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April 7, 2026
In this episode of The Climate Conversation, hear how Mayor Steve Patterson (Athens, Ohio) and Joe Flarida (Power a Clean Future Ohio) have worked with municipalities across the Buckeye State to deliver on sustainability goals despite gaps in federal and state support. Mayor Patterson describes sustainability initiatives in the city of Athens, including solar panels on government buildings, planting shade trees, and fixing sidewalks— and he talks about their carbon fee that recieved 76% public support at the voting booth! And Joe jumps in to explain why Congress should be listening to local leaders right now. In the words of Steve and Joe: “we know what the people are asking for."
Show notes:
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About this Podcast:
With all the depressing climate news out there, it’s sometimes hard to see progress. The Climate Conversation cuts through the noise and presents you with relevant climate change solutions happening on the Hill and in communities around the United States.
Twice a month, join Environmental and Energy Study Institute staff members as they interview environmental, energy, and policy experts on practical, on-the-ground work that communities, companies, and governments are doing to address climate change.
Whether you want to learn more about the solutions to climate change, are an expert in environmental issues, or are a policy professional, this podcast is for you.
Episode Transcript:
Daniel Bresette: Hello and welcome to The Climate Conversation podcast. I'm Dan Bresette, president of the Environmental and Energy Study Institute. And joining me as my co-host for this episode is Hannah Wilson-Black, a member of our communications team here at EESI. Hey, Hannah, welcome back to the podcast.
Hannah Wilson-Black: Thanks, Dan. I'm excited for our episode today.
Daniel Bresette: Me too. And today we have quite a treat. We're talking to Mayor Steve Patterson of Athens, Ohio, and Joe Flarida, Executive Director of Power a Clean Future Ohio—or as we'll call it, PCFO. Power a Clean Future Ohio is a nonprofit organization that equips local leaders with tools and resources to create and implement carbon reduction plans that are achievable, measurable, equitable, and economical. They have over 50 member cities and counties, representing 45% of all Ohioans. Joe, you've led PCFO for the past six years, but before that, you spent some time on Capitol Hill working for the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. And that's actually where we first met, all the way back when you worked there. And you've been back to the Hill since then. You testified in front of a Senate committee in 2022 about the economic costs of climate change. So hello to you both—and Joe specifically, we're recording this from Washington, at least half of us to Washington, so welcome back to your old stomping grounds.
Joe Flarida: Yeah, it's nice to talk to old friends from D.C, revisit some of that incredible work and also to dig a little deeper into the work we're doing here in Ohio, because so much of what I worked on and what so many folks work on in D.C. at times can be a bit distant, right? It can feel a little bit removed from the day-to-day lived experience of Americans and I'm very fortunate to get to do what I do every day because it is so connected to real communities, real experiences of Ohioans, real challenges we're facing. Obviously, it's great to have partners at the federal level too, and partners at the state level. So much of what we're doing and get to do every day in partnership with Mayor Patterson and communities all across Ohio is to address the real challenges that we face in communities, the real environmental challenges, economic challenges, budgetary challenges, all those things.
Hannah Wilson-Black: Athens, Ohio is one of PCFO's member communities, which is why we're joined by Mayor Patterson today as well. Steve Patterson has lived in Athens since 1998. In addition to being the city's mayor, he served as the president of the National League of Cities in 2025. Welcome to The Climate Conversation, Steve and Joe.
Joe Flarida: Thank you.
Steve Patterson: Thank you both.
Hannah Wilson-Black: First off, can you all explain how PCFO and the City of Athens are working together? Mayor Patterson, maybe you can start by telling us about the City of Athens and how its collaboration with PCFO got started.
