It's said that change is the only constant, but South Dakota is stuck, continually revisiting
concerns that really aren't that concerning to most people in our state, while real needs
remain unmet.
Our smartest and brightest leaving for greener pastures.
We can change that.
Welcome to Change Agents and the power of we.
Hello and welcome to another edition of the power of we.
My name is Rick Knobe.
The power of we is one of the efforts of the group Change Agents of South Dakota to communicate
with folks, not just face to face, but through the wizardry of electronics and this podcast.
And we thank you very much for listening to us today.
We're going to do a little follow up an event that happened on Saturday, December 2nd.
It was called the Community Conversation on Climate Change and Sustainability.
And we have three guests with us today.
First of all, we have Craig Brown, who is a part of Change Agents of South Dakota and
numerous other efforts, political and non-political.
Craig, hello and welcome.
Hello, good to be here.
Nice to have you with us.
Linda Stensland, whose name is probably familiar to some of you.
She served in the South Dakota legislature back when there weren't many women in the
South Dakota legislature.
And she's also one of the people that started leading the state towards paying attention
to the environment long before that was fashionable.
Linda, nice to have you here.
Nice to be here, Rick.
Thank you.
And then of course, the man running just about everything here electronically is John Fiksdal.
We are in the studios of Media One today doing this recording.
Mr. Fiksdal is well known to many folks who have been around successful projects that
required media assistance.
John, hello and welcome.
Thank you.
Thanks for inviting me, Rick.
Appreciate it.
Linda, I'm going to start with you because I know you were in the audience the day of
December 2nd when we had the event on climate change and sustainability.
I know you've been around this stuff for a long time and have probably far more expertise
than most of the people that were in the room that day.
But interested in your reaction to what you heard, what you observed, and any takeaways
that you had from that event.
Well, first of all, I was very excited to see all the people.
I think John has probably better numbers than I have, but I figured there were at least
200 people there.
In my day...
Okay, I'm going to stop you right there because I've since looked at the Mentimeter stuff
and the responses on one of them were 243.
So I think there were between 250 and 300 people at the event.
The group put out, the SODAC 350 group put out...
158 participants.
I rounded out at about 200 because I figured there was a lot of people in the room that
didn't register, you know, the various people running booths and stuff like that.
That's more than likely.
Yeah.
So that's where I came from, about 200, and I'm comfortable with that number.
Well, if you've got 243 people signed into the Mentimeter system, those are separate
phones, each one.
Okay.
All right.
That's fine with me.
So, you know, almost 250.
Go for it.
That's great.
Yeah.
And that was exciting to see so many people actually interested and involved in sustainability
and climate.
So that was a really positive thing for me.
I thought the speakers were extremely good.
And I really enjoyed the architect talking about buildings that were more environmentally
conscious and what that savings was to the people that rented those spaces.
Stacey McMahon was the architect with Koch Hazard.
Yes.
Yeah, she made a good presentation.
Yes, she did a very good presentation.
How did the table topic conversations go?
You were obviously part of that.
Every table had conversations.
How did yours go?
We had very positive conversations.
And one of the people at our table is a student at Augie, and he's a student in environmental
sciences.
So he brought a real technical expertise to the table.
But we had very positive people are concerned.
Someone that day talked about radical hope.
And I really like that because radical hope is the difference between the climate deniers
or the people that are terrified, and then the people who think that solutions can be
accomplished.
And so that's the idea of radical hope.
And I thought that was exciting.
Craig Brown was involved in helping put this event together.
He also was the roving microphone when it came time for people to ask questions of the
speakers and make general comments.
So he was roaming the room, as it were, that day.
Craig, what impressions did you get from what you saw and heard?
Well, I think first and foremost, it's so important to take note that people showed
up.
As you mentioned, I'm kind of a veteran of a lot of different causes.
The first time I was arrested was in Sioux Falls during the Vietnam War protests, just
to put you in the way back machine there.
But all my life, I've been willing to hit the streets, so to speak, over causes.
And it led me to a deeply held belief that it's just important to show up as a citizen
of this community, of this world, and make your presence known.
So you think about, okay, it's a cold December morning.
It's early for some people, you know, 9 o'clock, 9:30.
And 200 people got up and went down in, you know, what I have to term is a bit of a mystery.
They didn't know what they were going to hear.
They didn't know what they were going to discuss.
But they showed up, and they were willing to engage in the conversations.
You know, I moved from table to table, as you mentioned, and I never found a single
table the whole morning that was off topic.
They weren't chit chatting about other stuff or the price of groceries or anything else.
They were there to talk about climate change and how it impacted them.
And by gosh, they did that.
