Trump is rolling back climate solutions. What can cities and states do?

Our planet is getting hotter, in fact, the last 11 years have been the hottest on record.

“And for people working to address climate change in the U.S., the last year has been”

a hard one. The Trump administration has been backtracking on rules and regulations meant to reduce planet warming pollution. We are officially terminating the so-called endangerment finding. That was President Trump in February announcing his administration was rescinding the scientific

finding that underpins, many of the nation's rules regulating climate pollution from cars and trucks and colon gas power plants. And that's not all. In the last year, there have been lots of other changes.

The administration has rolled back tax credits for electric vehicles and solar panels.

It's cut research to help us understand climate science and help us adapt to more heat and wildfires. But even in the face of these federal actions, there are states, cities, and towns across the country that are still finding innovative solutions for the climate crisis. To join now by Julia Simon, NPR's Climate Solutions Correspondent, Julia, welcome to the

podcast. So nice to be here, Ayisha. Julia, I understand that you're going to help us find some bright spots in the midst of all of this kind of doom and gloom for the climate that happened this past year in the U.S. Yeah.

So tell me about that. Ayisha, often the focus is on these big decisions on the federal level. And what's going on locally can be overlooked. And it shouldn't. Right now, I'm going to take you to a gathering.

I went to recently that gave me a lot of hope. Well, we could definitely use some hope. Pusher can.

So last month, I went to the first international conference for the transition away from fossil

fuels in Santa Monica, Colombia. Burning fossil fuels, Ayisha, it's the single biggest driver of climate change. So more than 50 countries, they showed up to support finding these concrete ways to transition away from oil, gas and coal. I'm here in the plenary hall in Santa Monica, Colombia and I see ministers from Spain, from Nigeria.

Was anyone there representing the U.S. or somebody from the Trump administration? There was no one there from the federal government, but there was a state official from California. And there were actually lots of people representing local climate action. You had mayors from Athens, Greece, from Kito, Ecuador, from Cape Town, South Africa. And one of these local politicians I met at the conference was Juan Carlos Luzada.

He's in Colombia's House of Representatives. And he says right now, Colombia's federal government, it's very left-wing, very pro-climate action.

“That's why they co-hosted this conference on transition away from fossil fuels with the Netherlands.”

The president now, Gustavo Petro, he has a moratorium on new exploration contracts for fossil fuels. They've suspended new fracking projects. But later this month, there's a presidential election in Colombia. Here's Luzada.

If the right-wing party's win, then we're going to be in Trump's world. That means drill, baby, drill, that's what's going to happen in Colombia. But Luzada says that even if the right-wing wins in Colombia, he says that won't be the end of climate action in the country. He came into the House of Representatives 12 years ago.

He's been through administrations that were pro-climate action, others that weren't so much. He says the lesson for people working on climate solutions is to keep pushing on the local level.

“That's why my biggest lesson is never to give up.”

You have to keep on going and we have the power to keep issues in the agenda. All these climate actions on the local level, he says add up and that is why NPR and NPR network have dedicated this past week to examples of local climate solutions across the country. That's really interesting because usually when you're thinking about climate change, you're

thinking about global solutions and getting all these different countries together to try to work together to address this issue and it can feel overwhelming, right? Like, does it really make a difference what goes on at the local level? When you add all these local actions up, yes, actions on the city and state level matter for reducing emissions.

Obviously, scientists are calling for coordinated high-level climate actions from federal

those are implemented on the local level, research finds that what states and cities

do actually really matters for climate.

“And that's why I wish I want to tell you about some communities here in the US where”

people are making real changes. Today on the show, two stories of climate solutions. What happens when a city re-invisions its own infrastructure and a neighborhood project to plant not just trees, but a pocket forest, stay with us. New shows, new music, new movies, keeping up with pop culture sometimes feels like a full-time

job. And over at pop culture happy-hour, it's literally our job. We break down what's actually worth watching, listening to, and pretending you already knew about.

So the next time someone says, "Did you see that?"

You can say, yeah, obviously, follow NPR's pop culture happy-hour wherever you get your podcasts. We're back with this Sunday's story. I'm Aisha Roscoe, and joining us for Climate Solutions Week is Julia Simon, NPR's Climate Solutions Correspondent.

“Now this is your week, this is your Super Bowl, right?”

This is my shark week. This is one of my favorite weeks of the year. So you're going to be like a breath of fresh air on the show today, right? And it's my goal. We need to hope, I understand that you've picked out a couple of themes and stories that really

show the power of local initiatives. Exactly, Aisha. A lot of the stories this week are about energy, because the energy sector, it's a huge driver of global warming, and in cities, a lot of that energy use. It happens through heating and cooling buildings.

Colorado Public Radio's Ishaan Takor brought NPR this story for Climate Solutions Week. It's about how one city is using old infrastructure to find new ways to heat and cool buildings. They hope that by tackling one of the biggest ways that cities make climate pollution, they can be a model for other cities across the country and save money. Okay, that sounds like a win-win, so tell us more.

Since the 1880s, downtown Denver, they've had this very special heating system. It involves underground pipes that connect the buildings in a network of sorts.