Steve Patterson: Sure. The City of Athens is a truly amazing place, in my opinion. Of course, I'm biased. I came to Athens in 1998 as a newly minted assistant professor at Ohio University. Athens is home to Ohio University. We have a population of around 25,000—25,072, I believe, with Census Bureau estimates. And we're in the heart of the Appalachian Ohio region. We're a city that was basically—aside from the university being one of our founding pillars of the community back in 1804, the city was established in 1797—we're also in the heart of what was the extraction economy in Ohio, where initially it was coal, actually oil prior to coal. And once most of the oil was extracted, the companies that were here doing the drilling left with their profits. And then coal was identified in southeast Ohio. And so we were a large coal mining region in the state. Again, companies not from Athens or from the state of Ohio coming in, extracting what they were profiting from and left communities to kind of fend for themselves. I've been mayor since 2016 and I was a council member for four years, two terms, prior to that—from 2012 to 2015. And when I became mayor in ‘16, I was kind of all in when it came to us rethinking the climate crisis and climate action in the City of Athens, which we'll get into in more detail. But I have to say PCFO was a large player in that. We've been a member since 2020, one of the early members of PCFO. And one of the things that's kind of been my guiding document was given to us by Power a Clean Future Ohio, which is our greenhouse gas inventory, which spoke volumes to not only “where are we?”, but how we should be thinking, looking forward in time. Because probably the most critical thing to me was that we have the lowest carbon emissions per capita in the state of Ohio. As a matter of fact, we're probably in the top 10% when it comes to low carbon emissions per capita in the United States. The U.S. ranks at 19.9 metric tons per capita. The state of Ohio is approximately 21 metric tons. The city of Athens is 5.8. We're chasing Tacoma, Washington, which is kind of the leader on that leaderboard. But again, it was that document that really set the tone for what we need to continue to do in reducing that carbon emissions per capita. I believe we're well on the way for a city our size. We tend to hit way above our weight when it comes to our goal to reduce carbon emissions and just leave our community in a better place than it was when I became mayor in 2016.
Joe Flarida: And you're kind of seeing how our collaboration came to be live here, which is—our organization founded in 2020, launched publicly in February of 2020 with a desire to work with local governments who want to do this work, who are demonstrating real leadership. And without a doubt one of the very first meetings we said we had to have was with Mayor Patterson in Athens because this is a city that has demonstrated time and again that they're taking on this issue seriously. They're ready to act, ready to move. And so they've been a peer leader across almost every area that we work and someone we point to a lot to say, you know, if you're trying to take on this challenge, whether you're a big city or a small city, anywhere in between, there are folks that are demonstrating you can do this no matter your scale. We've grown now to 54 communities all across Ohio that represent 45% of Ohio's population.
Daniel Bresette: And Joe, among those member communities, there's a range, right? Like you just said, there's larger cities and smaller cities. If you visit the PCFO website, there's a statement that says something along the lines of “the biggest opportunity to address large-scale environmental challenges and opportunities is at the local level.” What was the driver for PCFO reaching that conclusion? What did the founders of the organization see in the communities of Ohio that led them to go down that path?
Joe Flarida: Yeah, I think there's two sides to this answer. There's the dark side and the light side. And I would say, to give you the dark side first, is that Ohio, historically over the past several years, has a pretty bad record when it comes to these issues. And unfortunately, so much so to the point of seeing the state's largest bribery and corruption scandal take place, where we saw the Speaker of the House is now in prison, right? And we've seen multiple arrests and really a tragic story on a number of fronts, but especially challenging for Ohioans who faced additional charges on their bill. Folks can't afford to pay that, but yet wealthy companies decided they were going to corrupt our system for that purpose. And so we saw a lack of state leadership on this issue for years. And not only a lack of leadership, but continued barriers put in place, be it for siting wind, for building new wind projects, building new solar projects, for investing in electric vehicles. It's been a challenge time and again on this. And so that's the bad side of this. The good side of this is that the reason why we were founded, why we launched, was because we saw local leadership doing this work and seeing the opportunity to invest in this and be a leader. This challenge that we face around climate, I think oftentimes can be overwhelming and exhausting because it is this big global challenge. And I will say, having spent time working on these issues at a national and international level, when you look at it, you know, the commitments that countries put toward climate change, those numbers can be a little squishy. When Mayor Patterson looks at his greenhouse gas inventory, those numbers are far less squishy than some national contribution that the United States commits to at a climate negotiation. When a city is assessing their emissions, it gets pretty specific pretty fast. And so when you want to talk about local solutions, when you want to account for carbon and say, where are we going to reduce our emissions? We know where we can find those and we know where the solutions are available to us. And so in a lot of ways, yes, that can be daunting, but it's also invigorating. I found that time again, talking to local leaders, they say, “Well, you frame the challenge for us, you frame the problem, and we have a set of solutions, let's get to work.” And I think to me, that has been the most exciting part about this is that mayors are very practical folks. Local leaders are very practical folks. They’ve got issues to address and they hear about it from residents. They're looking for partnerships and support to get the job done. And that's what we present ourselves as.
