Special Earth Week Episode: R Is for Resilience

Meet Grant Ervin, Pittsburgh’s Chief Resilience Officer, and Dr. Nicole Heller, the world’s first Curator of Anthropocene Studies.

Listen to “Whose Garden Was This” by Tom Paxton here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msKYLHwqvW4

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:05

Hi everyone. I am thrilled to be joined today by dr Nicole Heller, Carnegie museum of natural histories and the world's first curator of Anthropocene studies. Hi Nicole, and welcome.

Speaker 2: 0:20

Hi, Sloan. It's great to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:23

So how are you holding up in this hopefully temporary new world order?

Speaker 2: 0:29

Yeah, yeah, I am. I'm holding up pretty well. I'm thankful that I have a roof over my head and good food to eat and can spend a lot of time with my family. Um, but also, you know, very anxious, anxious times and, um, I've have a lot of weird dreams, my share of like Titlewave dreams and so I'm kind of waking up in the morning knowing that things aren't sitting quite right and, um, thinking a lot about kind of how do we learn from this and, um, to, you know, make things better.

Speaker 1: 1:03

Yeah. What do you hope we do learn from this?

Speaker 2: 1:07

Yeah, it's a great, it's something I've been thinking a lot about and noticing a lot of people writing about. Um, you know, there are many ways in which a pandemic is, um, really eyeopening about how interconnected we are. And not only interconnected as humans, right? Globally, our humans, our societies, but also, um, with the natural world, right? So this is great reminder of how interlinked we are. You know, a virus can kind of bring our entire society to our knees. And, um, so that's, that's awesome. And eye opening. Um, and I think that that we have a lot to think about when we think about our, you know, our economic system and our, um, our society and thinking about resilience and how can we kind of weather these sorts of storms so that all of us, um, are okay and we're not suffering economically that our economy kinda doesn't fall apart. You know, to me that's the challenges of these, the Anthropocene really is to kind of be able to face these. Like, I think of it as a disturbance event. That's the sort of language of systems science. You said, okay, this is a disturbance event that's disturbing our human society, right? Our systems or economic systems or ecological systems and how can we respond to these, um, without it causing too much pain and suffering. And, um, so, you know, so those are the kinds of lessons that I'm thinking about. Well, how could we change our economy so we can weather these kinds of disturbance events? Um, but then also, you know, what do I like about suddenly being at home all the time and seeing all the people in the parks and eating home more? You know, I've actually been losing weight, I think, cause I'm not eating out as much. And so that's a kind of a good, you know, reminder or something, a lesson learned. Um, yeah. So it's kind of thinking about these big picture lessons and wanting to, uh, use that to kind of catalyze the positive changes we need to become more sustainable overall to the Anthropocene. And then it's catalyzing personal changes in my own life for health and wellness.

Speaker 1: 3:26

I'm actually gaining weight, not a ton, but, um, because it is so easy to sort of, um, stress eat my kids snacks. I've been, I've been succumbing to that temptation. I do agree that it seems to me that if we don't come out of this on the other side, wiser with some tactics that we can employ for next time, it seems like such a squandered opportunity. It's also interesting, I've been thinking about sort of the tensions between what is real and by real I mean tangible and what sort of this agreed upon human system that we've all, we all agreed, for instance, that the economy is backed by this thing. We call it the dollar and the stock market, which it's funny, we're feeling those very real effects, but it's based on facts on the ground that are not abstract, right? That are life and death.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we know how much we're dependent on this economy, right? I mean, it's interesting, the economy is sort of this monolithic thing, right? But really you see the way that, again, it's this interconnected system, right? That's woven together at the very individual level of your neighbors on the street and where they work and our neighbors, our coworkers at the museum. And, and then it's this, it's this global thing, global capital that undermines it all. And yeah, so these are these great moments too. Ponder that. And I guess what I've been thinking a lot about, and I'm not a student of economics, um, I, you know, I think a lot about the way our economy is connected to our ecology and really that is the challenge I think for us as a society, um, is to figure out kind of how we can decouple our economy to some degree from are ecological problems, right? Cause right now we see with the pandemic, it has had these ways pollution is down in areas. Even here in Pittsburgh, our air is cleaner than it has been otherwise. And you can see it in the local apps we have available, um, the one called the smell app. Like how many people are smelling bad smells. I mean it's actually, the air is a bit cleaner now and this is a really good sort of analogy of maybe where we want to get right, where, um, our environment is cleaner, but our economy's still ticking. How can we kind of decouple that? Or how can we imagine that economy that has more resilience and isn't so dependent on, on pollution and other factors to make it tick?

Speaker 1: 5:59

Well, look how many of us are managing to work from home right now, for instance, who are commuting every day. So being productive and maybe ashamed of something that small isn't, isn't carried through and applied on the other end.

Speaker 2: 6:14

Yeah, and the same with travel. You know, I really hope that we recognize that there's a lot of meetings that we travel to and conferences and workshops that maybe we don't have to get on a plane to, to make them affective. We can actually have online meetings effectively. That's a real benefit to help us use those carbon emissions more wisely. Right. Travel more wisely, be a little more prudent and modest about when we travel.

Speaker 1: 6:41

That's a really good point. I was a guest on a webinar yesterday with I think 2000 attendees from all over the world, which was really intimidating when you talked a little, uh, attending number in the corner of the screen, keep clicking up. And it's really hard to figure out like the mood of the room if you can't see them. But, so it was[inaudible] it was, it was sort of intimidating, but it's also really, um, astounding when thinking of it in another time, months ago. That would have been a conference somewhere, you know, in Italy or someplace.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Right, right. So all that, um, all that emissions associated with that travel are averted.

Speaker 1: 7:25

Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 7:26

At the same time, the positive benefits associated with that travel to local businesses and the airlines that's also lost. So it's that tension that we're struggling with. Yeah,

Speaker 1: 7:37

exactly. Exactly. So, speaking of you said ecology a couple, a couple of minutes ago, so let's talk about that. And what is a pathway, a career path to lead someone to become the world's first curator of Anthropocene studies?

