One Oregon Neighborhood's Quest for Climate Change Solutions

If the success of one project in Corvallis, Oregon is an indicator, the key may lie with neither governments nor the private market, but with the old-fashioned concept of communities coming together to solve a shared problem. To find out more about one neighborhood's experience I sat down with Nathan Jones of the Northwest Institute for Community Enrichment (NICE), to talk community engagement, citizen activism, and ways ordinary people can reduce the causes of climate change.

According to Jones, fossil fuel companies' stranglehold on society begins to erode when communities work in concert to reduce fossil fuel consumption—or better yet, generate their own home-grown renewable energy. During a "Summer of Solutions" program run in conjunction with the Corvallis Community Energy Project and the national groups Grand Aspirations and Energy Action Coalition, NICE organizers knocked on doors throughout Corvallis' Job's Addition neighborhood and invited residents to participate in an eight-week Community Carbon Challenge.

Forty percent of respondents agreed, and were then asked four questions: What's your interest in carbon and emissions? What have you done to reduce your carbon footprint? What additional steps would you like to take? And what barriers prevent you taking action? Each person selected three actions they would take to reduce carbon emissions—from insulating windows to installing home solar panels. Jones says residents of Job's Addition committed to taking a combined total of more than 600 actions.

Jones envisions a future in which programs like this help communities sever ties with corporate utilities that produce their energy from fossil fuels. Eventually neighborhoods and cities could actually become energy producers and exporters, powering well-insulated buildings with rooftop solar panels and residential wind turbines. The goal of the NICE is to expand energy solutions throughout the Northwest, until such a vision becomes attainable.

Summer of Solutions in Corvallis concluded after eight weeks, but not before establishing five neighborhood teams that will continue the work of cutting fossil fuel consumption in Job's Addition. Jones hopes to run Summer of Solutions programs in other Corvallis neighborhoods in years to come: perhaps as many as three per summer over three years. Meanwhile successes in Corvallis could be expanded to communities throughout the Northwest; next summer will likely see similar initiatives in cities like Portland, Oregon.

A Portland-based program would aid broader efforts to eliminate the state's largest source of carbon emissions: the Boardman Coal Plant, operated by Portland General Electric. Environmental groups are pushing to have the plant taken offline within five years; community carbon challenges could at least partially answer the question of how to make up the power difference. While environmentalists will rightly keep pushing to have as much of PGE's coal plant as possible replaced by renewable energy, community actions that reduce energy consumption may make polluting power plants not just undesirable, but irrelevant.

If this seems like a pipe dream, consider the results already coming out of Corvallis. Listening to Jones describe the summer's successes, it became clear how tapping the power of community has allowed Summer of Solutions organizers to start the process of transforming how people think about and respond to causes of climate change. The solutions to fossil fuel addiction are as tangible as a knock at the door, and a neighbor's invitation to join a community carbon challenge.

Photo credit: Jared Schy, Summer of Solutions organizer

Nick Engelfried is a freelance writer on climate and energy issues, and works with campuses and communities in the Pacific Northwest to reduce the causes of climate change.