Daniel Bresette: If we assume that a lack of squishiness in goals and results is where cities are headed in Ohio, if it's what they're working toward, what are some of the range of services or support options that PCFO offers to member communities? And does that vary based on commitment level? Does it vary based on population? Is it geographical or is it just entirely what the community sees itself as?
Joe Flarida: We like to say we present ourselves in a way that allows us to walk through any door in Ohio and pitch this work because there's a whole number of reasons why you'd want to invest in clean energy, invest in clean transportation, and do this work. Namely, certainly in the past several years, it's a budgetary issue. How can you help invest in technologies that are going to insulate you from some of the volatility in the market? Certainly today is a very clear example of that and what we're facing. And so I think that is number one, is that we want to make sure that the solutions we're providing fit with the challenge. When you talk about the actual technical services we provide, it's mapped to the emissions that we see. So when you look at a typical greenhouse gas inventory across the city, depending on what it's like, whether it's a large manufacturing city or largely residential, you're going to see major emissions from residential building stock. You're going to see emissions from transportation. Those tend to be the largest when it comes to more residential communities. And then, of course, you're going to see commercial industrial emissions as well. Those are the types of services we provide. So it's a number of things from a planning policy level. How do you make sure you're able to put the right policies, incentives, in place, be that a building performance standard or updated zoning code to make adopting solar or electric vehicle infrastructure easier? It's those basic things to help provide that runway for those technologies to come online. And then it's other planning tools like greenhouse gas inventories and those types of things, direct policy guidance on how to make your own buildings more efficient or help educate residents to make them more efficient. We've done a lot of grant writing services, certainly a lot less these days, given the significantly reduced amount of grant opportunities at the federal level. But then also looking at EV adoption. So how do we get more EVs, both from residents, but also municipal fleets as well? And so it's really mapped across those key emission points, but also the key opportunities exist for jobs and savings for municipal budgets as well.
Hannah Wilson-Black: Thank you. That's really helpful for context. I have a question for Mayor Patterson. What has PCFO support allowed Athens to do that it might not have been able to accomplish alone as quickly or even at all?
Steve Patterson: You know, I'd have to say, first off, it's support, it's the connections being made with other mayors across the state of Ohio that are also PCFO members, because it's, at the end of the day, it's those connections and understanding what kinds of interesting projects are other cities doing that we might not be thinking about. We just came back from a trip to England with Joe, with PCFO, and other mayors from across the state. And during that trip, although we had a delegation mission to talk and better understand some things that are going on in London and Manchester and Liverpool, we also had an opportunity to share our stories—but getting to hear what cool things are going on in Lima, Ohio with a solar project or hearing what's going on in Euclid, what's going on in Lorain, Ohio, those typically wouldn't happen without having an organization like PCFO facilitating connections and whatnot. The other thing I would have to say is just the briefers that we receive or the newsletter that comes out, again, helping us dream big and think differently about things we're doing in the city of Athens that PCFO is all about sharing with all of us and even non-members so that people know about PCFO. So for me as a person, it has basically given me the support to know, one, I'm on the right track. Number two, to get the city of Athens excited about it as well. In 2018, we put a ballot initiative out there with the help of our community choice aggregation, which is called Sustainable Ohio Public Energy Council—I'm on the board, just to say that in full disclosure—to where we had this idea to put a carbon fee out there for the electorate in Athens to vote on, which would add 0.2 cents per kilowatt hour if it passed, and that money can only be used on solar projects, on city buildings or government accounts in the city of Athens. It passed by 76%, which was truly remarkable. That revenue can now go towards, like I said, solar projects. You know, we've been a pretty forward-thinking community for...certainly