Speaker 2: 7:52

Yeah, yeah. Well, I feel, I feel so honored to have this position. And, um, it's been a winding career path for sure, but in many ways it's also got the core thing in the center, which is being focused on kind of my interest on the interactions between plants and animals in complex systems. And when I say animals, I mean including humans. So humans are a big brain animal. And so I, I sort of decided I wanted to be an ecologist at a very young age. I had an amazing, um, environmental teacher in maybe third grade at my elementary school and we would go out to the Creek by our school and we would do all kinds of experiments like sampling algae and, you know, picking up what we could find in the water. And, um, and she was just this great science teacher who was so passionate and exciting and I already kind of instinctually just had this strong sense of justice for other creatures and for all creatures, humans and all creatures. And, um, and so that science teacher kind of with this feeling I had, you know, all creatures mattered. I would be the weird kid who would be like, don't you know, if I saw some other kids like pulling the legs off daddy long legs, I'd come over there and say stop, you know, leave him alone. Like how it's very probably a lot of kids didn't like me during much, but I was, I really cared. And so for me that translated into just continuing to study science. I had a great biology teacher in high school who really captured my imagination more. And by the time I got to college, you know, I was majoring in evolution and ecology and um, had a kind of a watershed moment for myself where I went on a field studies course to Baja California to study Marine biology. But the professor there kind of did, I mean he was a Marine biologist, but he was a real, this is in the early 1990s. And so by all the conservation biology, it was really just emerging as an important discipline. It was named as a discipline in 1985. So it's not that old conservation biology, which is the work to conserve populations of plants and animals. And other organisms. And so my teacher was really name was Don curl and he was incredibly impassioned about the impacts humans were having on the planet. And we did all kinds of work to study that in these islands off the coast of Mexico. And I'll just say that he captured my imagination. And from that moment on, I was on this path, you know, to think about what's happening from the human impacts on this planet and what I could do as a scientist to kind of understand that and help mitigate those impacts, right? To help protect these creatures that I cared about to help practice my kind of justice that I wanted to practice. And there were times I thought about being a lawyer, but I ended up going the scientific route. Um, and, and did, you know, I studied ants. An answer, kind of a neat analogy for humans. There are social complex creatures, you can think a lot about sociality and how that relates to impacts. Like how, how do individuals interact together and how does that affect impacts right on the environment? Or how does that affect the way that those organisms change their local environment? So I was studying that with ants and thinking about human systems. And then, you know, it just kept going. And I started studying climate change and working more and more with humans directly. I didn't get into the Anthropocene until around 2015 so this is the neat thing about the Anthropocene. So my trajectory is pretty normal in a lot of ways as an ecologist who got concerned with environmental change and human human caused environmental change and conservation. But where maybe I got really interested and what I think this is a neat link to the Anthropocene is that the Anthropocene is this term that emerged around 2000 and it's a geological in origin about the new times we're in, right? This new period of time. But it really is a key word that standing in for all of these collective impacts that are happening. And because it puts anthro right, the human right at the center. I think that caught the attention and imagination of humanists all over, um, English professors and um, geographers and artists. And so what started to happen in the two thousands is all this really creative thinking started to come together under the rubric of the Anthropocene. And I saw a call and it was like 2014, I think it was called an Anthropocene slam, like a poetry slam. But out of the university of Wisconsin, Madison, they said, enter what you think would be an Anthropocene object, like an object that would perfectly sort of, or just describe the Anthropocene, enter your object, like a competition. And if you get selected you can come and present it at this slam. So to me this was like, Whoa, this is so different. It was such a creative idea, right? A slam. And so I entered a jar of sand, uh, working with my partner, my husband, um, who's an anthropologist and we ended up going and doing a spoken word kind of poetry like thing. And we got, we kind of won. We were one the soul like winners, so to speak, you know, like, um, I think 15 or 20 projects were selected. And then we got to travel to Germany. And suddenly there I was curating an object in a museum in Germany as part of an Anthropocene. And so, and I was loving this because it was so interdisciplinary. I was working with artists, I was working with English, you know, humanities, ecological humanities, and kind of seeing my science in a bigger picture. And so for me that was like, what's so exciting about the Anthropocene and I think has helped me to move into this role is my openness and interest in that kind of creative, cross-disciplinary thinking and exploring this idea.

Speaker 1: 14:27

That's amazing. We should do an Anthropocene in the slab.

Speaker 2: 14:31

Yes.

Speaker 1: 14:33

As a marketer for, for our museum called Carnegie museum of natural history. And I often find that that word history trips people up because it obviously connotes past tense and connotes for us dead things, things behind glass, things on pedestals. Can you talk a bit about, about that? How, how, you know, in a museum that people associate with dead things in the past, how the, how that impacts our understanding of the present.

Speaker 2: 15:04

Yeah. Yeah. It's a, it's a great question. And, um, and I, you're right, this, it's a big, um, I think it's kind of a misnomer that the way we think of history and natural history and, um, cause natural history really is the study of, of, of how creatures live their lives.[inaudible] it's actually not a historical term. Um, but, but it's obviously also through, um, you know, looking at fossils and, and, and exploring environments, scientists, that's how we've discovered all these things and been able to tell the history of the planet. So, and that history of the planet is like, is so much about how we understand what's happening today, right. And how we can make projections or models to project what might happen in the future. So the knowledge that we gained from studying the past, um, you know, using fossils or rocks to sort of figure out what were the chemical conditions of the atmosphere in the past.[inaudible] and we can think about, okay, what was the CO2 level? What are the indicators from tree rings that tell us about the temperature. What are the, um, chemistry in, you know, little tiny diatoms from the surface of the ocean floor, all of those, um, pieces of natural history that tell us about organisms, right. Lived on the planet either in the past or still today. They also are like these little time capsules of information about the earth system, about the atmosphere and the chemistry of the water. And all of that information has been the critical information that's enabled, um, computer scientists, modelers or system scientists to create, um, these kinds of mechanistic models of how the earth works, right. And how the earth is interconnected and so, and how the earth has changed over time and how when the temperature changes or the carbon dioxide levels change, how that drives changes in biology. And so natural history is like, it's not really a very, it's not often thought of as a super contemporary field. Probably most of us think of some like old timer who's like out in a field with a notebook, right? And binoculars and, and, and I liked that kind of ecology a lot. But you know, these days, ecology, you know, with computers we have a lot more computing power and big data. Um, but I think it's important to see the way that natural history collections and science here really continues to inform contemporary science today. And that all of us are practicing contemporary science today. Most of our curators at the museum now we're a lot of us identify as ecologists and we go out on field trips and we, we might collect some things for the collections, but a lot of the work that we're doing is more about living systems and about, um, these questions of sustainability. For example, in my work, um, you know, I work out in California on one project and I, I work with farmers and um, and foresters and indigenous people and other kinds of land stewards to try to understand how we can, even for protected lands like lands that have become protected from development because of climate change. And because of other, um, continual changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere. Things like imported species that come in exotic species. Even though we protect land, that doesn't mean it's necessarily, I'm going to protect species longterm. So I work with these different stewards, farmers, foresters, um, who take care of land to think about how can we, um, how can we use our practices to both fond the land successfully but also care for IO diversity for the biological species. So it might sound a little weird what I just said. Cause I said talking about protected lands, right? Where we keep them safe from development and then I'm talking about farmers and foresters and it's like, wait, if land is protected, there shouldn't be any farmers or foresters. Right? But one of the big thing that's happening in conservation is this recognition that actually people can play a positive role in taking care of land. And um, and that we can actually, so what I've tried to manage, like the landscape is a mosaic of different uses. We can have some farming embedded into some and some forestry and those practices can actually be part of a diverse, healthy, rich ecosystem. So some of the science I do is trying to understand interplay between those different ways of using the land and caring for the land and how we can kind of really create vibrant, thriving landscapes where people can live and co-exist positively with nature. Are you optimistic? Very region to region geopolitically? Yes. There, there is hope and hope is like I think I'm filled with hope and optimism and, and maybe the that gives me hope is knowing that and that people do belong in nature, that people we can be, we belong in nature, we can participate in nature, we can tend other creatures. And, and to me that's this world that I can see. Like when I close my eyes, I just see this incredibly entangled complex, um, intertwined social world that we live in. I hear the birds, I want them to be around, I need them to be around. And I see the ants in my front yard, I see the plants and I see the possibilities for, um, really vibrant ecosystems. And I'm encouraged by the incredible science that we have. Like it's finding, you know, a micro organisms that can break down plastics that is discovering incredible ways to cult, to make energy, right. Renewable forms of energy. And so I guess, I guess I just feel so excited about the possible future and that may be what motivates me. Um, it makes me want to work at the museum, frankly, because the museum is this incredible place, yes. To talk about the past and to kind of wonder and be an amazement, right? These crazy giant dinosaurs walked around, you know, but that, but that same imagination that you need to, to imagine a landscape with dinosaurs is the same imagination. We need to imagine a future world where our activities aren't destroying all the life around us, where we can live and, and the rivers are clean and the air is clean and we can kind of have it all.

