You can’t get much for 50 cents these days, but if everyone were to pitch in 50 cents for a cause, well, that’s a different story.
That’s what the leaders of Columbus, Bloomington and Nashville are asking for in announcing last week the creation of the Project 46 Southern Indiana Regional Climate Alliance, named for the state road that connects the three communities.
Meeting in the middle last week in Nashville as a March flood warning was in effect, the atmosphere also was heavy with the recent news that United Nations scientists had warned time was running out for meaningful action that could avert a climate catastrophe.
Leaders asked for a small contribution from their communities to try to come up with solutions, even while realizing climate change is beyond the scope of any particular region to alter. But there are things local people can do to make a difference, and it’s in our communities’ interests to pursue them.
This is Columbus Mayor Jim Lienhoop’s barometer for what he hopes the alliance can accomplish:
“… Part of what I would hope we would get out of this is to see a meaningful reduction in greenhouse gas emissions that we can track in our community so that we can demonstrate a measurable impact from our efforts, number one,” Lienhoop said.
“Number two, I would hope that we could serve as a model for others,” he said.
These seem like goals worth a 50-cent investment.
The coalition aims to get people talking about solutions in each city, and on a regionwide basis. If that sounds nebulous, it is. The project is in the formative stage, but the leaders of all three communities expressed a desire to have a working group active for at least three years that will include numerous stakeholders. Each community’s council in the coming weeks will be asked to pass a resolution supporting the initiative.
Bloomington Mayor John Hamilton said he “would be disappointed if within 90 days we didn’t have the resolutions passed” in each community.
He called local council approvals “an important political momentum-building step. Because if we don’t have support from our financial providers, then that’s a challenge.
“We feel urgency, but we also understand this is a long haul,” Hamilton said. “… Of course what we do in this region is not going to dramatically affect the trajectory of our Earth. But it can dramatically affect the trajectory of our communities.”
On that point, Lienhoop said something that we also believe to be correct.
“We’re going to do this partly because it’s the right thing to do,” Lienhoop said, adding, “to a certain extent, this can be a competitive advantage for our communities. People want this kind of effort to address climate and want this kind of activity to occur in the communities they live in.
“I believe that we all understand in this day and age that people get to choose, to a much greater extent than before, where they live,” he said. “So they want communities to have this kind of forethought.
We applaud the aims and goals of the coalition and encourage its support. We believe its communities, which will be represented by people desiring to address the climate crisis, are uniquely situated to make a profound statement as well as a measurable difference.
