 I mean, think, take Hawaii. Welcome one and all on September 12, 2022. The email address of what my prime guest number one guest is keep oil in the ground that's pretty self explanatory. I have not one, but three guests today. And each one of them is a passionate advocate for supporting Hawaii's initiative for 100% clean energy by the year 2045. And Governor Igay announced this some years ago, we were completely Hawaii was completely out in the wilderness, in having such an insanely ambitious goal. Guess what, many states have joined us now, including California which is usually leading the pack but good old Hawaii led the pack this time. And we have since made that goal, more and more ambitious all the way to decarbonization of the entire economy. Talk about being wildly ambitious but I'm sure well agree that we need to rastic revolutionary changes. If we're going to keep more homes from falling down onto the beach in the north shore. And wildfires occurring even in little old Hawaii forget to California. So we all know the urgency and these three guests. Mr. Matt guyer who took the lead. Noelle more in who has been my guest before, and Dr. Paul Bernstein UH economics. So welcome to all three of you, and Matt, please take it away. Thank you, Howard. So we formed Hawaii environmental change agents for a lot of the reasons that you just mentioned that the dire urgent environmental problems that we face, as well as the fact that the way to make change quickly is through legislative changes. Hawaii environmental change agents is an independent organization that focuses on creating coalitions people organizations that address these environmental problems that we face, such as climate change, as well as resilience and equitable adaptation. Our mission is to build these groups. And then support them and magnify their impact, get them all working together and do it really, really fast because we don't have a lot of time. So we're, we're grassroots, we're independent, we're formed by volunteers, people know one single organization is organizing this, but a lot of us in these in HECA are from and represent a lot of other different organizations. So Matt, just to jump in with a very cheery note, because Lord knows we can have enough unsharing notes, just had a conference call the other day with the manufacturer of spray foam insulation. Everybody's familiar with the fiberglass the pink stuff that goes into walls to protect from in Hawaii's case keep the heat out, and in the northern climates keep the heat in, or that an alternate type of insulation is called spray foam, where you have these big canisters and you spray into the wall cavities and every wells. And it does a beautiful job of really really sealing the home light like an ice box, and then you actually have to bring outside air in. Well, it turns out that not only does this spray foam do a beautiful job of insulation but it strengthens the structure of a home, both lateral forces and vertical forces. Earthquakes and strong winds. So we've been searching searching for those measures which can increase resilience of homes and save energy at the same time. So this was a great piece of news. So I pass that cheeriness on to you Matt, please proceed. Thank you yeah that's that's the kind of fantastic ideas that we want to support as part of HECA's mission. So if there's a individual out there that has, you know, sees something like this, like this this insulation it's going to save a lot of energy and make a better, you know, structure for people, then you can join HECA you can we can help you form your own task force to address an issue like this and say we need to do this in our government buildings we need to do this. We need to support this with tax policy or, or whatever, you know is going to get this idea off the ground quicker and really push the idea forward, both into the public space by engaging the public, but also engaging legislators, and the real change makers. We go back. So yeah that that these are the task forces that we have currently. We have the carbon cashback being power I'm not going to read them all there's a lot of great task forces out there. And again, it really only takes one person who just is really passionate about an issue. And we will will help you create this task force will get people to join will will will share with you how we can help you get legislation drafted and pass. All the steps were working really hard to try to support these task forces as best as possible, and get all these, all these different but linked environmental issues, working together and get them all moving forward as fast as possible. And so here's our values. Along with addressing all these different issues we need to focus on making sure there is equity at the heart of what we are doing and make sure that when you make a, especially in the legislature you make a change that how is that going to impact the wider community. And how is it going to impact the people who are already feeling the impacts who are already feeling the worst impacts, including, you know, not just here in Hawaii but, you know, our, our Pacific islands who are going to lose their entire communities and how are we going to address things in a way that's important for them. And that's really important because inequity is also at the heart of why we are facing the challenges we are facing. We can't make more policies that are inequitable and address climate. We have to