Speaker 3: 22:41

Thank you. That was, uh, uh, personally that was such an encouraging answer, but I appreciate just how eloquent and

Speaker 2: 22:49

I want to say one thing on that makes me think of Matt Lamana. Um, so Matt and I have, yes. Matt Limona is our paleontologist and he's, um, he's really fun to talk with. And sometimes we've talked about, okay, here we have Matt who focuses on organisms, you know, from millions of years ago, and myself, curator the Anthropocene who's focused on right now, right? And we say, well, what do we have in common? Uh, and that kind of, that imagination I think is one of the really neat threads. And you know, it's like sometimes people say about ecology looking into the future or what would, well, how can we project the future? We don't know what's going to happen. And it's speculative. And that speculative newness makes them uncomfortable. But the truth is science, whether we look back in time or look into the future, it's always speculative. You know, you have to work with whatever information you have to try to put your best picture together. And that's what, um, scientists are doing with climate change, for example, is they're saying this is the information we have and we're making projections for the future. And Matt's doing the same thing. He's got some bones and he's taking all the information they have and he's, he's speculating about how these organisms in the deep, deep past looked and behaved. And so there's a neat kind of convergence whether we look forward in time or look backward in time, we have to speculate.

Speaker 1: 24:27

Yeah, that's a, that's a great point. And new data of course makes the speculation picture become more and more into focus. Yes. Yeah. Let's talk about earth day. So this week is the 50th anniversary of earth day and we, the museum and Sydney and Pittsburgh and our sister cultural organizations throughout the region had all these really ambitious, wonderful, really, you know, cross disciplinary plans for, for earth day celebrations. And of course they're all uh, on hold or radically altered. But it's interesting that given where our conversation started with sort of understanding this pandemic, you know, with a Anthropocene lens, it's kind of eerily fitting that we are celebrating the 50th anniversary of earth day and quarantine. If there's something really strange and really strange.

Speaker 2: 25:41

Yeah, no, I mean there is, I'm first of all happy earth day. What a great day. I love the earth. Um, and big earth day, you know, it's neat. So the Anthropocene, the best, yes, right now, or the best scientific theory about when the Anthropocene starts. And meaning that's kind of when do we see a record in the geology of the earth that says, Whoa, something has happened that takes us out of the last, um, time period, the Holocene, and makes the idea that scientists would say this is a new time period on earth, a new part of our, the history of earth. And so the best proposal out there right now from the international commission on strategic graphy is that it starts around 1950 in this time that's called the great acceleration, which is when all of the, um, social and ecological changes just start technological changes just start really accelerating, kind of like what we've been seeing with these pandemic growth curves, right? The virus just hits a community and you get this, um, exponential growth. So the great acceleration is a time of exponential growth of, um, things like plastics and oil production and all of these changes. And so what's neat to think about is, okay, so that's all happening around 1950. That human population is increasing rapidly. All this industry is increasing. So rapidly. Airplane travel, all these changes. And lo and behold, 1969, um, you know, inspired by the anti Vietnam anti-war effort, people get together and say, and, and, and concerned about what's happening in the environment around them. You know, um, oil spills, rivers on fire, um, bad air, polluted air, and, and they, they organize the first earth day, 1970. I was totally blown away to read an estimate as 20 million Americans came out into the street. That's 10% of the population. So awesome. It's amazing. Yeah. And, and we, we should be proud right here in Pittsburgh. Cause whenever you read about earth day, they, people say, um, Rachel Carson, a local, a local Pittsburgher, um, helped start that movement with the publication of her book silent spring. So when I think about that, I think about, okay, that's really interesting. So 1970 you had this incredible intersectional movement where it was urban urbanites, rural people, rich people, poor people, business labor, Democrats, Republicans, all joining together saying that the earth really mattered and pollution mattered. And they wanted to clean things up. And what happened, we got the environmental protection agency, the clean air act, the clean water act, the endangered species act. All of our major environmental legislation happened in the next few years following at first earth day click. Yeah. Because everybody knew the air wasn't partisan, right? Like clean air, you know, we all have the same lungs and we all breathe the same air and, and so, and there was just that, that science was emerging. And I think the changes of this new world in this base of this great acceleration, people felt it. And they were, they were, they were concerned and they wanted to do some stuff to protect themselves. And, um, so what I'm excited about today, you know, fast forward 50 years, I mean, we have in many ways the challenges are harder, right? Because it isn't about, um, well, I mean, it's still about cleaning our local water. And things like that. But we've made a lot of progress. We're facing these challenges like climate change, which are global changes, right? And, and they, they require the entire globe to work together to mitigate. And I think that, that, that challenge, the globalness of the problems today is part of what makes it so hard for us to come together. Because, you know, I can't go out with you and just clean like you and I could get a trash bag. We could go clean local trash and take care of our local area and we could, we can make a difference and we should do that. But even if you and I turn off all of our lights and don't travel anywhere, you know, it doesn't have the same immediate effect. And so, um, on, on climate change. And so I think that, yes, this earth day, 50th anniversary in the face of this pandemic is this an incredible moment to remember that intersectionality of that earlier movement and the power that that social movement had. Cause that's what we've got to do right now. And there are lots of um, glimpses of that we see in the climate justice movement, for example, a real bonding together, Mmm. Of many different people coming together under this umbrella of climate, uh, action. And, um, and I think that this, this movement to sort of see the way that social issues and social challenges and inequities that we're talking a lot about right now in the pandemic, right? How much those are intertwined with the environmental challenges we faced with the public health challenges we face. And so that this opportunity to kind of see those interconnections and to build a social movement that, that works to understand the system and lift up these problems and work on them simultaneously. To me, that's, that's the moment we're in and that's so positive and exciting and possible and hopeful.

Speaker 1: 31:53

I'm struck by right now. Well as such, this sort of back to basics lifestyle that, you know, zoom aside and, and our, our screens aside for a second, one of the only enjoyments that people have is going to a park. You know, it's, it's and[inaudible].

Speaker 2: 32:17

Yeah, I was joking like a nature nature open for business.

Speaker 1: 32:21

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Your point about equity really resonated with me because I think that is something that I feel like here to for has only been kind of on the periphery of environmentalism and in, um, I think sometimes environmentalism has had a bit of a, uh, an error of privilege to it sometimes. And there's an opportunity there too. It's like, Hey, welcome others to the fight, you know, and we're all in this together. But, but it's a, I'm glad that that area is now getting attention and emphasis because it's certainly a really important part of the argument.

