The conference opens the evening of Thursday, April 18 with a keynote presentation at the Hangar Theater in Ithaca featuring Mark Hertsgaard, author of “Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth.”  Mark will join ST President Gay Nicholson and panelists from academia and state government to talk about what actions are being taken at the state level.

Events on Friday, April 19 will be held in Cortland for the agricultural sector, and in Ithaca for the legal and medical professions.  Saturday will feature an all-day conference in downtown Ithaca with specific tracks developed for elected and appointed local government representatives, business and economic development interests, and community leaders.  A Youth Power Summit focused on the overlap between climate justice, economic justice, and social justice will take place on the Ithaca College campus on Saturday and Sunday.

On Sunday, April 21, families and citizens are encouraged to come celebrate Earth Day at the Ithaca Farmers Market and in downtown Cortland, and learn how they can share in the responsibility of coping with climate impacts while preventing additional damage to our atmosphere.

Everyone has a role to play in protecting and preparing our communities for climate change.  We are grateful to our sponsors for making the conference possible, and to Assemblywoman Lifton and the members of the coalition for working toward a shared understanding of what our region is facing and how we might simultaneously lessen the severity of climate change while coping with what has already been set in motion.  We thank our promotion partners for getting the word out to people throughout the Southern Tier, Central, and Finger Lakes Regions.

Events are free and open to the public except for the multi-venue Saturday conference downtown.  Tickets for Saturday are only $20 and include morning refreshments and afternoon reception ($12 for students and scholarships are available).  Seating is limited so be sure to buy your ticket today!

Gay provided opening remarks to a large audience at the Hanger Theater composed of HOLT clients and local sustainability advocates. Sustainable Tompkins has partnered with HOLT in the past when they helped us put on our Health and Sustainability conference in 2007, and they are currently sponsoring and helping to design sessions of our Climate Smart & Climate Ready conference to be held April 18-21.

We appreciated Ed’s encouragement to the architects and engineers in the crowd to remember that they hold great power in helping to determine how effective our response to climate change will be.

As Gay emphasized in her remarks, this is no time for business as usual. And in fact, there is no more business as usual because even if we continue to build in the same old way and move around in the usual way, the outcome is no longer “as usual.”

The philosopher Holmes Rolston calls this a “hinge point” in human history. We have set in motion planetary changes and have entered a new era of human-induced major shifts in the ecosystems that support us. Thanks to visionaries like Ed Mazria and leaders like the folks at HOLT, we have only to implement the restorative power we already possess.

Renewable Energy: Global and Local

Monday, February 25, 2013     7:00 – 8:30 p.m.

Unitarian Church Parlor, Buffalo and Aurora Streets, Ithaca

Featured Speakers

Francis Vanek: Senior Lecturer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Cornell

Guillermo Metz: Tompkins County Cornell Cooperative Extension

Jonathan Comstock: Co-chair of Energy Independent Caroline and Chair of Solarize Tompkins SE

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Co-sponsored by Sustainable Tompkins and The Ithaca Journal.  ST President Gay Nicholson will announce the Climate Smart & Climate Ready conference.

Find out how to reduce your energy use and transition to renewables. From simple DIY energy savings to whole house system improvements to solar and wind for your home or business. Local contractors and energy experts will get you started on your path to greater energy security.

We’ll start with a look at our Finger Lakes Communergy programs to help people reduce fossil fuel consumption, offset emissions, and invest in renewable energy.  Then Brad Pacalis of the Public Policy Education Fund and Lou Roma of Sustainable Performance Consulting will review the funding and technical assistance available from NYSERDA to homeowners and businesses.  Pat Dundon of The Insulation Man will then take us on a tour of your best energy investments: insulation and air sealing.  Expect some fun with blower doors, gas sniffers, and infrared cameras!  After lunch, we’ll stay on our feet as we explore the historic mansion of St Patricks School and John Paterson demonstrates how to be a DIY Climate Hero.  Once we know how to shrink our demand for energy, we’ll sit down to hear from Alec Mitchell of Weaver Wind and Gay Canough of ETM Solarworks as they demystify the process of bringing renewable energy to our homes.

The Energy Teach-In takes place Saturday, February 23 from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm, at St. Patrick’s School, 309 Front St., Owego,NY.  Participation is free, but lunch will be offered for $7.  Registration is required by February 20.  Call 607-218-7261 or email raftny@gmail.com.

Energy conservation and renewable energy offer us a sensible, holistic solution to our energy needs that harms none and benefits many.  Join us for our Energy Teach-In and get climate smart!