And I realize I'm not expecting to remember every discussion you heard, but do you have
some of the topics that came up?
Because every table was free to talk about basically whatever they wanted to, as long
as it related to climate and sustainability.
What's some of the stuff that you recall hearing?
Well the one that stuck out for me, you know, was a real takeaway was the gentleman who
was obviously involved in the trades and, you know, had asked the question about code.
And you know, that's something, building codes.
Building codes, yeah.
And so that was, that stuck out to me because, you know, he was, he understood that we needed
to update building codes and he was in a vigorous conversation with people going back and forth
about what this meant for his business.
And it was a little unclear to me exactly what that was, which trade he was involved
in.
But you know, there was a vigorous discussion between him and three other gentlemen at his
table going back and forth about what that would mean, the updating of the codes.
And that's the one that really hung with me.
One of the things I remember hearing under the architect, Stacey, talked about the fact
that the building codes for the city of Sioux Falls, there's different sections, different
chapters.
Right.
The chapter on energy and conservation is a 2009 version.
That's right.
And there are versions up to and including, I think, 2021.
And so our energy and conservation codes, which is all part of this climate and sustainability
thing, are way behind the technology that's available today.
And that really surprised me.
And it, what I, from some of the publicity that's come out over the summer out of City
Hall and other places, is that the leadership at City Hall does not seem the least bit interested
in updating those codes.
Yeah.
I mean, I think that's, you know, we're going to talk in the future about what citizens
can and should be doing.
I think that's a great place to start.
The citizens of Sioux Falls deserve to have an answer of, you know, what is the process
by which we do update these codes?
And why are we behind other cities in the area?
What's really frustrating is that all around us, cities have updated their codes.
Bismarck, North Dakota, Omaha, Nebraska, Rochester, Minnesota, Madison, Wisconsin, Fort Collins,
Colorado, Missouri, LaTown, Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Fargo.
They're all doing it.
And we're sitting here with 2009 building codes.
Doesn't make sense.
Especially when you realize that if those codes were updated, it is to the benefit of
those who inhabit those dwellings.
It might cost a little bit upfront, but the fact of the matter is that extra is retired
in a very short period of time to the benefit of whoever inhabits those dwellings.
Yeah.
One of the presentations was by Joan Franken, and she was with Costello Companies, and they
are builders of basically blue star, green star kinds of dwelling units, apartment buildings,
and they built one of the first sustainable slash affordable apartment complexes in Sioux
Falls.
And she showed a chart about a one-bedroom apartment constructed this way, and then the
one-bedroom apartment that they built, and the cost per month on utilities was like,
I think was close to a 20% difference, as I recall.
And of course, they've got one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedrooms, and I don't remember
all the numbers, but each one of them had a substantial difference in the, for what
you and I would call the operational costs or the living costs for the tenants.
And that really surprised me.
I heard there were savings, but to actually see it, somebody who actually does this for
a living, that was pretty profound for me.
And looking at those savings points to the importance and the benefit and why we should
be embracing sustainability, because it's going to save all of those people money in
their rents, and we're just ignoring that.
John, I want to go back to the first question that I asked.
John Fiksdal was in the room.
He was handling a lot of the technical stuff, the screens and the recordings, et cetera,
et cetera, et cetera.
And you've put on a lot of events like this in your career.
What was your takeaway overall from that particular day?
Interested in just hearing from you on that?
Well, I'd ask anyone who's listening right now to decide who you think would show up
to an event like this.
I mean, you think it'd lean left probably.
Certainly those on the right side of the political spectrum would eschew such an event.
But what really impressed me was the broad spectrum of people who showed up to be in
this thing.
This is not a liberal or conservative issue.
This is an existential issue.
It's about whether or not we continue to exist.
And I, for instance, can quote one prominent, and I'd have to say leans very conservative,
Sioux Falls citizen, businesswoman, whose name many people I know would know and recognize,
who in conversation with me stated, well, you know, I was a little worried about coming
here because I was afraid I was going to hear all this whacked out liberal claptrap.
And the fact of the matter was the discussion was direct.
It was fact-based, evidence-based, to the point, drove right down the middle of everyone's
concerns.
And it was a very broad range of Sioux Falls constituents who showed up to express their
concern that we in our city are not doing what we can and should be doing to address
this issue together.
Thank you for that.
Appreciate it.
Since that event was on December 2nd, where we're past that a little bit, the International
COP 28, I think it was called, environmental thing, was held in Dubai.
Something like 70,000 people attended that.
And one of the things that they were struggling with apparently was fossil fuels because the
person who was running the event, of course, is one of the princes of the fossil fuel industry
literally and figuratively.
And so he had put out some statements which were a little bit.
