Photo courtesy of Shane Rounce via Unsplash

Communities have an essential role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and limiting the impacts of climate change. While reducing greenhouse emissions is an immediate need, it is integral to include long-term systems thinking and planning around future impacts of climate change. This work requires assessing the unique vulnerabilities that communities face and understanding the inequities of impact within these vulnerabilities. The past five years have been the hottest on record for the planet, and just this week many communities across Colorado and the West are experiencing dangerous record-breaking temperatures. In Colorado, we recently suffered catastrophic wildfires, and areas have experienced extreme flooding that killed people and destroyed homes, businesses, and public infrastructure. Climate science indicates that we should expect more of what we have seen recently in the future. These impacts have caused immense stress on all involved, but more so on community members of color and low-income communities. Now is the time for communities to not only prioritize climate action but to ensure their action planning includes assessing vulnerability, ingraining resiliency into plans and processes, and including all community members in the process to ensure those most impacted have a voice.

For a deeper dive, see the project highlighted below with the Colorado Resiliency Office, and be sure to keep an eye out for our blog coming out soon with resources and tools for including climate justice in climate action planning.

“Climate change is more than parts per million and greenhouse gases,” he added. “The people who are feeling the worst impacts of climate, their voices have got to be heard.”

— Robert D. Bullard via the NY Times

Project Spotlight – The Colorado resiliency office

Lotus worked with a team of experts on behalf of the Colorado Resiliency Office to create an interactive website that helps communities understand the shocks and stresses they face, make connections across sectors to leverage resources and ideas, develop solutions that address multiple challenges, and build adaptability and preparedness into plans. As part of the project, the team created multiple toolkits and resources for communities to help proactively prepare for and adapt for changing conditions. Also, best practices on how to meet immediate, short-term, and long-term recovery needs in the aftermath of a disaster.

Team highlights - lotus is hiring a research associate!

Click here to review the job description. To apply, please submit the following documents to hillary@lotussustainability.com with position name in the title followed by your name “Research Associate – [Your name]”:

Resume and Cover Letter – Help us understand why you’re the right fit for our team. Tell a story, highlight your most applicable skills, do whatever you think will capture the essence of what you’ll bring to the table. Cover letters should address your ability to meet the job responsibilities in the Required Qualifications section. Please include 2-3 references.
Writing sample – We’re looking for something that shows us your writing style, whether it’s a blog about skiing, a technical paper you wrote, a section from a recent project report that’s publicly available, or something else. Please make sure that it’s your writing that we see.

Review of materials is ongoing and will continue until the position is filled. Early application is strongly encouraged. We strongly encourage applicants with diverse backgrounds to apply.

Lotus’ commitment to equity

It has been one year since the Lotus team made a commitment to equity. After the murder of George Floyd, many of us took a moment to look inward to try to understand why this happened and how to prevent more atrocities happening in the future. Over the last year, we have participated in a diversity, equity, and inclusivity training, some of us have started and joined social justice book clubs, and we have been on the path of self-edification. As members of the dominant culture, we are just starting to learn our roles in our country’s history of racism.

We are committed to continual learning. Over the next year, we will collectively dive into white supremacy culture and discuss how it may affect our workplace and our work, learn more about historic structures and institutions that laid the foundation for today’s racism, and identify how climate justice issues show up in our neighborhoods and for our clients. In the fall of 2021 and through 2022 we will engage in equity modules with The Avarna Group. Our hope is to grow and be better humans so we are able to better serve people through our work.

The Lotus office will be closed tomorrow, Friday, June 18th, to recognize Juneteenth. Juneteenth celebrates the announcement made by Union Major General Granger to enslaved African Americans that slavery was over and the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. It is celebrated every year on June 19th. We honor those who were subjected to slavery and to those who are still feeling slavery’s longstanding ramifications today.

Check out some of our favorite resources on equity:

Favorite reads on equity: Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Homegoing, The Sum of Us, The Color of Law, and Born a Crime.

Favorite movies on equity: 13th, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Moonlight.
Favorite podcasts on equity: Ezra Klein’s interview with Heather McGhee About the Cost of Racism, Code Switch from NPR, and Pod Save the People.
Favorite influencers moving the needle on equity:
- @greengirlleah ; @mikaelaloach ; @ajabarber ; @Toritsui_ ; @ayanaeliza
General resources:

Inspiring and Noteworthy News

Local:

Climate-friendly appliances, including refrigerators that do not use HFCs, as becoming easier to find for US consumers thanks to a new website.
The City of Boulder updated their climate action goals!
The City and County of Denver released its Renewable Heating and Cooling Plan to transition the City and County’s homes and buildings toward a cost-effective, equitable, climate-safe future.
Drought in the Western U.S. is getting bad. Climate change is making it worse.
Colorado has made some progress toward reducing ozone pollution. But it will take leaning on automobiles and oil and gas producers to really move the needle.
Two Colorado researchers on renewable energy have a recommendation that might surprise some who embrace goals of 100% renewable or, at least, emission-free electricity.
Colorado bill proposes to add a filter of global warming potential to state-funded buildings and roads.
Amazon’s first electric vans started delivering packages in Denver.

National:

The Biden Administration’s massive infrastructure plan proposal includes a program to put pipefitters and mines to work capping methane leaks at “orphaned” gas wells across the country.
A focus on offshore wind development by the Biden Administration may result in tens of thousands of jobs and 30,000 megawatts of additional clean energy capacity.
The “American Jobs Plan” has nine key aspects that are likely to have a big impact on the fight against climate change.
How your hot showers and toilet flushes can help the climate.
America’s largest coal minors’ union supports clean energy (with conditions).
New survey finds surprisingly high percentage of unionized solar jobs.