under my leadership, but former mayors too were forward-thinking, where in 2014, we became a charter member of Sustainable Ohio Public Energy Council, which in 2016 had a 100% renewable product on their portfolio. The city of Athens, all of our residents that are SOPEC members have 100% renewables. This is coming from wind RECs out of Texas, but it's renewable energy they're taking advantage of. We just flipped the switch on a 2.1 megawatt solar array that will be using that carbon fee revenue to pay debt service on that. And we were able to retain our solar SRECs, Solar Renewable Energy Credits, which is great because that brings in revenue to the City of Athens, again, for further solar projects. To say that I'm addicted to solar on municipal government accounts would be an understatement. It's true, but it's not just solar. Our new fire station headquarters has solar on the roof and it has geothermal underneath, so a truly remarkable building. We have also, since 2016, been going over the path of converting our fossil fuel vehicles to EVs. We now have two EV police cruisers, which was a hard sell to our police department because at first they're thinking, how long of an extension cord do we need for these EV vehicles to run around the city of Athens? Jokingly, obviously. But they absolutely love their EV police cruisers. My code office, all of their former Crown Vicks or Chevy Impalas are now Nissan Leafs. So they're EVs. We have an EV bus in the Athens public transit system. It's a 16 passenger that's been running on the streets for quite a while now. But again, all those things that we're doing were things that I knew that this is right in alignment with PCFO and what they do and the way they think about things. So that has really been the strength of the relationship and hence my jumping into PCFO early when they came to be. I knew in my heart of hearts it was the right organization to be a part of. Much like in 2017, when the person occupying the White House at that point in time removed the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, we immediately got a resolution in place saying, no, we continue to adhere to the Paris Climate Accord and we're going to continue doing what we know is the right thing to do for the generations behind me and trying to right the wrongs in an area that has been, again, basically abused with extraction economies that came in. And we're just doing everything we can to keep ourselves as resilient and sustainable as we possibly can.
Joe Flarida: Yeah, if I could just add in an example of what I've seen from Athens and from Mayor Patterson in this work. One notable issue we had this past fall was the state does a review of net metering laws every five years. And folks who are unaware, net metering is a rate structure that provides fair compensation to folks who have rooftop solar generation on their home or their business. And that excess generation can be sold back onto the grid. You know, Ohio does have a good net metering policy that allows for that access and allows for that– oftentimes for those projects to pencil because you can sell your excess energy back to the grid. But they need to review those every five years, those laws and rules, administrative code. And what we saw was a last minute request from a utility, I won't name them, who wanted to make a push to dramatically change the net metering rules. And that would have hindered the investment in solar all across the state. And so, you know, we went into activation mode to say, “Hey, local leaders, this is happening. This review is underway right now. And it's, you know, the 11th hour that we saw this. And so, can you move to tell us the value that this brings to your community?” Mayor Patterson, his team moved quickly to do that, along with several other folks across the state to say, no, let's make sure we maintain this fair structure in place to make sure that folks can get the value out of their solar installations. And fortunately, we were able to preserve that. And that's due in large part to seeing such a significant response from local governments who, again, are on the front lines of these issues, that see it every day, that understand it in a way that other folks just do not. When you're at a higher policy level and thinking through these issues, you may miss it. You may miss the reality of what that looks like to change those laws, essentially really hurt an industry and hurt the ability for us to move to more solar generation in our state.
Hannah Wilson-Black: I have a follow up question for you, Steve. You mentioned the ballot initiative that passed with huge support. Was that an idea that was sort of brought to you by residents of Athens? Was that an idea that was sort of created at the city government level and then presented to them? What do you think motivated people to really come out and support that?
