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 the power of we brought to you by Change Agents of South Dakota.
I'm Rick Knobe.
As we get started with today's program, we just want to say congratulations to Dawn Marie
Johnson.
She was elected to the Sioux Falls School Board.
She was endorsed by our organization and we're just very pleased that she will become a member
of the Sioux Falls School Board.
So that's one topic of conversation as you recall we interviewed her last session and
talked about what she wanted to do if she gets on the board.
Today we're going to focus on sustainability and sustainability plans.
These days you turn on the radio, you watch television, you read articles.
There's all kinds of stories going on being published about climate change and what it
means and what's happening here, there and everywhere around the world.
And some of it's not very good stuff.
Sudan, all the tornadoes, the huge flood down in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, some of the crazy
weather in California this year.
The list goes on and on and on.
Joining us today to talk about the Sioux Falls sustainability plan or at least one version
of it are two members of one of the task forces or steering committees that were put together
to deal with this issue for the city of Sioux Falls.
First of all, a senior member of the panel is a gentleman by the name of Casey Abbott.
He is a professional engineer.
He was one of the original members of the original task force and he joins us.
Also Dr. Michael Heisler is with us.
He is a physician and has some practice, his practice involved in ICU medicine, medical
care, etc.
And he was also a member of the task force, the second incarnation of it.
Gentlemen hello and welcome.
Hello, good to see you.
Thanks for asking us.
Casey, I want to start with you.
In 25,000 words or less, what's a sustainability plan?
What does it do?
What's it mean?
It's a roadmap to lead Sioux Falls to a more sustainable future and we had one about 10
years ago and it was due to get updated and they asked me back in early January of 2021
if I would be willing to be on the committee and I said that I would and we got together
and over the next year we put together a plan and put it out there for the public input.
I mean there was lots of public input on this.
Eventually the mayor presented it and I was at the announcement for it, I was out at the
environmental center and it was shortly after that we got feedback that we had to go back
and get some additional feedback and redo it and you know I'm a business owner and it
took a lot of my time.
I mean there was a lot of input from a number of people.
In the original plan.
The original plan didn't get to that stage.
We brought more people on and that's when I think Michael you came on board but you
know I was very excited with the progress we'd made and getting the different inputs.
Okay.
Alright.
So Michael you came on in the second incarnation of this.
You're a medical doctor.
For me as a living breathing human being on the planet what does climate change and its
impacts, what impact does that have on me as an individual?
So that's really an important question because when you think about why the city of Sioux
Falls and why the community should care about this and you ask you know the question to
Casey our focus on this has been on the health impacts of climate change and on the business
opportunity that transition.
Let's just focus on the health aspects of it.
I want to pretend this is all about me Michael.
Yeah no for sure.
So but that's an important issue.
So the health impacts of climate change are measurable and they're real and they're already
happening in our community.
I'll give you an example.
So when things get warm and wet in Sioux Falls we begin to deal with West Nile virus which
is indigenous to our area.
From the ICU perspective you know we know that we're going to get patients coming in
with West Nile.
The number of cases of West Nile and the number of mosquitoes carrying West Nile has gone
up in our region over the last five to ten years as the average temperature has gone
up and as the amount of rain has gone up.
So the ability to breed West Nile virus has gone up.
Every month there's a new article in one of the important medical journals about ways
that climate change is impacting our health, both our public health in terms of the number
of disasters, the number of floods, the number of tornadoes.
And what we're learning that's maybe surprising to people is the impact on specific organ
system diseases.
So someone like you for example would say well will it affect my lungs, will it affect
my heart, will it affect other organs.
We don't have time to go into all of that but we're learning more and more and more
that there's basically not an organ system that isn't impacted by climate change through
heat, through particulate matter in the air, through the impact on stress on your heart.
And we're learning more and more every day about it.
Just in terms of natural disasters there's been a 300% increase in what we call billion
dollar disasters in the United States since 2000.
300% and we all know that we pick up the newspaper every day and you already made reference to
it.
But there are health and public health events too because they lead to trauma and to people
showing up in the ER with heat stroke and on and on and on.
So it's a real issue.
Okay, I'm going to, yeah, go ahead Casey.
And I'd like to tie in on that heat stroke.
What a lot of people don't realize, the rising temperatures, you know, that we're seeing
get a lot of the attention.
But the other thing that is going on is our humidity levels are rising.
And we humans, we cool ourselves by evaporative heat transfer.
But as those dew points rise, it becomes more difficult for us to dissipate that heat and
we're seeing rises in heat stroke.
Like over in the Northwest when they had that terrible, I mean there were like 300, 400
people that died in the Northwest from that, the record heat they had last year.
So there is with these rising dew points, which is a combination of the temperature
but also the humidity levels rising, it's impacting more and more areas and we're going
to be impacted too.
I think about, you know, the greenhouse gas thing and the particulates in the air, Doc,
is what you pointed out.
And I've got relatives who have asthma and I've got friends with COPD and etc.