focus on equity. And just chime in on that last point is what Matt you just described, I can also be viewed from the standpoint of the challenges that we face that that are that we experienced collectively from the threat of climate change is it, it affects certain communities and others right and generally these would be the communities that are least able to afford the things that they need to do to be able to get away from harm. So the inequities that we're talking about are also reflected in communities that are ill equipped to, you know, lift themselves out of, you know, the states that they're in in, you know, in terms of being able to afford renewable energy solutions, electric cars and so on and so forth. So as we move forward with our solutions we have to, we must pay attention to the social equity component. And let me just chime in and give a real simple example of that in lower income homes refrigerators, and to be a major energy user, because you number one it's an old old fridge. Number two, you tend to have a lot of people under that roof. The more people you have the more cooking you have the more that refrigerator is going to be very well used. An old refrigerator consumes about 1400 kilowatt hours a year, a new refrigerator same size with all those new bells and whistles. 400 kilowatt hours savings of 1000 kilowatt hours a year right off the bat, you get a better refrigerator. So one thing that we state energy office and others are doing is further incentivizing the purchase of new refrigerators for low income people by giving them a really, really good financial incentive. Thank you. That's a very valuable point in a previous conversation I had. I shared the comment that the best renewable energy solution out there is efficiency. Right. It's like if you can reduce the need for energy to begin with, then you can do quite a bit in terms of addressing pocketbook issues but more importantly, emissions. So, it's just spot on. I think that many of these solutions can both reduce their energy use but increase quality of life. Yes, it's so important. I'd like to get back to the slide that where you have the, the different task forces and as I was looking at that and as as you were sharing, I couldn't help but think about the metaphor of the canoe, right. Hika is almost like this canoe. We've created this opportunity, this space for organizations for individuals who care about the environment care about the climate they care about taking action to affect, you know, one part of it which inevitably is connected to all parts of it to get into this space where we are able to help each other move further faster. So, I like in Hika to this canoe this canoe metaphor, and to make it very clear, we offer quite a few resources that enable economies of scale and what I mean by that is, for example, the ability to draft legislation there could be a bill there that would like to create a bill or write a bill and then have a legislator sponsor the bill, but may not have the experience. However, within Hika, we have resources that have that expertise because of their past experiences and they actually can help organizations with that particular task. The other the other thing that we do is, and it's really focused on this coalition building and again it goes back to this opportunity to create economies of scale. If, if one organizations out there trying to get their word out to a certain part of the community or all of the community. It's much harder if they're doing it alone if they work with another group that is or a coalition that has very similar interests, or even slightly similar interests, we now have the opportunity to reach a much broader group of people with certain messages so we Hika offers this this opportunity, a few more items discussions with local leaders so one of the things that is really important is to create the will for change and having conversations with our political leaders or government leaders enables that so creating the space or the opportunity for those conversations to take place is something that Hika has been doing and will continue to do. So these are just a sample of the things that we offer it's essentially a way to leverage each other, but also leverage similar resources could be social media it could be marketing content it could be a zoom webinar. These are activities that can certainly be done by individual organizations but when you bring a number of them together, you magnified the impact of each effort so I just wanted to call attention to that it's a very powerful component of Hika, and, you know we invite other groups to to join us and find out, you know the power of this this coalition and effective change that they'd like to see. Thank you know well and economists usually are not very silent, but here is Mr. Dr Bernstein being very very silent by sure we miss his wisdom here. I don't know what wisdom but I'll just add on to know well that also what he offers is the ability for all of us to learn from each other. And therefore to become stronger right, we can learn different elements we don't know. We certainly don't know all the different dimensions of climate change it's a very complex issue. So Hika has lived experiences of different folks when it comes to inequities and what have you so. So Hika provides that and not sure if this is the right opportunity and can let Matt go with this but that's, for example why he has put on various events over the