Steve Patterson: It was not brought forward by the citizens of Athens. It was brought forward by SOPEC, Sustainable Ohio Public Energy Council, and the city. We had many town hall meetings about this because it qualifies in some ways as – we call it a carbon fee, but it was a tax. So we had to explain that what this would amount to is about $1.60 to $1.80 additional on their electric bill that they would receive every month. And I said, “It's less than a cup of coffee from any of our coffee shops in Athens that you would be paying.” And I think that resonated with them. They also – again, we're a college town. And so being a college town, it's a pretty progressive place. So a lot of the citizens wanted to know more. They wanted to know, well, tell me what you're going to do with this revenue if I'm going to pay extra. But 76% is a very high number in terms of passage of this particular piece of legislation. There has been projects in the city of Athens where it did come forward from our community wanting additional ways to increase our resilience and sustainability. One was a request for a lot more trees in the city of Athens. It's interesting, where we live in the city of Athens, we have about 750 acres of park lands. Most of it is preserve land. So it's got trails in them, but the tree canopy is very strong and healthy in the city. Our tree canopy makes up about 58 to 60% coverage with our tree canopy, which is significant. But we still have work to do along our bike path. There's a – of the 23-mile long Hockhocking Adena bike trail that runs through – or bike path–that runs through Athens, a good portion of it runs in Athens. And we need to plant more trees along that bike path from an equity standpoint because a lot of pedestrians and cyclists use that bike path. Yet there's some areas where it's in the blazing sun all day long. So work to do there, work to put more street trees in. So this year, we're going to plant close to 200 trees in the city of Athens, which is really going to enhance the robustness of our tree canopy. Because we do a pretty good job when it comes to carbon sequestration in the city of Athens. We have, I believe it's around 4% capture, which sounds like a really, really small number. But in the grand scheme of things, it's not. It's pretty substantial for a city to have that percentage of carbon capture due to our tree canopy. That was a citizen-initiated. Sidewalks, another thing that – if you've got more people’s feet walking from point A to point B, as opposed to jumping in the things that we're addicted to, which is our cars, and accessible to all, mind you – is important if you're going to continue to reduce your carbon emissions. We had a lot of aging infrastructure where they didn't have curb ramps, ADA curb ramps, associated with them. And most of them do–especially our newer ones–but we had a number that didn't. We added some sidewalk but most importantly new curb ramps or replacement of curb ramps and we did over 150 of them. We received a grant for 1.01 million to do this and we got that done last year. That was citizen initiated. It was a lot of individuals – either individuals with children and strollers or people with bikes or pedestrians, you know – so that has really augmented what we're doing here in the city of Athens and that was all citizen-based initiatives.
Daniel Bresette: The tree planting business is so important. We've featured – in some of our previous briefings – American Forests, and they have some really tremendous tools, I think it's called the Tree Equity Tool. That helps municipal leaders think about tree canopy because it makes such a difference. A little bit of shade on a bike path or a sidewalk, it makes such a difference. So these are great solutions. And I suspect that if the good people of Athens, Ohio can do them, other people in other communities across the country can do them as well. And in order for that to happen, it helps to have a supportive or at least conducive federal policy environment. So Joe, this might be a question for you, but of course, we'd love to hear what Mayor Patterson has to say as well. What's the relationship between what PCFO is trying to do in Ohio and federal policies? And how has all of the will-they-won't-they around tax incentives over the last couple of years, how has that affected what communities like Athens and other PCFO member communities have been able to accomplish?