Under the leadership of Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, Sustainable Tompkins is working with a coalition of Cortland and Tompkins County nonprofits, colleges, businesses, and local governments to support ongoing planning and action to make our region more climate friendly and climate resilient.  The Lifton climate coalition has been meeting to plan a major regional conference focused on how our local governments, institutions, and businesses can both lower fossil carbon emissions and prepare for multiple impacts of a turbulent climate regime.  The ‘Climate Smart & Climate Ready’ conference will take place April 19-21, 2013.

We invite you to join us in this regional conversation at the Ithaca premiere of ‘Chasing Ice’ at Cinemapolis on Friday, December 21 at 6:45 pm.  This award-winning documentary by James Balog was created from years of time-lapse filming under the extreme conditions of the planet’s polar regions.

Originally a climate skeptic, Balog encountered the undeniable evidence of global warming on his first visit to Iceland in 2005.  What he saw made him realize the scope of the greatest risk that humanity has ever taken, and he decided to launch the Extreme Ice Survey and capture multiple years of arctic climate change on film.  The result is Chasing Ice with its hauntingly beautiful images of a planet forced into rapid change and tumult by humanity’s dependence on fossil carbon to power its economy. 

The film will run at Cinemapolis for two weeks, but Sustainable Tompkins and partners will be hosting the opening show on December 21.  Gay Nicholson will introduce Assemblywoman Lifton before the initial screening.  Lifton will speak briefly about the challenges of climate mitigation and adaptation and how she is working with her constituents to prepare residents of Cortland and Tompkins Counties for the climate work ahead.

A sign-up list for those interested in helping with the Climate Smart & Climate Ready conference will be available in the lobby (or email Gay@sustainabletompkins.org to get on the list).  Attendees can also sign up for the Finger Lakes Energy Challenge to document their efforts to reduce fossil emissions, and access the Finger Lakes Climate Fund to offset emissions from their holiday travel.

Please join us in honor of hundreds of your friends and neighbors and celebrate their contributions in co-creating a more sustainable community.

Everyone is invited to the “Signs of Sustainability” reception on Sunday, December 2nd from 4:30-6:30pm at the Wine Center in downtown Ithaca. This will be our biggest Signs of Sustainability celebration yet – don’t miss it! Our celebration will include brief remarks around 5:00 pm, leaving ample time for enjoying one another’s company with free food and beverages, including local wines courtesy of King Ferry Winery. You are welcome to come for all or part of the event. We’ll post all the “signs” we saw this year – including yours! – on the walls at the Wine Center, so you can browse them at your leisure. Please RSVP through our Facebook page. We hope to see you there!

For more information, email info@sustainabletompkins.org, visit our Signs of Sustainability web page, or call 607-216-1552.

Special thanks to the Park Foundation, Sustainable Tompkins donors, members and volunteers who make it possible for us to continue our work.

Join us at the Ithaca Alternative Gift Fair (IAGF) on December 1, 2012 from 11am-6pm. We’ll be at table 10 in the First Presbyterian Church in DeWitt Park.  Since 2004, the IAGF has hosted an annual fair featuring dozens of hard-working local community groups working to make a better future for all of us.  Show your love for what really matters this holiday season by supporting Sustainable Tompkins in our work to craft a more equitable and sustainable community.

PLEASE JOIN US MONDAY, JULY 30th at 7PM

Special Screening of New Documentary Film and Discussion

Finger Lakes Bioneers presents:

YERT – (Your Environmental Road Trip)

Where: Greenstar’s “The Space” venue– access via northside of 700 W. Buffalo St. Just west of N. Fulton St. at the intersection with W. Court St. parking is available —  across from Finger Lakes Fabricating.  Free Admission, but donations welcome. About 70 minutes for film plus time for discussion.  THANKS TO PURITY ICE CREAM for donating a special treat for attendees!
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This special New York version of the film will be introduced by two of its traveling producers whose own story is a topical component– Ben Evans and Julie Dingman Evans, actors turned real world sustainability ‘detectives’… This project has been underway for five years and is based around a 50-state research tour into the environmental challenges and potential solutions that citizens and activists are engaged with across the country; the documentary offers a combination of serious and humorous insights.

In the discussion afterwards we will explore:
- the changing roles of citizens and innovators,
- balancing denial, dangers, doom with potential for the positive,
- strategies for communicating across various media.

Ben Evans graduated from Stanford University in 1994 with a BS in Science, Technology, and Society. After working as an actor for a decade in LA and NYC, Ben found himself looking for a way to marry his creative urges with his abiding passion for the environment and a growing concern about the future. Looking for adventure and a sense of greater purpose, Ben launched YERT in 2006 with his college buddy, Mark Dixon, and convinced his exceedingly understanding wife, Julie, to join him on the adventure of a lifetime. This is his first feature film.