last year to bring these different groups together learn from each other and to go forward and with legislation and work on legislation to get the bills in place of laws in place that we need to affect the change that we ultimately need to address climate change. So I'm gathering that you have lined up a cadre of like minded legislators where you get a good legislative idea and then pass it off to that legislator to introduce. Yeah, so the legislative portion of what the services we offer. I think, again, saying what Noel said was offering the ability to draft help draft legislation, going back to that canoe metaphor. Instead of being in the canoe, and you get to the legislative session and you see what bills are there. And so you either say stop or go right you either say let's support this one or let's testify against it and that's that's been a lot of the experience that I've had in legislative sessions is that's what you see. And we're we're saying these environmental task forces need to be able to steer the canoe where it needs to go so help them draft legislation that is what needs to happen and then support that we have we then reach out to a variety of different legislators it's different for each task force probably but making we help make make and maintain those connections and that's that's so so important. But yes, going back to we do have an event. Paul mentioned we have an event this Saturday, September 17. From 10 to 1130 am. You can register at bit.lis ly slash he can, or just go to our website at Hawaii change agents.org, and you should find the registration information there. This Saturday, September 17 10 to 1130 we have Dr. Dale Grubowski, director of shaman odds environmental studies program, we have Dyson Chi, executive director Hawaii Youth Climate Coalition Dr. McKenna Kaufman, a UH professor with expertise in energy and climate policy representative Nicole Lohan, she's the chair of the Hawaii Committee on Energy and Environmental Protection. Dr Debbie mellican director of sustainability at Puneho school, and Beth tokyoka, who's the communication manager at Hawaii Island utility cooperative and these are all really big important climate leaders. We're going to have a panel discussion. Dr Grubowski is going to provide a keynote should be a really exciting event that will help us guide us in this upcoming 2023 session. And just a second that Matt by saying that Dr Grubowski specializes in Micronesia and other Southeast islands. And as we know, many of them are literally going underwater, or they have reached that stage where the ocean rise. It prohibits them from raising crops, the roots want to go down and the roots, it's salt water and boom, there goes your crop. So they become refugees and many of those refugees have ended up here in Hawaii. She has taken a lot of them in as grad students and each of those grad students from Micronesia and Southeast is specializing in different environmental areas. So she should be quite an inspirational speaker. Thank you. So, if I may, I'd like to just add one more dimension to what we do. So, so far, everything we've talked about has been around helping environmental groups, you know, focus their, their, their, their priorities and gain the benefit of this coalition that we just discussed. There's another dimension to what we do and that is empowering the general public. So encouraging the general public to be engaged in the political process. And sometimes it's very overwhelming to be able to understand, you know, where the bills are at how they impact you. And more importantly, how to get your voices heard, right, submitting submitting testimony and support or against something is a process that not everybody is familiar with or nor are they comfortable with so one of the things that we do is also educate the public encourage them to be involved in the process. So that once they start, you know, once they submit that first testimony, they realize that it's demystified it's so easy that they will then be more active participants in the process. So that's another dimension that I think is very, very critical for any of the groups out there that are working to get change enabled through the political process and we're certainly doing it. Yeah, I think we all remember when legislator laws policy that was something very, very vague for the big people. And then you get drawn into it and you learn how to do things and all of a sudden boom, hey, I've got some power here. And related to that we have within the energy office group called the wayfinders and these are generally young people who are serving as interns, who are going out into the community generally underserved communities and addressing environmental issues, environmental issues that impact that community directly. So I'm going to help you people up with the director of that program, so that you will learn what what they're doing and maybe ally with them. Yeah, I was just going to say if anyone wants to participate join a task force. Just learn more attend the event this Saturday. Check us out online again, why change agents or email why change change agents at gmail.com. As you mentioned Howard my email is keep well in the ground at gmail.com. And yeah be in touch. We, we need everyone to be doing something even if it's not perfect. If you're not sure you're doing the right thing just start taking action now. And as you continue to take more and more little actions you'll get