, yes, this is real.

And I know it's a problem, but they haven't yet gotten to the point of, you know, taking that step to, to be active in this work or try to reduce their impact or even necessarily acknowledge that they are contributing to the problem.

And this actually is the group where I think it is most helpful, if we can think of it as a spectrum, right?

So that, we can all help each other kind of wake up progressively to this issue and realize, yes, in fact, you know, not only is it happening in it's real, but I am contributing.

There are things I can do these are the hard feelings I have about it, and this is how I'm processing them.

And together we can work on kind of, you know, grappling with the complexity of this issue.

I've never heard it framed that way.

I really appreciate it.

You know, I've been, I've been an animal rights advocate for decades.

And so I've had to kind of live my life being able to compartmentalize, you know, you have to in order to exist in the world.

You go literally anywhere you see animal exploitation.

You would completely go nuts if you were advocating for farmed animals.

And and I feel like putting it that way as it relates to the climate and kind of like, oh, I would never get up in the morning if I only thought about this.

I just think it's very normalizing.

I just want to turn to you.

I don't actually have a question.

I want your validation.

Oh it's totally normal and I'm glad you're pulling me in because I think Abby is so wonderfully articulate on this.

And she's languaging something for our community that's so pervasive.

So it's so helpful just to put some words around the normalcy of this stuff.

two things that I want to pull out.

One is that she's right to say that denial is in all of us and is necessary to getting out of bed in the morning.

I loved how you put that.

this is a capacity that our nervous systems have to keep us engaged with the world in a way that we can tolerate.

And the world is full of rapid and intense and chaotic change.

So if there's some denial there, that's a healthy and useful adaptive part of the way that we're functioning.

So it did want to validate that.

And the second piece that Abby's talking about when she talks about knowing something cognitively, but not necessarily letting it in and doing its transformational work on your life, such that the way you show up in the world really changes.

That has a name.

It's called disavowal.

It's a type of defense, a way that we defend ourselves from an uncomfortable reality.

And it's really common in our culture.

So it's not just you and it's not a personal failing.

It's our capacity to, like, read a New York Times article on climate and share it with like 20 people and say, oh, this is really important.

So important.

Right?

Yeah.

So important.

And then our life doesn't change.

The way we feel, doesn't change our behavior doesn't change.

So that's pretty pervasive.

And getting through that is very challenging because we've all kind of bought into it collectively.

Yeah.

I think the other thing that really, you know, framing it this way helps me to do is to break down the the good guy, bad guy narrative.

Right?

Like, our culture is so divisive right now, and we're all pointing fingers at each other and doing the shame blame thing.

And when we can get to the point of being like, I know we're all contributing, we all, you know, are in this together, right?

To to the extent that using this, you know, kind of spectrum of climate denial can help us see that it's just not that simple.

Good guy, bad guy thing.

I think it's going to help us work together to move some solutions forward.

We have a comment from a YouTube viewer blog 65. anecdotally, the most common deniers I interact with are the the Zoomers x I don't I think that's how you would say it.

X oh, Gen X demurs.

I don't know who are like oh, but it's India China's fault.

And then end the discussion on the topic.

And in response to that, I'm a I had to remember what is the Himalayas.

So I'm just catching up on that one.

I think the kind of denial we encounter is maybe a function of the context that we find ourselves in, and also what we are personally most sensitive to in our journey, with our own facets of denial and the ways that we're leaning and right.

I notice in myself that sometimes I'm most thrown off by people who are embodying the thing I don't really want to acknowledge in myself.

So perhaps people who are in touch with a future that looks really, really scary or really, really bright.

Both of those, oh, I'm like, I don't really want either of them.

So they bug me when they show up.

In other people.

So I hear you.

I'm so used to bugging people just like this.

Yeah, yeah, I totally get it.

And and and those people bug me too.

And and it's just an opportunity to look within, I suppose you would say.

Yeah.

The question is, what's coming up for me such that this person's version of climate denial is showing up all the time, and I'm really bothered by it.

There's something there for us.

Well, I like to hand people a vegan cupcake and then just and have them enjoy their day.

That's my one of my favorite forms of advocacy.

If you're hanging out with me, I might hand you a cupcake.

Me too.

Cody.

That's right.

You, And by the connection, the vegan could share recipes.

Absolutely.

Actually, I really only know how to make toast, but I'm excellent at ordering in.

I have the exact same bicycle pin that you're wearing.

That yours is a hot pink bicycle pin on your blazer.

I'm kicking myself that I didn't wear mine because mine has.

Mine's bright blue, but that's what you get when you're in the vegan club, I suppose.

I don't know, we have an email from Michael who says, thanks so much for this excellent version of connections, because there's nothing more important than saving the planet for human, for human habitation.

And sure, I'll add non-human habitation as well.

I want to go back to Dave real quick before we conclude.

And we only have a couple minutes left.

Dave Seeley is the executive director of Rochester Works.

Housing is such a huge part of this conversation.

I mean, it kind of was like underscoring everything we've been talking about, especially in a city with so many older buildings.

Just briefly, how do energy efficiency upgrades factor into both workforce development and economic equity here in Rochester?

Oh, it's a it's a really it's a loaded question.

So it's a very big opportunity.

and it's one that you don't normally think about.

But, you know, we have a lot of buildings in this community.

There's a need to maintain them, but also need to make them more efficient and being able to train people and building maintenance.

We hear a lot.

It's a huge need.

You hear from random employers.

Just I need a facilities person and I also need to have them cross-trained in, you know, if an energy efficiency etc..

I know, action for a better community is is trying to stand up a program, with some, with some, foundation funding that would provide that just that training opportunity for disadvantaged, communities in the city of Rochester.

So it's it's a it's a need that you don't always think about when you think about the economy in the workforce, but certainly one that's that's essential with regards to housing.

Housing is a barrier to employment.

and that comes in a lot of ways.

It's housing insecurity.

It's it's the instability that that can create to try to maintain a job, but also the proximity to a job.

So it's one thing that we look at often, and probably one of the harder barriers to address you will all be at the summit next week.

So, Abby, just very briefly in 20s or last, tell people about the summit and how they can get involved.

It's on April 4th and fifth, but registration closes next Monday.

two day thing come for two days or one.

You will hear about all these topics and many, many more.

We're going to need all hands on deck approach to co-creating our future, and we hope you will be there.

And the website climate GFL Mortgage Summit.

Abby in 10s or less.

What's one action people can take today to talk about climate change more?

Share your.

Share your concerns.

Thank you everyone so much for joining us today.

Mike, you were just all phenomenal.

And I'm so excited about the summit from WXXI news.

I'm Jasmine Singer.

Thanks for making today's environmental connections.

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