|
With COVID-19 cases rising in Johnson County, the Iowa City Farmers Market will retain its online format for the 2020 season and will not resume in-person sales.
While COVID-19 has caused the cancellation of the City's annual Rummage in the Ramp event, Rummage Redux will continue online. (For more information about Rummage Redux, click on the graphic above.)
If you have items you had set aside to donate to Rummage in the Ramp, you still have local outlets for them. Just visit the City's Resale and Consignment Directory online.
Is your business a leader in local sustainability measures or on the way to becoming one? Apply for a Climate Action Award and share your story!
The City of Iowa City is recognizing local businesses that are advancing sustainable practices and initiatives, by inviting them to participate in the new Climate Action at Work awards program. A winner from each category will receive $500 that can be used to help offset the costs of sustainability efforts.
The application deadline is Monday, July 27, at 5 p.m. Winners will be announced at Iowa City's virtual Climate Action Festival in September 2020.
For program details, contact Economic Development Coordinator Wendy Ford at 319-356-5248, email wendy-ford@iowa-city.org or visit the link below.
|
Iowa City’s longtime Monarch Festival will be offered in a new format next month—virtual events will be offered on four Sundays in August. They will include children's activities, information for adults and a video series about monarchs.
Iowa City's first-ever Climate Fest kicks off on Saturday, Sept. 19, and runs through the following Saturday. Events galore are planned, both virtual and in-person. Watch for details.
Kasey Hutchinson, Soil and Water Conservation Coordinator for Johnson County and member of the Iowa City Climate Action Commission
What do you do for climate action?
It feels so small considering the scope of the problem, but I try to do all the things that I have capacity to do. It’s the usual suspects of transitioning to a plant-based diet; reducing, reusing, recycling, repurposing, composting; creating a backyard habitat of carbon-sequestering plants, keeping my thermostat low or high enough to keep my family complaining and me yelling back at them to either put on more clothes or sit in front of a fan. My family recently purchased cargo e-bikes so we can transport our entire family for everything from school to work to staying alive purposes, replacing our vehicles as long as road conditions allow.
I've conserved resources to a fault since I was a kid, which I half-jokingly attribute to fighting my twin sister for resources in the womb, and while my reasons have evolved, this characteristic has persisted. In my work life I focus on exploring other communities' approaches and policies that could be adapted practically in our own community, for which I can potentially be a mechanism for implementing.
I recently heard someone say, with regard to a peripheral topic, that sometimes our energy shouldn't be focused on changing a stubborn mind, but instead it should be focused on words and actions that will resonate with our youth. I'm sure to tell my children why an action is important in the context of climate change, and why taking climate action is important in general. If they can grow up with a mindset that they personally are called to this fight, my hope is that not only will they take the same and greater actions, but they'll actually be part of the solution. I’m so encouraged by the actions of today's youth, and I cannot wait for more of them to be old enough to vote.
What can others do to take climate action?
Any actions big or small. Not everyone has the capacity to take action, and unfortunately the lack of capacity is often directly proportional to being disproportionately impacted by climate change. If we have capacity to take actions beyond our household, I think it's upon us to bring our entire community along with us, especially our most vulnerable.
Also, this is a crisis for which we cannot afford any policy or politician to ignore, and climate inaction should be punished at the polls. Voting should be a key action.
Why does climate action matter to you?
Climate change is a humanitarian problem. My motivation may have started with wanting to protect bugs and bunnies from the time I was a kid to a young adult, but a question once posed to me that really resonated was, "Once the bugs and bunnies are in trouble, you know who's next?" I am not willing to leave any kid behind in a dire situation they simply inherited without a fight, that’s not an option. Not fighting for it is antithetical to what a lot of us have been told our entire lives: "Put it back the way you found it, or better.”
|