better you'll refine it, and we can all get there together but we do need people urgently to take action and this is one way you can participate jump in and make a difference. And you people can serve as as the guide posts along the way. They can say I'm a total amateur. I want to do this. How do I do it, you people can give them a guidance. Yeah, we end up we end up learning from each other right. We, we have some experience, we have a lot of experience on our team. We have people who have been in the legislature who drafted legislation we have all this depth of expertise you know you see Noel and Paul here. I'm kind of the newbie. And I learned so much from these guys all the time but we we all learn from each other so if, if someone watching right now joins us. Yeah, you're going to learn from us we're going to learn from you, and we're going to figure out the best path forward. I guess I would just add that. I mean, it's building on all this. It's just a great way joining he has a great way to leverage your voice, right, you have several other task forces already set up, you have people with the X, the experience, you already have members of these various task forces. So it's a great way to to leverage your voice and because you've been saying it's taking advantage of grass roots of media grass tops would have you all these different levers that we can pull to try and get legislation that we need paths. So, again, echo what Matt saying highly encourage you to come to the Saturday's event. And, and please join. Just another example of what could be done. Just received a call from a friend of mine on the mainland named Gary Klein, and he has is an award winning innovator for plumbing or water efficiencies within the buildings. He's coming to Hawaii in early October, and we're arranging for a webinar for him to present so I'm going to pass that information on to you guys and then you doubtlessly have a water efficiency task force, and you can invite them and they can get involved and learn a heck of a lot. Just, just another good example of getting the word out and empowering people. I'd like to do one plug and Paul I'm going to put you on the spot here and that is with with our activities we have been active, we have been intentionally engaged with our youth. Right, they, they come to this challenge with a different perspective. And, you know, the concerns that we're trying to address are their concerns and their children's concerns right where we're, we're looking at a way to ensure that we have a livable world for, for everybody moving forward and future generations, especially. So, Dyson she who's going to be at our event this Saturday is a leader for Hawaii youth climate coalition. Paul has been driving an effort with citizens climate lobby we have a youth high school students who are actively engaged in climate action. And we invite our youth to be very, very active and participatory in this in this, this journey because they at the end of the day are going to be the leaders of the future and they're already taking the step to making that happen today. So, Paul, I don't know any if you want to just pitch what's happening with our youth, but I think that's also worth a worthwhile note. I appreciate that. Just add and maybe in a future show Howard. On December 3, we could actually have a few youth on to talk about an event that they are working with folks from citizens climate lobby actually. Dr Debbie Millican at Punahoe. A shout out to representative Amy Peruso who scheduled event for December 3 centered around youth getting involved in democracy. The event will be at the capital Saturday December 3 from probably around nine to three. Each are very youth centric. Listening to their climate stories, helping the youth learn more about the legislative process. The beginning of writing a bill to following it all the way through till it becomes a law workshops to actually develop bills. A little bit of learning about climate change, how that works and how policies affect different parts of climate change or the drivers of climate change so anyways yeah it would be great to see them sometime in November on your show Howard. I've just made a note where I will definitely invite you. And that brings to mind the fact that a colleague of mine in the energy office was at Ilani school on Saturday and there was a big ostensibly robotics. And she said, I want to show, you know, different kids developing different types of robots and performing, but also there was a lot of the environmental tables out there. And she said, the best group was fourth graders. The fourth graders were very, very knowledgeable and very passionate about climate change. And I know that they are going to bug the heck out of their parents about doing the right thing. And the more we can bring them up bring them up. Because I for one I'm not going to be on the planet forever. We need to hand off the leadership to these younger people. And it just feels really good. It's just a cheery note. I believe we are out of time. So thank you gentlemen, one and all this has been delightful. And I made a note to bring you back in mid November in preparation for the December third event. So this is think take away. Howard way code green. See you next time again Mahalo to all three gentlemen. Thank you so much for watching think tech Hawaii. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn and donate to us at think tech Hawaii.com Mahalo.