Speaker 2: 33:02

Absolutely. And um, I think this is where it's really interesting to kind of study the history of the environmental movement because it hasn't always had that, that um, domain of kind of being the domain of elitist like you just said. And I think looking back at earth days is a moment to kind of remember that the 80s were a time when, um, the movement shifted from thinking about the local environment, clean water, clean air in, around urban areas, environmental justice. And you know, around that same time, as I was saying, conservation biology emerges in the 80s. You know, there was a movement that I think to think a lot more about protecting rare species, you know, protecting the Panda, the polar bear, and that kind of shifted environmental attention away to far off places. And maybe that's when it started to become a movement that could be seen as, um, elitist, right? Who has the time to worry about polar bears if you're, if you're not, even if you have asthma. And you're right. And, and that's a fair, that's a really fair critique. And so yeah, to me what's happening now is we're reconnecting these issues again, right? And, and bringing it back to, to a real social movement that, you know, I think that we can be con concerned about polar bears and we should be working on local air and that we all do really care. Um, and, and I, I think all the polling data always shows that out. Everybody wants clean water and clean air. No, no question. Mo. Many people identify as conservationists, they really care about the plight of rare and species on this planet or just all of the diversity. And so, you know, I think some of these um, conflicts, they reflect that history. They reflect certain moments and narratives. But, um, but as a community it's really up for us to kind of see those communal values and start working together. And like I said before, how can we solve multiple problems at once? Um, to me that's the kind of Anthropocene thinking or complex systems thinking that we have to, as a society we're going to survive in the 21st century and we're going to thrive. We've got to be able to think about complex systems and solve multiple problems at once. And, um, and the pandemic is a great example of that. How do we solve this problem and how does it help us solve other looming problems like climate change?

Speaker 1: 35:36

Nicole, this has been a great conversation.

Speaker 3: 35:38

We're going to have you back, uh, anytime you want. Um, if you have a topic you'd like to discuss, um, and you'd like our listeners to hear first, you know, just, just let me know and we'll be back.

Speaker 2: 35:51

Thanks Sloan. It was a super pleasure to talk with you and just want to wish everyone a happy earth day again out there and every is aren't they? I guess so. Thanks for, um, thanks for doing this.

Speaker 3: 36:03

Of course. Thanks you and everyone. After the break you will hear Steve and my interview with grant urban from the mayor's office in Pittsburgh.

Speaker 2: 36:14

Green mountain energy company is the presenting sponsor of a is for Anthropocene living in the age of humanity and is the nation's longest serving renewable energy retailer and believes in using wind, sun, and water for good. The company was founded in 1997 with a simple mission to change the way power is made. Green mountain offers the choice of cleaner electricity products from renewable sources as well as a variety of carbon offset products and sustainable solutions for businesses. Green mountain customers have collectively helped avoid more than 85.5 billion pounds of carbon dioxide emissions. To learn more about green mountain, visit ourBooth@thecarnegiemuseumsorcheckusoutonlineatgreenmountainenergy.com. I was thinking about this song by a Oak singer who is actually a family friend of mine, a very lovely man named Tom Paxton and he has this song I was remembering that he wrote for the first birthday it's called whose garden was this and it's really sad and poignant

Speaker 3: 37:21

Google. This song is a great earth day song.

Speaker 2: 37:24

Tom Paxton, folk singer, an American folk singer and the song is called whose garden was this and he dedicates, it was song written for planet earth and he wrote it for the first earth day and it's sad but so beautiful and um, motivating to think about the future.

Speaker 3: 37:47

Before we jump into this next segment, I should mention that we interviewed grant urban back in February of 2020 while we were coordinating our museums earth day planning with the city of Pittsburgh's. So it's sort of a time capsule from the world before the pandemic. Welcome back. We are so thrilled to be joined on this earth day podcast with grant Ervin, chief resilience officer of the city of Pittsburgh. Welcome grant. Thank you. Thank you, Sloan. Thanks Steve. It's a great honor to be here. So can you just describe your role and also how does one become a chief resilience officer? Certainly, certainly. So, uh, the chief resilience officer, maybe I'll give you a little bit of background, I guess is probably, uh, the most appropriate way to kind of the position

Speaker 4: 38:36

for folks. Uh, the city participated in a, uh, competition, uh, that was created by the Rockefeller foundation back in 2014. Uh, and we were selected in 2015 actually as kind of the second round of cities to participate in what was known as the 100 resilient cities initiative. And the Rockefeller foundation supported the 100 resilient cities program with kind of four key pillars. Uh, the first was, uh, the ability to develop a plan and resilience strategy. Uh, the cities is known as one PGH. The second component is, uh, the development of what's called a preliminary resilience assessment. Essentially an evaluation of the shocks, kind of the potential immediate negative impacts of the city can face or the stressors, kind of the slow moving challenges that a city can, uh, can come across its, its daily operations. Um, the third piece was kind of the operations of what's called a, uh, platform partnership. Uh, so effectively organizations around the world that we're working or are working with cities, uh, to help build their resilience. This could be from small nonprofit organizations up to large multinational corporations like Siemens or Microsoft, um, where some of the partners that we work with. Uh, and then the third piece was a, a strategy partner. Uh, in our case we worked with the, the Rand corporation and their local offices here in Pittsburgh. And then the fourth component is the chief resilience officer. Uh, so prior to the, uh, the creation of the Rockefeller, uh, strategy, uh, which I helped to lead, I served as the city's sustainability manager, uh, basically overseeing kind of sustainability activities across the city, both in terms of our operations, uh, but also in terms of kind of citywide sustainability. And, uh, with the, uh, acceptance of the, the award from the Rockefeller foundation, we had to, um, appoint a chief resilience officer and, uh, having kind of developed a kind of the team and the strategy, I was able to, uh, be selected as that, uh, that first chief resilience officers. They can never take something away from the cities first and thus far only chief resilience officer. So I wear, wear the badge with, with honor, but effectively what the chief resilience officer position isn't, it depends upon, uh, each city and kind of what their position and what their needs are. Um, but my role is effectively to serve as an integrator across platforms and services that the city offers and to help facilitate what we call cross sector partnerships. So it's a really understanding, going back to that preliminary resilience assessment, what are the shocks and stressors that the city faces, but kind of working across the silos of both the organization that also across the city to start to integrate solutions to those challenges or help mitigate kind of the risks that are both apparent because of shocks. Uh, but also because of the stressors that we experienced. And a lot of times what that means is that it, you know, kind of from a day to day operational aspect, I'm forming teams, I'm convening people, but also building decision support tools. So understanding what a challenge is that the city might face, um, and kind of using kind of policy tools and analysis to effectively bring those resources to bear and help decision makers across the city make better decisions and, and in essence build their resilience.

Speaker 5: 42:01

It's interesting that a key, uh, element of the Anthropocene is the realization that we can't really be resilient. We can't really face a sustainable future without thinking in systems terms and the emergence of systems and the emergence of, um, uh, sort of networks of experts. And, uh, parts of the community is keyed to solve problem solving an Anthropocene overall.