Joe Flarida: Yeah, I think the thing we hear a lot from the business community is “Certainty. We want certainty. Give us policy certainty, tax incentive certainty, any of those things. That allows us to function in some sort of reality that we can plan for ahead.” That is the exact same case for local governments. It's the same case for state governments. If you have policy certainty, a strong market signal from the federal level, you can plan. You can do investments that may seem even a little risky. But if you know for certain that you have something at your back, be it a federal policy incentive, a federal program that provides funding, or certainly a tax credit that you can leverage, that helps us look out. And we had 10 years of tax credits that we thought were in place, only for them to be pulled away. And so I think for folks that want to purport to be and represent to be pro-business, I think what we've seen is one of the most anti-business eras in federal policymaking that is going to hurt domestic manufacturing. It's going to hurt the growing clean energy job market that we have seen and enjoyed here in Ohio, and unfortunately now is hindered by all of this work. And so this past year to me has been, to put it simply, frustrating, incredibly difficult for local governments as folks try to plan around what they had in place for tax credits in this work, and that was going to result in significant job growth in these communities for both the manufacturing side, but also when you talk about the purchasing and installers and all those additional jobs that get leveraged alongside this, those are all in jeopardy or not showing up. And so, for us, what we shifted to quickly when we had the grant opportunities available to folks to support them in grantwriting, identifying, doing matchmaking, figuring out how they could, you know, get a hold of some of those grant dollars. And we were very successful. There was a lot of hope and excitement around some of that work to come to Ohio. And we were significantly impacted by, you know, grants that just disappeared, that were frozen and locked out, that contracts were canceled and whole grant programs that just were taken off the map. And so I can't picture maybe a worse set of circumstances over the past year for some of these investments. And like I said, it's severely impacted Ohio. We've got numbers of the job losses that we can share with folks as well. But for us, it was, at the time, how do we advise folks and leverage this work? And today, we still stand in that gap to say, what is left of these tax credits? How can we take advantage of them now? Because certainly the changes were made, many of them will sunset, and policy adjustments were made to how you can access those, but some of them still exist. And so how can we leverage them today and still do that? So we still provide that sort of project-by-project guidance and support, but it is a difficult environment, a difficult circumstance. And I know Mayor Patterson has experienced some of this directly in Athens as well.
Steve Patterson: Yeah, if I could add to that, Joe, to your point, such a great point – it's been frustrating. There are frustrations in Athens over some of the changes that have taken place. Most notably, two come to mind. Number one, we put a lot of work into creating an environment for our residents to better access solar for their homes. And part of that was knowing with the Inflation Reduction Act, there's a real opportunity for citizens in a more cost-effective way to deploy solar on their homes to where we changed code, we changed the requirements for putting solar on their rooftops or ground mounted in their yards if they choose to. A lot of work went in there. We also went down the path of creating a more streamlined way to get a permit to put solar on your home to where now someone in Athens – and again, this was to take advantage of the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA – where someone can now apply for a permit to put solar on their homes online. And within 24 hours, if everything checks out, we'll have that permit in their hands to be able to deploy that. Now, the citizens who are just energy conscious and want to save more dollars in their pockets, they're doing it anyway, knowing that this is the right thing to do, but to Joe's point, it was certainly frustrating and not for lack of being on the Hill and working hard, much like PCFO does. Much like I've been doing with the National League of Cities. I was just on the Hill in March talking about these types of things. The other story – again, while frustrating, it hasn't dampened our motivation to do better – was we ended up pulling together 20-plus political subdivisions across southern Ohio from Athens to Dayton, and were successful in getting a charging and fueling infrastructure grant, all told $16.2 million. And then in early 2025, DOGE happened to where all of a sudden that money was frozen. Still trying to work through the release of it, but that's not likely to happen. But it was truly disappointing for all the communities. And some of these communities are villages of 172 people. Amesville, Ohio, thinking, man, we're going to get a DC fast charge charging station, you know, level three, which to them is one of those pipe dreams that they would never experience if it weren't for something like this. Again, frustration. But I think if you don't go on the Hill and you aren't fighting hard for any of these things when it comes to protecting your environment and providing equity in an otherwise chronically distressed part of the state of Ohio, you know, you're never going to get these types of things. So, you know, we keep working on our mission, keep working with PCFO because we know we have a partner who, too, is lobbying hard for the things that we need and we're entitled to, in my opinion, given everything that we've had to live through from our history, to make our environment as clean and safe as possible.
Daniel Bresette: So you just mentioned, Mayor Patterson, you just mentioned you were recently on the Hill, presumably meeting with the Ohio delegation. Is there a kind of a bottom line that you might share with offices or Congressional staff that you didn't just meet with about the real world challenges that small local governments are trying to deal with and the responsibilities to your constituents that you have to make Athens sustainable in all of the different ways it can possibly be sustainable?
