Current Media Hits...

Earth Stories: The Good & the Bad

To A Green Collar Future

Cutting Carbon One Clothespin At A Time

Truckee Utility Gives Green Option

Carbon Worries In Ski Country

Renewable Desire

Free Efficient Light Bulbs to Truckee Residents

Step It Up in the Press

Patagonia Wild & Scenic Film Festival

TCAN Receives Grant From Grassroots Fund

From 2007...

The Sierra Sun - March 26, 2007

by Christine Stanley

Some pledged to recycle, others pledged to conserve water, and on Friday at Glenshire Elementary, hundreds of students made a promise to be kinder to their environment.
As part of a larger community effort, the Truckee Climate Action Network is calling on adults and children alike to create pledge flags (think Nepalese prayer flags) as an outward statement of their commitment to stop global warming.
Glenshire students created more than 200 flags, and hundreds more are expected from children at other schools in Truckee and on the North Shore within the next few weeks.
“I pledge to save more tress by recycling paper at home at school,” said Glenshire fifth-grader Bryson Olson. “It’s easier to breathe with more trees and they’re pretty. I’m going to recycle by having a recycle bin at my house — but sometimes I forget.”
And fifth-grader Sarah Cavanaugh, took a more challenging pledge.
“I pledge not to take airplanes as much to stop global warming,” she said. “Cars just put pollution into the ground, but planes are in the air and go everywhere.”
Hundreds, perhaps thousands more flags will be created at a number of upcoming environmental events, including Earth Day and Step it Up in April, and the annual Youth Symposium in May.
The Youth Symposium is a day-long event, hosted by the Sierra Watershed Education Partnerships and the Truckee Tahoe regional Education Coalition, that exposes students to alternative energy options, environmental issues and interactive presentations.
Step it Up is a nationwide rally that some Truckee resident will participate in locally to promote cutting carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050.
“We will be making the pledge flags at every event through the summer, and then hopefully the town will let us hang them up downtown,” said Carolyn Hamilton of the Action Network. “This all feels incredibly grassroots — cutting fabric flags on the floor with a glass of wine. But now, looking at the children’s work, it’s so powerful and so compelling.”

The Sierra Sun - March 1, 2007

by Christine Stanley

It might be cold in Tahoe this week, but the rest of the planet seems to be warming up. It’s for just that reason that a new organization has taken root in Truckee.

The Truckee Climate Action Network (TCAN), established by former mayor Beth Ingalls, is a green-eyed grassroots effort focused on making a positive local impact on global climate change through education, legislation, conservation and communication.

“As my (Town) Council term was ending, this issue was at the forefront of my mind because of the general plan. And then the whole coal debate came up and there was this combination of people and energy.”

Ingalls described the events leading up to the Network’s creation — Town planning, influential blockbuster movies, new environmental legislation, and shopping for local power contracts — as the “perfect storm.”

Now with more than 20 members, TCAN is eyeballing possible partnerships with the Town of Truckee, the Truckee Donner Public Utility District and the Tahoe Truckee Unified School District, according to TCAN member Lauren O’Brien.

“We are in our infancy, of course, but communications is our forte,” said O’Brien, who also works for Streamline Consulting Group. “We have the right people and energy to impact awareness.”

The group’s web site, Truckeecan.com, is up, and members have defined a mission statement, formed action committees, and will be involved in several upcoming events.

In partnership with the Truckee Climate Action Network, an event called Step It Up 2007 will be held in April in conjunction with the National Day of Climate Action.

On April 14, more than 750 local rallies will take place nationwide urging Congress to “step it up” and cut carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. In Truckee, the rally will take place at the bridge on Old Highway 40.

“It’s the biggest rally for climate change to ever have occurred,” said local organizer Carolyn Hamilton. “Every [group] is doing it in their own way; some people are SCUBA diving, some people are going to the Capitol steps, and others, like us, are meeting at an iconic place.”

Once gathered, group photographs will be taken at each rally across the country and will be linked together electronically to show the event’s scope.

Step it Up is the brain child of author and journalist Bill McKibben, former New Yorker staff writer and the author of “The End of Nature,” the first book for a general audience about global warming. 

As a sub-event of Step it Up 2007, interested locals can participate in “Climb It for Climate,” a rock climbing event at Grouse Slabs meant to raise climate change awareness among outdoor enthusiasts.

TCAN will also promote and participate in the annual Tahoe Truckee Earth Day event in late April, which will be held again this year at the Village at Squaw Valley.
The group also plans to have a presence at the Second Annual Youth Service Symposium, a local school event sponsored by the Tahoe Truckee Regional Education Coalition and Sierra Watershed Education Partners, in May.

An Editorial "My Turn" by Carolyn Hamilton

Published in the Sierra Sun on April 9, 2007

My passion for our Earth started mundanely enough: not on a mountain top, or at sea, or buried in documents, or at the poles or the tropics, but under my family’s homemade papier-mâché solar system in our Truckee kitchen.

Turbo-changes in perspectives sometimes happen like that. One night, there it was: blue Earth, suspended by invisible fishing line with all those other planets, the only one that held life. And, suddenly, even the moth became a spectacle, not to mention the cougar or the columbine.

Hungry to confirm the preciousness of Earth, to join the community of the awe-struck, I consumed information: I read and then watched An Inconvenient Truth, of course; read The End of Nature & Deep Economy by Bill McKibben; read magazine articles, web-posted reports, and explored Web sites, finding, finally, that we humans — just one of the spectacles of life on Earth — have wielded a greater force than awe upon our planet and it has suffered for it.

Among other powerful influences, humans have wielded a terrible nonchalance. In our search for ease, we’ve taken all this life for granted, and, as the IPCC report concludes, in so doing, we’ve changed everything — everything.

And so, I entered a state of solo-questioning: What can I do? How can I stop something so big? What am I but a mom in a small mountain town? I vacillated hourly from marveling to feeling morose; from feeling despair to being inspired. But the “I” turned out to be the problem.

Community was what mattered now. Converting worry into positive change would take a community.

Enter former mayor and long-time environmental activist Beth Ingalls. In one sitting, she took the handful of us — varied in experience with environmentalism and activism — and made us a charged and hopeful community called Truckee Climate Action Network (TCAN). See our Web site www.TruckeeCan.com

Our group’s first public act was, fittingly, to join an even larger community of nationwide concerned citizens and plan to host an event called “Step It Up,” spearheaded by Bill McKibben, internationally renowned environmentalist, activist and writer. As of this writing, there are 1,300 Step It Up events planned across the country. On April 14, in virtual force, thousands of people will gather and call on Congress to cut carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050. Photographs of each event will be linked and sent via the Internet to Congress to show our nation’s deep concern for the Earth.

Now, back again to the individual: enter You. You can come to the Truckee River Regional Park on April 14, next Saturday, at noon to hear a powerful line-up of speakers on climate change, to hear Truckee musician Jeff Jones play, to make a pledge flag that will hang with hundreds of other pledge flags already designed by Truckee and Tahoe children. You can bring your own homemade banners or just-plain come to forestall more nonchalance.

Better still, come and join a community that cares.

Carolyn Hamilton is a Truckee resident.