Speaker 4: 42:31

It really is. And it's kind of, it, you raise a good point, Steven. It's kind of an interesting thing. So in the Rockefeller kind of work, uh, so we have 99 other city partners in the network. I was really kind of the one key benefits of the program. What you see is kind of this emergence of urban systems thinking. So, um, when I go back to kind of the beginning of our application that we were developing, there was a little bit of resistance from folks I would say in the environmental community around both the acknowledgement and the use of the word resilience almost as if, you know, kind of your quote unquote giving up. Right. Um, so there was a little bit of, of tension between folks in the sustainability world and folks and kind of this, this resilience world is of recognizing, you know, that the two need to come together. Um, it was a friend of mine and kind of a mentor. Uh, Brett can Karen and city of Boulder that really kind of taught me that, that, you know, this is the yin and yang that you have to be able to, you know, with their core root of their word, sustain, have the ability to endure and last, but also resilience, have that ability to bounce back and also bounce forward in the face of adversity.

Speaker 5: 43:44

It's interesting coming from a biologists background, uh, that people are beginning to realize that urban systems are also a new kind of ecosystem that's assembling itself in urban areas. So rather than try and, uh, sort of make the urban system what was there previously in that environment, we're recognizing that that's not going to work. Um, and resilience here means, um, understanding the ecosystem that's developing and supporting that ecosystem. What

Speaker 4: 44:18

you see is, uh, you know, in kind of understanding some of these challenges of around urban systems. Take a, for example, one of the kind of the pillars that we operate under is this idea that you have kind of three, I'll call them mega trends that cities are facing around the world, and that is urbanization, globalization and climate change. And if you just take kind of the climate issue, about 70% of all emissions are being generated in cities around the world, right? So when we talk about emissions reduction for example, and kind of that, that face of, or you know, go to the Paris climate conference and you know, those types of conversations, cities really have to be at the forefront in terms of reducing those emissions. But similarly, what you see is cities confronting a lot of those challenges, uh, probably disproportionately with regards to climate risk. So for example, whether that's sea level rise or storms or earthquakes, uh, have much more challenges when they're faced in population centers versus places that have, uh, have more disparate populations. So cities are really kind of confronted with the twin challenge of both finding ways in which to reduce their emissions footprint, but concurrently find ways to plan and be prepared for adversity that we know is kind of on its way. So our, our version of those risks in Pittsburgh like monk slides and clearly, you know, just just like the road systems and obviously Arizona, everybody's mind. Yeah, definitely. One of the things that, uh, I don't know if it's clairvoyance or irony or what the fact might be, but when we developed our preliminary resilience assessment back with, uh, our team at Rand back in 2015, you know, we lay out just exactly kind of the things that you, you talk about their Sloan in terms of what are the potential negative impacts that the city could face. Kind of those shocks again, but also what are those slow moving challenges that we face, the stressors and a couple of things that we've identified since then. We have experienced all the things that we laid out in that 2015 report. Um, you know, whether it is a extreme heat and cooling, uh, or cold spells, you know, like the polar vortex, um, that we hadn't 14 and 15, um, which then leads to kind of crumbling roads because the extract a X a, you know, the contraction and um, uh, expansion of the road network. Um, you know, we've experienced floods, we've experienced, uh, the past three years, I believe we've seen two times the annual amount of precipitation that we normally get. So Pittsburgh's a wet place and we've been wetter. Um, and as a result of that, we've seen landslides which creates a host of infrastructure challenges. Um, and one of the things that we've kind of started this conversation in the city in terms of city operations is that going back to 15, 16, when we started to develop our, our third climate action plan, which is a mitigation strategy. You know, just in three years time, we've now kind of stepped into this space of talking about climate adaptation and how do we adapt to kind of these changing realities. Um, so figuring out what those strategies are are, are things that are at the forefront of some of our work right now. And that's just in that short, you know, two, three year window. It's interesting, despite, uh, a lot of press, uh, suggesting that the scientists who made predictions about the effects of, um, atmospheric change on climate, those being extreme, they were actually pretty conservative and we're seeing, um, the extreme effects developing much more quickly than was originally predicted yet. Yeah. And for a place like Pittsburgh, I think one of the challenges that we face is frankly being inland. Um, so a lot of the conversations, even within our global networks, um, there's a lot of attention given and just justifiably so given to coastal cities because of the challenges of sea level rise. So we have, you know, great partners in Norfolk, Virginia and new Orleans and Miami and they're dealing with, you know, meter level, sea level rise types of challenges, um, daily, daily kind of tidal flooding. Um, obviously hurricane Katrina, things like that. What we see in Pittsburgh is kind of the implications of those changes are a bit slower moving, um, maybe less kind of visibly apparent to the naked eye because we tend to endure a lot of those challenges. Um, but also, you know, one of the things that we see is, is that they are increasing in their frequency. Yeah. Um, so for example, uh, one of the things that we've started to do is having conversations with a city council staffers because they are, you know, kind of the front lines for taking kind of residential complaints. I have a problem with this, a problem with that. Can you help me out? And what you see is a lot of those complaints or things like basement backups or water in my basement and why is there water in my backyard and it hasn't been here before? What's, what's, what's the problem? Um, so a lot of those anecdotal types of stories that start to come out that start to start to build trends effectively. Um, those are some of the dots that we're starting to connect. So it's not, uh, a hurricane or a, you know, a massive weather event that basically up roots and who know all we have those. I don't want to kind of discount that we've had micro bursts and windstorms and like I mentioned the polar vortex, but it's these kind of continual, you know, slow gut punches that, uh, are having, you know, real challenges with infrastructure challenges with operations. Um, but it's kind of a matching them together to show the trends in the reality that we're facing slope mentioned earlier. Um, the problem with, um, landslides and I have worked over the last 15 years with a wonderful, um, mainly mining engineer to receive Pittsburgh who uses models to predict the steepness of a slope that is stable based on the soil type, et cetera, as well as precipitation rate. And one of the things he says, which always, uh, frightens me a little bit is that with the increased amount of rainfall we're getting, um, many of the slopes in Pittsburgh will be unstable. Yes. Is the city doing any modeling that would seem like an important sort of, uh, step in an ed adaptive plan? We have. Um, and I was gonna say, I'd love to get that guy's contact information. He's great, great, great to talk with him about it. I'd be happy to do that. What we've started to see is, um, kind of the incidents, you know, so, so a couple of things to talk about there is, one is the response, and this is a place where we're traditionally U S cities, Pittsburgh's no different are good on the response, you know, so there's a landslide we need to get out, we need to clean it up, we need to be able to kind of, you know, mitigate those impacts. The places where we're trying to improve upon is exactly this. Like what are the predictive analytics that we can identify so that we can one, know where those target impact areas are and to start to find the policy decisions in which to make the right type of intervention that helps protect the health, safety and welfare of the both the people that are kind of directly impacted it, but the people around it as well. Um, so one of the things that we've, we've started to do is to collect that information. Um, right now we're starting to build some models just to understand, you know, so where are landslides happening, but also like part of the dot connecting exercise. Um, so we've started to do some meetings with colleges for example. And one of the things that we see, and this is not scientific by any means, but, um, is the issues related to the health of the, the canopy, the tree canopy and soil health and implications that has on landslides. So, uh, just two weeks ago, and this is all anecdotal and not proven, but, uh, you know, we had a meeting with a local oncologist who is doing some work in Riverview park, uh, on the North side of Pittsburgh. And one of the things that he was explaining was it, there are walking through the woods and they're just kinda noticing, uh, changes in the soil. So you know, how you would reach into the forest and kind of, there's a layer of leaves. And underneath of that is kind of the dark compost of, of like the decaying matter. And what they were finding was relatively dry soil, but they were finding a ton of worms. And as part of that was basically because of the amount of worms which I came to learn or are not native, right. Uh, not native species to Southwestern Pennsylvania, which the big earthworms, uh, there aren't native worms, but the, but the big crawlers, yes, use and fishing, those are not native. That blew me away. Like, you know, my life, I'm a baiting hooks with earthworms that I just thought that, you know, you go in the backyard and you pick up somewhere earthworms, but they're, they're not from around here. And then concurrently you have this challenge with the deer populations. So the lack of natural predators of Oz obviously allowed for the exacerbation of the deer population. So deer plus worms equal soil erosion plus a couple of, you know, multiple other factors. So when you layer on additional precipitation in a place that has a N D degrading soil quality, that allows for a lot of that,

