Podcast: Community Cafe Bainbridge:
Sustainable Bainbridge and EcoAdapt help our City face climate change

In this podcast, Lara Hansen explains how climate change will impact Bainbridge Island. She’s the chief scientist and executive director of local nonprofit EcoAdapt, and a board member of Sustainable Bainbridge.

EcoAdapt has been funded by Bainbridge Community Foundation to help local citizens participate in the City’s update of the local Comprehensive Plan and show how our island can plan to be more adaptive to climate change.

Lara describes how climate change will impact the various elements of our island’s Comprehensive Plan, including Land Use, Environment, Economics, Housing and Utilities.

She points to opportunities to resist and adapt to climate change that are available if we plan ahead. For example, for the City’s Utilities element of the Plan, she describes opportunities for our island to draw cleaner renewable energy and carbon-free electric power for our local grid if we form a local public electric utility rather than continue relying on our current mix of power sources that include coal and natural gas.

In this interview, Lara answers the question: What can community members do to help make our community more resilient in the face of climate change?

Lara’s nonprofit, EcoAdapt, hosted a citizen gathering at City Hall in late 2015 in which scores of islanders voiced concerns about climate change and articulated issues that are now finding their way into the City’s Comprehensive Plan update. That project and workshop was co-sponsored by Sustainable Bainbridge, our community’s 501(c)(3) nonprofit, and the parent organization of BCB.

Credits: BCB host, audio editor and social media publisher: Barry Peters.