And my understanding is they adjourned and they did come up with some statement, although
I haven't read it yet, that deals with the eventual decrease of reliance on fossil fuels.
And I never thought that would ever happen.
That's a big deal to me.
Well, given that climate change is going to impact the lives of every single person on
the face of the planet, even those people who are intricately involved in the production
of fossil fuels have to know that this is going to impact their kids, their grandkids.
The inconvenient truth is just that.
You're going to quote Al Gore?
Well, yeah.
I realize that people roll their eyes or slap their foreheads at the mention of Al Gore
because he was one of the early, what, the canary in the coal mine at the end of the
last century talking about this, but in truth nothing has changed.
And I recently watched a video with Gore and he reminded us that in spite of the efforts
of ordinary citizens to avoid unnecessary trips, to recycle paper and everything else,
in truth that's not going to make much difference.
And Bill Nye said the same thing the other night on CNN.
Those kinds of things are not going to make much difference.
We've got to tackle the big questions around the production of fossil fuel, the exploration
for it, how we get it out of the ground.
It's never going to go away in our lifetime, of course, but how we get it out of the ground,
how we produce it, how we produce cement and concrete, all of those are vital questions
that could have a significant impact on our world.
One of the things that was interesting to me in just focusing on one of the speakers
was Laura Edwards, who's the state climatologist.
And she puts up some charts and graphs and stuff and showed the trends over the last
several years and what they're forecasting for the future.
And there were two things that she said that caused me to go, ah, well, that's nice.
First of all, our winters aren't going to be quite as brutally cold.
And that was one thing I got out of it.
And the second thing that she mentioned was that, according to what they're looking at,
the growing season is going to be a little bit longer.
OK?
So you listen to that and you soak that up and you say, OK, geez, well, that's not so
bad.
What's everybody worried about?
But what she didn't focus on, and it's not her field of expertise necessarily, was the
day-to-day weather events.
And the day-to-day weather events, all you have to do is watch the news and watch the
severity of hurricanes, the frequency and severity of tornadoes, the rainstorms that
have inundated places that have never been inundated before, the droughts that have decimated
all kinds of things.
And so there's climate, which is the big long-term stuff.
But then there's the individual events that have gotten more severe and will continue
to be more severe.
And I thought back, was it last year, the year before, we had, I think, two derechoes
come through within a very short period of time, those gigantic windstorms that killed
a couple of people and did all kinds of damage, primarily to trees, but also structural damage.
And so as you look at the charts, then talks about climate around here, it doesn't look
so bad.
But the day-to-day weather stuff is going to be, I think we're going to have more derechoes.
People will probably experience more tornadoes, more floods.
And for the people that grow crops for a living in certain parts of the state, the droughts
are going to be more severe and longer.
And my takeaway from Laura Edwards was more bugs because-
Yes, they winter over.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
That was another thing.
More bugs.
And I'm not a fan of bugs.
Well, and the other part of that was, I'm not sure what the term is, and maybe you guys
can help me with this, but the, we're climate zones, and we were like in a zone four or
something like that.
And now we're in a different zone because of the climate change.
And so plants that used to thrive here maybe won't thrive here.
And some of the birds that used to be here and thrive here, they may not be here anymore
because the weather, the climate has changed enough that they will seek other places to
go and probably the same thing with animals.
And as you point out, Craig, bugs, we could find all kinds of new creatures floating through
the atmosphere that weren't here before.
Well, the point I'd like to make is that there always seems to be a debate as to whether
or not we're doing this.
Or the other question is, wait a minute, this is just another one of nature's broad swings.
Well, facts are stubborn things, and we've got a lot of facts, and we've got facts that
go back 800,000 years.
We can, we're able to see what the weather patterns were then and what is going on right
now, particularly in terms of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is truly, truly bizarre.
And you know what?
Whose fault it is?
This is the wrong question.
It doesn't matter.
What does matter is that we recognize those acts that we take as humankind in our day-to-day
and month-to-month and year-to-year behaviors that contribute to this problem and to mitigate
and to just stop doing it.
It doesn't matter whose fault it is.
It doesn't matter if this is humankind or not.
The facts are these, and these are facts.
They're not suppositions.
It's getting warmer.
The glaciers are melting, chipping off, breaking away.
These countries, and I saw an interview with some of those countries like in the South
Pacific, these small little islands, they're going to be gone, folks.
I mean, their land is going to disappear.
So what steps we're taking depend upon the things that we are doing that contribute to
the problem and we have to stop it.
I would love to just stop right here because that's a perfect place to stop, but let's
take a moment.