Speaker 5: 54:01

a runoff to occur. And ultimately lead to landslides. What you, what you really want is a, an intact forest understory of vegetation. And then as you said though, that layer of a slowly decaying leaves, because the ultimate goal is to slow down the rate of movement of the water. The more you slow it down, the more the word that's used is the more torturous the path that it takes, the more likely it is to go into the ground rather than to run across the surface, right? So then it makes it a a tougher surface, right? So the deer are consuming all of the understory vegetation, so the soil is bare, they're also compacting it, uh, and the earthworms aren't digesting that human Slayer that also contributes to absorbing the water. So you're

Speaker 4: 54:50

Sloan as a safe face. I had a couple of weeks like, wow, you know, what that starts to get to that is what are those preventive measures that we can make in terms of investing in ecosystem services to help restore kind of that, that underlayer of growth. So it's not just a healthy tree canopy, but it's the soil that lies beneath that as well. So those are the types of things where we're trying to educate folks both in terms of city operations, but kind of this, you know, the, the broader public in terms of the value and benefit of ecosystem services investments, because ultimately that's risk mitigation, right? So when you go back to kind of that resilience lens, what we're trying to do is again, gather information, provide decision support. So it's not just spending 10 to$15 million and you know, Pat yourself on the back for cleaning up the landslide, which is ultimately important and necessary. But how do you invest on the front end to mitigate that risk on the back of the house?

Speaker 3: 55:50

How do you communicate that strategy to people who are not Steve Tonsor? Because it's so nuanced and we're used to these sort of much bigger narrative, you know, almost sort of apocalyptic scenarios that seemed kind of Hollywood and we're taking a almost microscopic approach to, to mitigate on this level.

Speaker 4: 56:16

I think that is all ultimately one of the great challenges of climate change, right? Is that we need to have a basic, both a basic baseline understanding of what these challenges are, right? It's going back to, I don't want to trivialize it, but I've probably learned this in sixth grade biology and you know, 20 plus years later you start to forget some of this stuff. So it's having kind of that baseline of information and awareness, but also starting to use that in your day to day decision making. You know, so like some of the challenges that we face, um, are, are really, and this is one of the taglines I've started to use, uh, I was at the draw down conference at Penn state. Uh, if you guys read it, I'm sure read the book drawdown and really a great kind of example of the things to do, right? Yeah. That list of prioritization of what's most effective and what was really surprising to me. It is, it's really surprising in terms of some of the, both the, the top level, most impactful things you could do. But one of the kind of lines I used was we have to drill down to draw down. And what I mean by that is that you know, effectively here's, here's an issue like a, uh, one of the big things that we're working on right now day to day is district heating. So this is like number 32 or whatever in the draw down book. Um, and in fact frankly like we're using a lot of these strategies that are in the book, in our climate action plan, right? That's first and foremost. But underneath each of those decisions we're requires the education and the movement of the both kind of the people and the professionals working in these topic areas to get to the answer.

Speaker 5: 57:56

Yeah. And that can be a socially difficult part of mitigation and adaptation. And I think the example of the soils and the deer is a really good one. We've removed the top predators in the ecosystem. We're now responsible for managing that role they played. We could re either re-introduce Pumas and coyotes and wolves to the city or we can manage the deer population appropriately. People have real trouble with the notion that that means maybe killing or otherwise controlling, uh, the number of deer in our landscape. They're beautiful. Uh, the dearer, a lovely thing and

Speaker 4: 58:38

not their fault. Right. But we still have to face that challenge. Yeah, that's exactly right. You know, I think that, you know, whether it's, uh, you know, I'm not advocating for this, but whether it's deer calling or, you know, we recently had a coyote sighting in my neighborhood. Um, I live in Morningside. So, you know, everybody's like, it's a dog. It's a dog. Like, no, that's, that's a coyote. And they are there because there's a herd of deer that travel, you know, around Morningside, standard Heights and um, uh, and the Allegheny cemetery. So they're hungry. They have to eat. They're part of that ecosystem. Right. But I think it's, it's part of that drill down is exactly that type of education with key decision makers that these are the things that we have to do to create a healthy ecosystem. Right. Um, these are the things that, you know, one of the biggest things, um, you know, I, I joked with, with the mayor, uh, before I took my position, I've, I was, I told him I'm, I'm, I'm into big things and I'm not in here to just change light bulbs, but you know, six years later we've got to change a light bulb because these are like, one of the fundamental things around reducing carbon emissions is, uh, transitioning from kind of the old lighting technology to led technology. Um, so there's these fundamental nuts and bolts blocking, tackling whatever kind of trite phrase you want to use that every organization, every homeowner, every person that owns a building, everybody that has a capital or operating budget can make those types of decisions every day.

Speaker 3: 1:00:10

That's a good way to put it for Pittsburghers blocking and tackling because it might a lot Steelers, right? You can't establish a ride game. You can't throw the ball down the field. You gotta be able to do this now. Yeah. What are, what are some other of those blocking and tackling tactics that everyday