They're already compromised and I'm assuming based on what you're telling us basically
is the worse this gets, the worse the asthma is going to get, COPD and other kinds of breathing
things that impact people's daily lives.
Well, we already see it.
I mean, we know it in our practice, both COPD and asthma.
I mean, just for example, the number of children who have acute asthma attacks who end up at
Children's Hospital at the Sanford Children's Hospital in the emergency room is increasing
because of the particulate matter and because of the increased heat that, you know, Casey's
already alluded to.
So it's not something that we think may happen someday.
It's happening right now.
Okay.
Let's talk about the plan.
You folks submitted a plan to the mayor in December of last year, December 2022, and
there were several recommendations in that plan to get us from where we are to where
the mayor had said that he wants to take us, which was net zero by 2050.
Give us a couple of the things that are in the plan that you had that you think are really
important that are not going to cost $17 billion and take 150,000 people to do it.
Yeah.
So in fact, in the plan that our steering committee submitted, there were six focus
areas that the mayor and the city had defined.
And you can go to the website, the city website and see those, but you know what they already
are.
Their energy, their transportation, their green communities, their water, et cetera,
et cetera.
There were 70 recommendations in those six areas combined that dealt with each of those
issues.
And what really matters, and I know you know this, that our plan we thought was the plan
that would go to city council was then over the holidays replaced by a plan that was no
longer a plan but is now a framework.
And a lot of these things that we, the members of the steering committee, thought were important
were either changed or removed.
So to answer your question, here's an example of something that we had in the draft that
we did that we submitted for final review in December that changed significantly, building
codes.
So you could ask why do building codes matter?
And Casey knows a lot about building codes.
But the steering committee that expanded and what happened between the 18 member steering
committee and the 31 member is that really important stakeholders were added, like the
utilities, like the gas companies, like the building association.
They weren't at the table during that first 18 committee effort.
And that was a legitimate concern.
Well that was taken care of with the expanded.
So the new plan that dealt with business building codes included the home building association
and the utilities, et cetera, et cetera.
The discussion was whether or not Sioux Falls ought to move from its current guideline,
which is the 2009 IECC, the International Energy Conservation Codes, and join every
other city in our region and adopt either 2018 or 2021 codes.
We recommended after lots and lots of discussion, and some of us thought it ought to be 2021,
but we agreed with the overall consensus that 2018 was a significant move forward and it
would make a difference.
The city commissioned a study in the middle of this process by a reputable organization
called the Pacific Northwest National Labs.
They released their report to the city on November 18th, right in the middle of all
of this.
The question that went to that research lab was what would be the impact if we went from
2009 to 2018?
And here's the real short answer to that.
There would be a cost savings of 23.4% overall to the city, which was a number that none
of us expected.
It was far greater than we thought.
There would be $619 annually saved if we went to 2018 codes.
In the city, in the first year alone, the city would save $617,000 in energy costs and
decrease CO2 emissions by 4,500 metric tons.
Those are big numbers and they make a difference.
Okay, let me just stop for just a second.
So the $619 that you said, that's I own a home in Sioux Falls or I live in an apartment
in Sioux Falls and I'm paying for electricity and I'm paying for natural gas.
What you're telling me is I, as a utility user, would save $600 plus a year if I was
living in a place with the updated business building codes.
That's exactly right.
And here's the other thing that's important.
The additional cost in your home or apartment construction would be recovered within the
first year.
So this idea that, well, we can't afford to do this because it'll increase the cost of
construction and it'll increase our mortgage turns out not to be accurate.
We actually, by the report by the Pacific Northwest Labs, we recovered that cost, not
in 10 years, in the first year alone.
So yeah, you would recover your additional cost in the first year and every year thereafter,
you'd save over $600 a year in your energy costs.
Why wouldn't we do that?
Yeah, that's not petty cash for most people.
And we decrease carbon emissions by 4,500 tons.
Why wouldn't we do that?
Now I will make one minor correction.
In that first year, you're going to have a positive cash flow.
The actual payback is 3.8 years, but still a great payback.
And like, well, one figure that should catch everybody's attention is the life cycle cost
of the savings, $13,049 that you're going to come ahead by having this more updated
code.
And I know they also did a study for apartments and they're the ones that, you know, we want
to try to get them where they can eventually buy a home.
The payback for apartments, if we went to this from the 2009 to the 2018 code, is 2.1
years.
I hear a lot of pushback about housing affordability, but that needs to include, you know, the energy
cost.
And when citizens of Sioux Falls are paying substantially higher energy costs or energy
bills because of these buildings that are designed to this 2009 code where they go to
Nebraska, it's the 2018 code, they go to North Dakota, it's the 2021 code, we are not giving
people living in apartments a fair shot because they're in these buildings that are following
the 2009 code.
Okay, okay.
So the building code thing, I get that.
Is there another component of this, Casey, that you think needs a little bit more attention
than what it's gotten so far?
Well, the code thing has been a concern of mine for a lot of years.