Steve Patterson: Yeah, I think the number one thing that I would say is that as mayors, city council members, village council members, village administrators, city managers, we're the closest form of government to the people themselves. I joke around, but it's true. It used to take me 20 minutes to go through the farmer's market here in Athens, which is a robust farmer's market. It now takes me about two hours to go through because, you know, everyone wants to voice their opinion to the mayor or to a city council member. We get things done. You know, we have to. We face the people every single day, wherever we are. And so we're working. We're working and we're working when we're on the Hill. We're working to explain what is going on in our communities, which at the end of the day, it's their constituents too. But they're not as close as we are to what people actually want, what they need, the way they're thinking about things. So for me, it's: we're working to protect our communities. Congress, please get to work to solve a lot of the issues that we're having to deal with because you're the ones who are setting federal policy. Things like the National Flood Insurance Program reauthorization. Get to work and get it done. Rail safety is another big issue. Get to work and get it done and properly fund them, I guess is my bottom line. But my tagline would be: we're doing the work, please do your work, and together we can really move the needle on a lot of initiatives that we're all wanting, what the constituents are wanting.
Joe Flarida: Yeah, I would add to this, and I don't want to sound too dire, but to these offices, the bottom is falling out, and they need to demonstrate some leadership here. I think in Congress, there's this feeling of, “Well, if we pass a continuing resolution and we keep the government open, then we've done our job.” And there could be not a poorer way of grading yourself than doing the bare minimum here. And that's what we see from Congress. Time and again, over and over, they do this. They haven't acted on critical pieces of legislation, critical challenges and problems that are facing communities all across the country, especially here in Ohio. People are in a position where they're needing to choose between whether they pay their utility bill or they pay their rent, or they pay their utility bill or their grocery bill. And that is a dire circumstance that folks are facing, and they're looking to say, well, who's to blame here, right? Is it the data centers? Is it my utility? Is it my members of Congress who are refusing to take on this issue seriously? And what we know is that there's lots we can do right away, right? The fastest and cheapest energy to build is solar. There's all kinds of investments we can make in our grid locally, regionally, nationally to improve this situation. And they need to act. They need to act now and they need to do it quickly to address what is a growing bigger and bigger challenge of energy affordability. It's an absolute crisis. And certainly war with Iran has made that so much worse and just putting fuel onto the flame there. So I think that's the message I would give them is: sober yourselves up, act like an adult in this room and actually do something to address the real challenges facing Ohioans, the real challenges facing Americans.
Daniel Bresette: Well, thank you, Joe. And thank you, Mayor Patterson, for joining us. That is a call to action, I think it's fair to say, but also it's really critically important. And it's been really interesting for me, at least – I'll let Hannah speak for herself – to hear about all the amazing work that's happening in Athens and across PCFO member jurisdictions. Thank you so much for joining us on this episode of The Climate Conversation podcast.
Hannah Wilson-Black: Thank you so much, y'all.
Steve Patterson: Thank you.
Daniel Bresette: Well, Hannah, I'm not sure what there is more to say. Mayor Patterson and Joe covered so much ground. It's really important for a federal policymaker audience to be in touch with those local leaders, understanding what these issues really look like on the ground. From what I understand, being a mayor is a very hard job because your constituents never take no for an answer. And that requires a special kind of leader. And Mayor Patterson seems to be doing quite a good job balancing sort of economic sustainability, environmental sustainability, climate sustainability, you name it. Really great episode, lots of great insights, and I'm really looking forward to keeping track of everything going on in Athens, Ohio.
Hannah Wilson-Black: Yeah, like Joe and Steve said, state and federal officials at the end of the day are pretty removed from a town of under 200 people who want an electric vehicle charger and otherwise can't afford that infrastructure. And so they know what they're talking about. And I think a lot of what they were saying was: listen to us, talk to us, contact us. We know what the people want. And you know what the people want? They want to learn more about EESI's work, which you can do by heading to our website at EESI.org. Also, follow us on social media at @eesionline to hear about our new resources and events. Please make sure to follow The Climate Conversation podcast on Spotify, Amazon, and Apple and give it a rating or review. Share it with your friends. The Climate Conversation is published as a supplement to our bi-weekly newsletter, Climate Change Solutions. Go to eesi.org/sign up to subscribe. Thanks for joining us and see you next time.
Daniel Bresette: We did it.
Hannah Wilson-Black: We did it!
Advancing science-based solutions for a sustainable, resilient, and equitable world
Top-Rated Climate Nonprofit – 4-Star Charity