I want to go back to something that Craig said and I think was part of the basic conversation
about individual actions are important, but the big picture stuff like fossil fuels and
how we generate energy and wind farms and solar and alternative energy sources, those
are bigger than individual decisions.
But I come back to everything that's local.
So every decision that you and I make on a daily basis on how much are we contributing
to the problem, and I've talked about I don't drive my car two days a week and now I'm driving
a hybrid and I'm still not driving two days a week.
My thermostat set at 67 and I don't take the elevator, I take the stairs and I don't use
plastic bags anymore and stuff like that.
On the giant scheme of things, Craig, as you pointed out, that isn't going to move the
ship much at all, but if 50,000 of us in Sioux Falls do something with their thermostat,
decide not to drive their cars a couple of days a week or at least one day a week, that
does have an impact.
It does have an impact and there's still more things that we can do as citizens because
this statement is going to be an anathema to some, but government does have a part to
play in this because it is government that can pass an ordinance to do things like, well,
I moved back to South Dakota from a community where recycling was mandatory and I didn't
think anything of it, it didn't bother me in the least.
And I didn't talk to any of my neighbors that were bothered by it at all, it was just expected
and yet we see recycling rates in Sioux Falls have gone down in the last couple of years
and that's a dreadful trend.
We should encourage all of our neighbors to get involved in recycling.
We also need to encourage the city to make sure that we have an effective recycling program
so that all the recyclables are actually going to be recycled and not going to the garbage
because they pick up the recyclables in garbage trucks.
And where I come from, from Maryland, they have recycling trucks that pick up the recyclables
and they encourage people, your recyclables have to be clean and you don't put the paper
in with the cans and the bottles.
So there are a whole lot of simple things that we could do, the city could do to be
more effective.
Well you'll be pleased to know that I went to the city sustainability conference five
days after December 2nd and the mayor invited anyone who was interested to go out and tour
the waste treatment plant and see what the city does with its recycling.
So by God I'm going to take him up on that.
Oh me too, when is it?
We're getting it organized.
But maybe if citizens showed more interest in seeing what's happening with those efforts,
it not only holds a little bit of visceral accountability for the people involved in
that effort, but it puts us in a better position to influence our neighbors to get behind that
effort.
Well that's a proven fact that an energized public involved in public policy creates positive
change.
So that's something that as a person, we all have a responsibility to be doing that.
Well that's what happened.
That's what happened on December 2nd.
Take into perspective here, it's easy to vilify somebody at a distance, I don't know,
or mayor, but what I do know are the facts of the history here.
To reach out to the community, to pull together a group of really dedicated, very smart people
who know what they were talking about, people who were there for a reason because of their
knowledge and their expertise.
And they pulled together this series of recommendations and they said, this is what the city should
do.
And the mayor said, okay, let's take a look at that.
And some time passed and it passed and then some more time passed and all of a sudden,
the sustainability plan was stripped to the bone, essentially gutted, and actionable goals
were removed and this quote unquote framework came forward that, I'm going to say it, pissed
a lot of people off.
I mean, the people who had spent hundreds of hours in planning sessions and thinking
about this and contributing to these efforts, what happened?
How did that happen?
Well, it's easy to suppose that politics got in the way and who knows which way the
mayor thinks he's headed here.
I don't, I certainly don't.
But the fact of the matter is that it was politically challenging to present to the
community action steps that would have financial ramifications in many different areas across
the board.
And so what happened?
Well, they're not going to drop the ball.
They're going to keep it up.
And what happened was December 2nd, where over 250 people came together out of the woodwork
and said, no, we have to do something.
And it was truly refreshing to see them there.
It's going to be interesting.
Now, SODAC 350 was kind of the mothership of the coalition, Dakota Rural Action, a group
that I was unfamiliar with, Citizens Climate Lobby is a relatively new group in town.
And then our group, Change Agents of South Dakota, and then Common Grounds Indivisible
were part of the coalition that put this event together.
And it's going to be interesting now to see what SODAC 350, again, the mothership, how
they move forward.
I know they're going to move forward enthusiastically.
The members of the coalition, Sustainability Coalition, are working together, planning
for the next event.
They are not going to go away.
And they're going to keep talking to you, the citizens of our area, publicly about their
plans and their action steps.
And we invite you to stay tuned.
We on this program, The Power of We, we're going to be talking about that and a whole
bunch of other issues that are coming before us.
There's an election coming up in April, where public policy people will be elected.
And we're going to be involved in conversations on that.
So Linda, thank you very much.
You're welcome.
John, it's always a pleasure.
Enjoy it.
And Craig, as usual, nice work.
Thank you very much.
Thanks, sir.
The Power of We brought to you by Change Agents of South Dakota.
I'm Rick Knobe.
Have a good afternoon.