Since earning a BFA in Dance from Western KY and an MFA in Acting from the U. of Louisville, Julie Dingman Evans has toured shows professionally across the United States and Europe. She will be acting in two theatrical productions in Auburn NY this June and July. Her major role in “Kiss Me Kate” just concluded at the Merry Go Round Playhouse- where she has appeared over numerous summers.

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/////// Excerpted from review by Jeff Biggers

***To be sure, the YERT film team — led by former engineer Dixon and Off Broadway performers and veteran actors Julie Dingman Evans and Ben Evans — is no stumbling act of innocents. Vowing to keep to a rigorous low impact lifestyle on the road, the filmmakers set off to interview some of the most important voices in the environmental and sustainable living movements today, including Bill McKibben and Wes Jackson. The crew’s infectious drive lends an almost exuberant air to their often difficult journey, as theYERT team attempts to go “beyond hope,” as one philosopher tells them at the Green Festival in San Francisco, and seek efforts that are “independent of hope and despair, and totally creative.”

While the film is at its best when it focuses on energy and food production and consumption, YERT transcends any glib answers or simplistic blueprints and investigates changing lifestyles and community planning choices. From a “living roof” atop Chicago skyscrapers or the Ford factory in Michigan, to traditional Native American mud huts in Nebraska, cave dwellings in Idaho and pioneering carbon-free “Earthships” in New Mexico, the film looks at efforts to transition from devastating fossil fuel operations and reckless consumption to more sustainable ways of living.
Standing on the edge of a massive mountaintop removal strip mining site at Kayford Mountain, West Virginia, celebrated activist Larry Gibson warns them to “use your anger to get over your fear and change it. Because you’re the only one who can.”

In fact, YERT unfolds into an increasingly clearer vision that the environmental movement must shift from an agenda on doing “less harm” to taking effective and immediate actions that are restorative and regenerative.***

As more predictions for a turbulent stock market emerge, the community capital movement is organizing to create local opportunities for investment that are based in the Real Economy and help build a sustainable and just community. A group of local citizens supported by Sustainable Tompkins is exploring the creation of a Local Investing Opportunity Network (the Cayuga LION) as a means of connecting local entrepreneurs with potential local investors.

The third gathering of the Cayuga LION will be on Tuesday, June 26, from 5:30-7:30 at the Lot 10 Lounge at 106 S. Cayuga St. in Ithaca.  Participants will get acquainted with each other, learn more about how a LION works, and hear about additional local investment opportunities. Please rsvp by June 23 to Fred Schoeps at kmtalk@earthlink.net. There is an entry fee of $7 to cover refreshments. Cash bar available.

The featured speaker will be Greg Pitts of Natural Investments providing a brief overview of how to evaluate risk in investments, and the process of the LION.  You can learn more about the Cayuga LION at www.cayugaLION.net.  The Entrepreneur Spotlight will feature Jackie Richardson of Fruits and Roots Juice, Terry Kelleher of Lucienne’s Chocolates, and Melissa Madden of The Good Life Farm.

Fruits and Roots Juice is all about providing our community with fresh, all-natural, and healthy drinkables.  They strive to serve their customers pure, juicy, revitalizing, nutrition that is free of harmful chemical pesticides.  Their smoothies are 100% real fruit and have no added sugar, dye or additives.  Their juice is guaranteed fresh as they press daily, on-site, and use seasonally harvested organic produce. Fruits and Roots Juice supports responsible and sustainable farming practices by sourcing locally and organically whenever possible, and they strive to be eco-minded by composting all of their veggie pulp and using compostable cups, lids and straws. Fruits and Roots Juice can be found at farmers markets, local festivals, and catered events.

Lucienne’s opened in late 2009, making gourmet biscotti and chocolates. Founded by Lucienne Cruvellier and Terry and Diane Kelleher, Lucienne’s has developed an exclusive line of premium chocolate bars, featuring Rainforest Alliance Certified™ cocoa. Lucienne’s products are available through resellers and through their web site, www.luciennes.com. Their chocolate bars may be found at cafes and gift shops in Ithaca and throughout the Finger Lakes region. Lucienne’s has also developed a unique sugar-free chocolate, using all-natural ingredients and sweetened with stevia. It is suitable for diabetic diets and is available at natural food stores and wellness centers across the country.

Melissa Madden farms with her partner, Garret Miller, at The Good Life Farm.  Located in the heart of the vibrant Finger Lakes, their young farm produces perennial fruits, vegetables, and pastured poultry. They benefit from the guidance of local farming mentors, as well as act as mentors for other aspiring farmers through the Groundswell Center for Local Food and Farming.