I know that's your field of expertise.
Yeah, that's my field of expertise.
You know, my biggest concern is what a lot of people do not realize on climate change
is there's tipping points out there.
There is such a thing that you can wait too long.
And it was probably 10, 12 years ago, I wrote an editorial explaining how we needed to address
this because the warming in the North Pole as the ice cap shrinks, you get less sunlight
being reflected.
And so you're going to see more warming in the North Pole.
It's a positive feedback loop.
And then when the North Pole warms, you're going to start seeing methane release.
The methane is 80 times the greenhouse gas, the CO2.
So I said, those are feedback loops.
And once we start them, it's going to be very difficult to turn that around.
And unfortunately, that's exactly what we're seeing.
The Arctic has warmed four to five times as much as the rest of the world.
And we're seeing a lot of the methane being released because the permafrost is thawing.
So there's such a thing as waiting too long.
We need to act.
And this framework just kicks the can down the road.
OK.
So primarily, we're Sioux Falls-centric because that's where we live.
If we change things the way you gentlemen proposed that we change them, how will that
impact the permafrost?
Let's just stay with the permafrost and the methane because I think that's relatable for
people.
I think we all need to, it's going to take everybody, I mean, I'm talking about everybody
in the world needs to work together on this.
And so Sioux Falls needs to do its fair share of these emission reductions.
All the countries, virtually all the countries have committed to emission reductions.
We need to do our part.
As far as what impact we're going to have locally, we're going to see higher temperatures.
We're going to see more extreme weather, which those of us that have lived in Sioux Falls,
we've been seeing more and more extreme weather events, whether it be flooding or the two
deratios.
Yeah, the two derechos last year killed two people.
Exactly.
So there's a human cost extraordinary.
Now it's difficult to say that was caused by climate change, but the thing is, on average,
we're going to see more and more extreme weather events and we've been seeing that.
Well, just think of it from a perspective of a farmer, if you want to get to our own
local community, you know, increased temperatures, increased drought, interspersed with increased
deluge flooding, which has prevented over the last few years, farmers getting into the
field in a timely way, drought impacting, you know, crop yield.
This is real back pocket in our community impacting, you know, one of the most important
industries that it's happening already.
Okay.
Yeah, for sure.
So let's circle and we could spend a lot more time on this and I appreciate the time that
you've given us now.
This plan that was submitted has not gone anywhere yet.
The City Council ultimately is responsible for setting policy for the City of Sioux Falls.
How are you going to get this plan to them so that we all can participate in public discussion
on it?
Yeah, that's exactly the right question, Rick.
So because as you say, the City Council is where the policy piece and the budget piece
happens.
We've already begun a coalition of organizations in Sioux Falls, including, you know, the League
of Women Voters and Dakota Rural Action and Change Agents and a lot of others have already
begun quietly talking with and working with city councilors to say, hey, this is what's
happened.
This is an important issue.
Are you willing to put this on the agenda so we can have an open, transparent discussion
about where we are and where we're heading?
That decision hasn't been made yet, but that's what we're trying to get done.
Okay.
So what's the time frame here for?
And I, you know, there was a famous saying years ago, the best day to plant a tree was
yesterday.
The second best day is today.
So on this climate change, are we kind of in the same kind of a deal?
The best time to make a decision on this was yesterday, last week, last month, last year.
But it sounds like if I'm listening to the two of you correctly, if we don't act here
fairly quickly, we're going to hit one of those tipping points that we can't go back.
Am I getting it right?
I feel strongly that that is the case.
And we owe it to our kids and grandkids to address this issue because, you know, they're
going to be asking us, you knew, you saw this going on, what did you do?
And I'm not going to tell my kids that I came up with this framework that had no goals.
Yeah.
Okay.
Well, and part of the answer to your question, Rick, is so that people keep hearing about
this thing called the IPCC, which is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that releases periodic
reports on March 20th of this year, like two months ago, they released a synopsis summer
report of all the papers they've written since 2015.
Big long report, but basically said two things.
Number one is we're at tipping points now.
We're running out of time.
There's still some things to do.
Second point they made is that the biggest threat to us making a difference is apathy.
They actually use the word apathy and people thinking they can't do anything and not being
willing to move.
That applies to Sioux Falls too.
Okay.
We're at a tipping point.
So the answer to your question is, yeah, yesterday, but we'll take today.
Okay.
So those of you listening to this, what we would ask you to do with these two gentlemen
and what I would ask you to do is contact your friendly local city council member and
ask them to put this on the agenda so it can be discussed in public.
And so the city of Sioux Falls can take some action on this quickly.
Thank you very much, Casey Abbott, for being here today.
Appreciate it.
It was a pleasure to meet you.
Well, thank you for inviting me, Rick.
I appreciate it.
Dr. Heisler, doctor, thank you very much for being here and appreciate your input on this
and your work on this subject.
You're welcome.
Thanks.
This has been The Power of We.
And so we need to take action and I hope you will.
Thank you, Godspeed.