Speaker 4: 1:00:26

people can do? Yeah. You know, one of the things that we recently did was we created a, a green guide for folks. Um, you know, uh, basically to provide those simple examples. Um, we'll actually be releasing it on earth day. So, you know, just whatever kind of the, the, the podcast gets released to people would be able to, uh, have it available to them and it, and it's some, I don't want to call them simple things, um, but they are kind of, I'll call them your day to day things. Uh, if you're a homeowner, one of the best things you could do for example, is get an energy audit, is understand kind of the amount of energy that you are consuming within the operations of your home or apartment. And that's really fundamental because then you start to see where these gaps exist or opportunities exist in terms of energy efficiency. So if you look from a citywide standpoint, just calculate kind of our emissions footprint, about 80% of our emissions in the city of Pittsburgh, 55 square miles comes from buildings, commercial, residential, industrial buildings. So when you think about that, it's really about the amount of heating, the amount of cooling, the amount of lighting, and what are those technologies that you are using to provide those services to yourself? That's one of the, the real kind of basic ones. The second piece I talked to folks about is the idea around transportation. Transportation, excuse me, makes up about 18 to 19% of kind of the city's carbon footprint. And I safe cities citywide. And really that's about how we are moving to get around. Um, so one of the, one of the big choices that everybody makes every day is how am I going to get to work? You know, so can you walk? Can you bike? Can you take transit? Can you carpool? Um, can, do you need to drive by yourself? I mean, obviously everybody kinda has reasons for how, why they take their commute, but is there ways in which you can, you know, cut back on driving? Is there ways that you might be able to work from home? So kind of making those, those different choices, um, different times of day in which you commute make impacts on air quality for example. So making a more conscious decision with regards to your travel patterns is really important. One of the things in fact that we're working on with a project with a organization called the energy foundation, the national resources defense council, and then two local organizations, uh, by Pittsburgh in the Pittsburgh community investment group. Is it, we're looking at short distance trips. Um, so the majority of trips, and this is some research that our department of mobility and infrastructure conducted, the majority of those trips are less than three miles now, three miles in Pittsburgh. Granted for listeners it's different. It might be up, it might be down, it might be all around. Um, so it's not a, you know, kind of as the Crow FYS three miles. So I get that with what I'm about to say. But understanding how you can change those trip patterns is really important. The other is about kind of building and development. How do we start to develop around transportation, around the bike pedestrian infrastructure network. So that we're reducing those trips to kind of make our everyday daily decisions. And even if the average trip is three miles, that means half of the trips are less than three and probably, you know, a sixth or something like that are 10 blocks, 10 blocks. Exactly. Yeah. So those simple things, whether it's what, you know, instead of driving to the corner store, can you walk to the corner store? Um, could you consolidate trips, um, you know, the, those sorts of things. Uh, just good personal example for myself. You know, I mentioned I live in Morningside and I ride my bike to get my haircut, um, over and over in, in Bloomfield, um, where I walked down to the Barbara and Morningside. So those are, instead of getting your car and kind of saying, Hey, I need this, you know, change the, the

Speaker 6: 1:04:11

method of which, how you moving around

Speaker 4: 1:04:14

and get a little healthier. In the meantime, a little health, there's a little exercise. You can check that off your to do list. Yeah. It works out well. One of the other things too, just, uh, just kinda quickly I guess is, uh, another piece that, uh, my colleague Rebecca Karen is on our team, she's our principal resilience plan. And one of the thing is she's leading is a kind of engagement around what's called biophilia, sort of the idea that the city is connected and you're one with nature. Um, so one of the things that we've been doing is starting to educate kind of, you know, architects and kind of planners on our team within the city about how do you integrate nature into your daily lives. Um, that might be, you know, building a building with a window. It might be incorporating, uh, you know, different plant systems in terms of in your office environment or your apartment permeable pavement, permeable pavement, you know, all those sorts of things are kind of changing the way we make decisions. Um, but finding ways in which to integrate nature into those decisions. And as I was saying earlier, uh, nature integrates itself. If we give it an opportunity, that's exactly what I did. Even it adapts

Speaker 5: 1:05:18

as well. Nature's pretty resilient. If we, if we help it along a little bit. And so there are, uh, there's a book by a man named Menno Shupe Thompson called Darwin comes to town, which, uh, uh, talks about all the examples we have already of the ways in which, uh, plants and animals are evolving to be a part of the urban landscape. We had an example here in our exhibit, we are nature of PhD student who did her work and cities in Puerto Rico looking at two species of lizards, just little lizards that clamber up and down on tree trunks, that sort of thing in the, in the wild areas in Puerto Rico, but have also moved into the cities and can show she'd built these ramps out of uh, human built surfaces, polished concrete, uh, sheet metal, et cetera. And uh, ramps at the same angle made out of the bark from the tree trunks on which these things originally evolved. And the urban lizards can clamber up the urban surfaces while the ones that she captured in the wild make it part way up and slide back down. They've evolved. The urban lizards have evolved longer toes and bigger toe pads, uh, and the number of other features that make it possible for them to live and work in the urban landscape and they eat the insects that otherwise, you know, mosquitoes and things like that that would get to us. I think that's important to, to just to draw back to, you know, Sloan your other question and connect that to Steve. What you're saying is that there's this great importance I think in terms of like what can people do is to get outside. Yeah. I think, I think that the idea of, of being outside and taking stock of what is around you, um, and L that allows you to be in tune with some of these changes. Right? Um, so whether it's kind of a walk in your neighborhood or you know, a bike ride on a trail and you're getting out in the park and just taking the time to really kind of understand your surroundings and how your surroundings kind of integrate that, uh, with, with kind of that, not just nature as we see it. Because I think nature is not just going to the park, but it's also walking down the street. Um, and that's kind of an important factor. I think that, you know, one of the simplest things that people can do is to start to be observant. Yeah. And it turns out work of psychologist shows us that we're mentally much healthier and happier if we do that. Um, you know, we are so interconnected, we think of our bodies as being discrete, but we're constantly exchanging with the world around us. And to be sort of more fully part of that and aware of it and grateful for it really changes our ability to deal with all the challenges. I never been environment. It is. And I think that you start to understand, you know, both the

