What a wonderful sentiment to welcome me into Kansas City, Missouri. But let me back up:
I have now completed my three weeks of Green Corps training in Boston. It was an amazing, enlightening, and exhausting three weeks. The many high-profile members of the environmental community who came to give us information and advice on what we were getting ourselves into were inspiring, to say the least. The stories people told about their triumphs and failures, about their passion for their work and what keeps them going were emotional and powerful. People were in tears on a daily basis after hearing these people speak. One of the most important lessons I took away is that these issues, particularly climate change, need our attention now. How we address these problems within the next few years will determine how we will be able to exist on this planet for the rest of our lives. Climate change isn’t an environmental issue, it is relevant to all people, everywhere, now. This isn’t just about saving the spotted owls anymore, it’s about saving ourselves, our homes, and securing a future for the rest of human kind. This is big stuff. It was vital for this to get through to me because this is going to be a tough year, and I need to know that we’re playing with high stakes.
About a week-and-a-half into training we got our placements for our first campaign. There are four different campaigns this fall, all dealing with climate change issues and all strongly tied to November 4th, a day that will live on in infamy. After a couple of tense hours waiting, ultimately being the last of the 26-person class to find out my placement, my campaign organizer told me that I would be in Kansas City, Missouri (along with another organizer in KC and six others across the state), working to pass a Renewable Energy Standard (RES) on the ballot. This is an amazing campaign-Missouri has attempted to pass a RES through the legislature for the past eight years, unsuccessfully. But this year, a coalition of organizations has gotten the issue onto the ballot through a petitioning process. If, or should I say when, this issue passes it will make Missouri the 27th state in the nation to adopt an RES. As more and more states adopt their own renewable standards, it will become impossible for the federal government to continue to hold off on national legislation. So the work we are doing is seriously important to pushing federal legislation to slow the effects and persistence of global climate change. Amazing!
This brings me to the title of this post: two days ago my partner Katy and I arrived in KC, excited to discover what would be our memorable first campaign city. On our first day here we decided we should find a map of the city so that we could start to get our bearings. We really didn’t think this sounded like a strange idea-we were new to the area, wanted a simple map of downtown, the kind you find in most cities, usually for tourists. Unfortunately this request didn’t seem so natural to the many Kansas City-ans who we asked for help. The various people at the gas station, the college visitors center, AAA, and the travel center all looked at us like we were crazy when we said we were looking for a map of the city. “You want a map of Kansas City?” they all asked in disbelief. The woman at the travel center clarified, “we send people out of this city.” Not something you want to hear after just moving to a place. Finally we were able to locate a tourism center after about three hours of searching. We were so thrilled by the simple little map we found that we each took two. With our maps in hand we began to make sense of KCMO and started to feel a little more grounded.
So this is my home for the next few months, my battleground state. “As Missouri goes, so goes the nation.” When we get this RES passed (and it’s currently polling at 70% approval rate across the state, so it will pass) the country as a whole will know the importance and the future of clean, renewable energy.
