Peter Walks for Democracy

On Thursday, the Local Climate Action Program was awarded the Ryan Moser Reilly Award from the Engagement Scholarship Consortium. The Award “recognizes a campus or an entity on campuses (e.g. college, department, school, unit, program) that has made a significant contribution to transforming institutional culture that promotes community-engaged scholarship…[lifting up] institutions or units within that take leadership in supporting policies, practices, and resources to advance a community-engaged culture.” Below is an edited version of my acceptance remarks.

It was an incredible honor to accept this award on behalf of Penn State. My colleague Brandi Robinson, our alumna Kathy Cappelli Breier and all our amazing students, our colleagues, collaborators, and municipal, county, and state agency partners could not be more grateful,

Environmental leader and spiritual leader, Joanna Macy said, “[W]hen you’re worrying about whether you’re hopeful or hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you’re showing up, that you’re here, and that you’re finding ever more capacity to love this world.” The Local Climate Action Program—LCAP—is grounded in the practice that by showing up every day for our communities to draw down greenhouse gas emissions and plan for a changing climate, we can love our home.

Now in our third year, LCAP has served over 30 municipalities and counties ranging in size from a postage stamp of Selinsgrove on the Susquehanna River to Bucks County, a county with a population comparable to the nation’s capital and the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, one of the nation’s premiere agencies managing over 120 state parks and 22 state forests. Our local government partners serve about 1.5 million Pennsylvanians while DCNR serves millions upon millions of people every year through its award-winning parks. We have inventoried approximately 13.5 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent, provided climate-focused community surveys in English and Spanish, collaborated with Solar United Neighbors to support solar cooperatives, presented to the Secretary of the Deparment of Conservation and Natural Resources, and more. Last year, our students—including members of Kathy’s team—were recognized on the floor of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives at the request of the Secretary of the General Assembly’s Climate Caucus.

This is important for Pennsylvania’s communities, our nation, and the world. To meet the goals of the Paris Agreement, our nation to draw down its emissions under our Nationally Determined Contribution, and Pennsylvania to make progress on its Priority Climate Action Plan, we have to act locally. PA is the nation’s second biggest electricity exporter, the home of steel, and covered in over 16 million acres of forests. We have 2,560 municipal governments, 67 counties, and 500 school districts. Pennsylvania was the first state to ratify its Constitution to include a “green amendment” guaranteeing its citizens the right to clean air and water. We are the ultimate learning environment for local scale climate policy.

We hope that you—like us—keep showing up with love in your heart.