Speaker 4: 1:08:16

sense of disruption also because that is, that is a thing, particularly in a place like Pittsburgh or maybe anywhere, I guess, is that a lot of these challenges are not immediately impaired, you know, so they're not front and center unless you've been watching the movie the whole time. And I think that is one of the things about the Anthropocene. I think in that conversation, right is that we are in the midst of something. Um, and we are seeing these challenges increasing in their rate and frequency. Um, which, you know, there's a whole talk about psychology, there's a whole conversation out there around like climate anxiety, you know, so people are, you know, really kind of a growing sense of what are we going to do, which is, you know, also one of the challenges that we've kind of come into and recently we hosted the eco district summit here in Pittsburgh and I think this is one of the fun to mother kind of places that we are at Pittsburgh is I think at some cases the epicenter of this conversation too. When we talk about our environment, there is two fundamental challenges that we're seeing, uh, in society I think, which is the climate challenge. And then the, the challenge around inequality, and this is one of those kinds of components where you know, cities, this becomes a little bit a starker maybe, but it's also part of that urban rural divide as well that has taken shape that this idea of the climate challenge is one that has a timeframe on it. And that timeframe is one that, you know, creates part of that anxiety and people are like, we need to move now. We need to make changes. Whereas the inequality conversation is a conversation around justice and conversation on trust. And that moves it kind of a slower pace because you have to fundamentally reset yourself but also build those relationships that allow you to build trust. And I think that was one of the things where, you know, within this Anthropocene discussion, if we can start to blend those together, we're going to start to see a lot more positive momentum. We will not achieve a sustainable culture without it being a just culture. That's exactly right. Whether that is with, you know, kind of the, the energy transition. Um, and we think about kind of what's happening here and Southwestern Pennsylvania, which is very much the epicenter of, you know, are we gonna lasso ourselves to the, the petrochemical industry and kind of its future or are we going to kind of reset and think about, you know, what is the positive alternative? That positive alternative also has to benefit the people that are in those industries currently. So we have to rethink our economic relationship, our societal relationship. Um, so that, you know, kind of all tides are able to be raised. An interesting consideration in that regard with that is in the context of energy is the emergence of micro grids. Yeah. And the emergence of small generators of electricity. And the question is, as we go from a system that was designed to provide energy for everyone to a system where there are local clusters of people who, or organizations that can afford to generate energy, what happens to justice and the distribution of energy? How do we, how do we navigate that territory? We are in many cases at that precipice here in Southwestern Pennsylvania, which is theirs. There's some irony there. I think because we're the home of Westinghouse, right from the AC grid, but one of the things that we've recognized as build in part of building our climate action strategy is uh, back in 2013 and this was a result of a project called the power of 32, which was a regional visioning exercise. And one of the things was interesting. It happened right before the advent of the Marcellus shale. And one of the results of that project though, one of the legacies was the creation of the region's first energy Sankey diagram, which you know for listeners is basically that spaghetti flow chart that shows you kind of generation transmission consumption, right? And what you see here in Southwestern Pennsylvania, just much like any other place, but you have kind of your predominant sources of energy being the fossil basis, coal, gas, oil, et cetera. But then you see all of this loss that happens both from the point of generation through transmission and consumption. And that really starts to lead you to kind of district scale or micro grid solutions. And as part of our work, we've worked closely with university of Pittsburgh center for energy and others is really trying to find ways in which to localize that energy so that the point also makes D C more feasible. Exactly. Which is, you know, if we're looking at kind of the devices in our room, the majority of those are DC powered now. So that that transition again is one of those components of loss factor. So if we can start to think about the DC grid, going back to kind of the Edison model and red cases, right? Is that basically thinking about where energy is being consumed is, is, is in dense urban places. So reconfiguring grids also re in order to in include that type of intersect. That type of technology requires how we rethink about our policy environment. So right now, like those are one of the biggest challenges I see is, you know, talking about the drill down to drawdown, public utility commissions state legislatures really have to rethink the paradigm of how we support consumers, but also allow for the, the, uh, intersection of these technologies that really clean the grid and provide greater services and the benefits to the consumer and less loss of power, less loss of power, but also more resilience. Um, you know, so we're in these conversations right now in Oakland uptown and downtown, um, as well as about six or seven other sites where we start to configure energy from the ground up. Um, which really requires us to rethink, uh, you know, the conventional grid. Um, and Duquesne light has, you know, a host of engineers are kind of at the forefront of thinking about this also, but we need the policy environment and to start to enable these types of technologies. I think one of the important things is that we continue to really educate folks about these transitions and their, their various ones, whether they're economic or ecological or social, but they all intertwined together. And that is one of the, you know, the principle lessons I think of urban systems resilience that I've come to learn, you know, participating with other cities around the world, practicing here in Pittsburgh, is that we need to find ways into in which to integrate and build new teams and structures to really solve these challenges. Um, so it's much more, I think, asymmetrical and dynamic than what our 20th century was and, and that ability to kind of cross over boundaries and borders and silos to really get the right people around the right and form the right teams to solve the challenges that are in front of us. How do you have the patience for that? Because it's such a long game and we're, and we're, so there's, there's that, there's no question we need to do it. But then we also talked about the more immediate, uh, risks. So how do you, I guess, how do you patiently navigate that? I think, you know, one of the, you know, I was joking with somebody the other day, you know, one of the words that guides me is persistence. Um, so really kind of the idea that you have to stick to it because you're not going to change a system overnight. People aren't going to wake up and have an aha. Um, it really requires the ability to be persistent and continue to educate and nudge people. Um, you know, a good example is one of the things that we're working on currently is a what's called performance contracting. Um, so this is, you know, basically how do you utilize energy savings to accelerate kind of facilities improvement and investment. And it's a long game. Exactly. Say it. Like we're not going to get the procurement people and the finance people and the legal people overnight to, aha, this is exactly what we should be doing. This is the silver bullet. It's going to wreck. It requires us to provide the decision, support, create comfort, um, create confidence and then continue to iterate and kind of build within people's own language effectively. These solutions have a lot of what we call co-benefits to them. Um, so it's not just in this example about, uh, using our money better, but it's creating higher quality facilities for city employees. And for residents, it's about proving services. Yes, there are carbon benefits to it. Yes, there are resilience benefits to it, but it's really trying to train people to think in an integrated way and versus a linear way. And that's one of the things that I think that, um, you know, we're, we're really learning about right now ourselves in terms of how we apply and build this craft of urban systems resilience. I feel like, I feel like that's the next step, right? Like it seems like we, I think we inherited like this almost like, like eat your vegetables, you know, conserve, you know, kind of almost scolding a mindset that probably isn't the easiest way to rally people, but if you can communicate the benefits. Yeah, it's amazing. It's just a couple of weeks ago I had, uh, I had the ability and the privilege to be a part of a exchange, uh, with 10 American cities and the Swedish embassy and the Swedish energy ministry. We had a chance to go to, uh, Helsing, voice Sweden in Stockholm, Sweden. And what you see there, um, you know, in the Nordic countries and guests, they are a different place. Yes, they have kind of a specific paradigm in which they followed and yes, America is different, but what you see is a concentrated effort by the federal government, by local government and by society to effectively make these investments that basically improve humanity and the quality of life, you know, so whether it is, um, separating all of their waste into, you know, eight to 10 different what they call fractions, so that then they can take more, uh, circular and dynamic approaches to not just waste collection. In fact, they only use the word waste. They look at waste as an opportunity. So creating kind of those circular approaches to create new products and services, energy, um, that is all part of their deep, not just their decarbonization strategy, but also kind of their social and economic strategy as well. Um, so it's that type of integrative thinking that then produces a high quality of life, a high quality environment, but also economic and health, uh, and, and the great wellbeing of a society, climate, anxiety and climate. Depression is as big though, because like the of the sense of futility that we have here sometimes, um, I wouldn't say that I would say that, you know, and this was part of the Genesis at the exchanges. They realize that they have made advancements and that they have a responsibility to effectively share that with the world. Um, you know, a great example is, uh, two developments that we had a chance to visit where a hammer B and the Royal Seaport two separate developments, one's about 20 years old, the other is about 10 years old. And what you see as these integrative systems of, you know, effectively resource management of energy, of construction and they're practicing a lot of the things that we're investigating. Sure. Quotes. So you see the reality on the ground. Um, so understanding how those technical approaches have developed over time, they don't happen immediately. This is a generational effort, but you also see it in terms of like their technology sector. Um, you know, so they're making a 250 kroner investment, which Zales around$250 million. Not exactly, but kind of the same concept in terms of clean technology investments. Um, and what that is doing is basically igniting a host of creativity and entrepreneurship in the technology sector. Um, where here in the States, a lot of technology advancements just to maybe be selfish, don't get beat up for this, but are not focused on advancing solutions to these challenges. Right. You know, it's like, Oh, I was able to get my Netflix queue quite exactly right. Well, you know, did you reduce carbon in that? Did you make for anybody a better life? Well, I got to see my movie faster. Oh, well, okay. Um, so thinking about how do we improve humanity and making kind of our, our investments on those basis, I think is part of the shift. That makes sense. Grant

Speaker 3: 1:21:12

you so much for joining us. Um, you know, one of the things that makes us proud to be Pittsburghers is, is knowing, uh, this administration's commitment to, to these endeavors and I'm super grateful for you spending time with us and please keep us in the loop on everything you're working on.

Speaker 4: 1:21:30

Excellent. I appreciate the opportunity and uh, happy to come back anytime to keep you guys posted on the work that we're doing. Awesome. We will take you up on that. All right. Thank you.

Speaker 3: 1:21:38

Sure. We hope you join us in two weeks for a new episode that takes a close looking at our world of plastics. Thanks for listening everyone, and happy earth day. Be safe out there.[inaudible].