“You shot actually went to an old boiler plant that used to be a key part of this system.”

Today, it's this cavernous building filled with rattling pipes. Now you shot, there's another way to say it. It's a pretty gross place, it's got the spestas, piles of dead cockroaches. It looks like a good place for a rave or potentially a horror movie to be filmed at this moment.

That's Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. This old boiler plant was designed to make steam. That steam then sneak through that old network I mentioned earlier. Now heating buildings this way, it was very innovative in the 1800s. Today, it's super leaky, it's expensive, and it's also polluting.

So Mayor Johnston says that he has this big vision for this boiler plant and the system it was a part of. And we think we are standing what can be the future of energy in Denver. So how are they going to do this? The city is reengineering some of this old underground pipe system.

Instead of sending steam around, they're going to send water around. Which is more efficient because right now the steam loses a lot of heat before it even gets into buildings. Under the city's new idea, they will use water as this source of energy to heat and cool buildings and to do that, they're going to use something called a heat pump.

OK, I feel like people who are really into climate like to talk about heat pumps. Oh, we love our heat pumps, we climate nerds.

So basically, these buildings will be looped together with a network of pipes full of water.

If a building's too cold, the heat pumps suck out heat from the water in the pipes. If the building's too hot, the heat pumps dump that extra heat into the water and cool the building down. And also, the buildings they share heat between one another. So if, say, an art museum is overheated, for example, the heat pump can dump its excess

heat into the water and then that water can flow into a nearby municipal building, where another heat pump could draw that extra heat to warm up. If you're just not wasting heat, and that efficiency means that the city will end up saving money using this system. So how far along are they?

It's still early days, Denver's climate office hopes two buildings will be heated and cooled using a version of this system in the next year or two, plus a sidewalks, no melt

In a decade, they hope it will be much more.

“And I should note that powering the heat pump, getting that water to the right temperature”

in the loop, it does require energy. As the new system gets up and running, energy is going to come from some renewables, but also natural gas, eventually Denver hopes to get the system off of fossil fuels entirely. A big way they hope to do this is by using less energy to heat and cool the water in the loop.

So how are they going to do that? Well, they are going to tap into two sources of energy or heat that the city already has.

The first source of energy, they have to dig for it.

Okay, that's geothermal heat. That's another thing climate people like to talk about to you. Yes, you know it, we definitely do. So they're going to use this heat from under the earth, that's geothermal. And then they also plan to tap into another type of heat that they already have in the

city. Let me play you a sound to kind of give you a little hint. So they're going to get the heat from sewage, from warm wastewater. Waste water is warm, yeah, yeah, let's just sit with Dr. Second, yeah, that's kind of gross. Kind of gross, but technically, technically clean.

“When you say clean, you don't mean clean, you mean clean as far as carbon emissions, right?”

Right. Okay.

And then not fossil fuels sets, right?

Okay. Denver wants to repurpose some of this heat from the sewage, which is just being wasted down the drain. Okay. Well, that's really making you say everything and nothing's going to waste.

A renewable resource, exactly. Yes. So what's the lesson here from Denver? Denver hopes to be a blueprint for other cities, especially those that already have these old networks of pipes like New York City, Boise, Idaho.

What Denver is saying is, look, dense cities across the U.S., you, too, can pipe your water around heat and cool buildings, if you already have the pipes from old systems great

“if you need to build new pipes that also works.”

This system is way more efficient, it's way more climate-friendly, and it's a money. So I mean, this does sound like a really innovative and cool way to move away from fossil fuels. But it is a long-term project that's being pushed by the cities of officials. Yeah. Yeah, it is.

And obviously, not every city is going to be able to implement changes to their infrastructure like this.

But there are some other amazing efforts going on that pretty much anyone could help

with. When we come back, look at a neighborhood forest and Massachusetts. We're back with a Sunday story. Julia, so it sounds like this next climate solution is super local. Exactly, I eat shot.

In my next example, it's about a neighborhood level solution, something that communities can do to cope with a changing climate, and to understand we're going to an old abandoned baseball field. Bianca Garcia at WBU are in Boston, brought us this story. Earlier this month, she met up with about 50 volunteers at this old baseball field in

Adobro. It's a small city in Massachusetts. Oh, she saw the volunteers wearing gardening gloves, wellies. They formed sort of a production line to plant trees and shrubs. Some volunteers were dunking, saplings, and troughs full of nutrient-rich water.

Others stepped on shovels, and they dug holes for the saplings. People zoom by with wheelbarrows full of mulch. Some walked into a nearby forest, and they dug up some mushrooms to replant near the saplings so that this underground network of mycelium could improve soil health. And there was one student, her name Sidney Bottle.

She held a sapling in her hand. She's a sophomore at Adobro High School. She was trying to figure out where to plant it. I don't want to put an American chestnut right next to another American chestnut. I want to put like a variety, so it's diverse.

And I use this planting style that these volunteers are following. That's something called the Miyawaki method of planting. Miyawaki method of planting. What is that?

1970s. Basically, it's a way to plant entire forest worth of trees on these tiny plots of land. Very dense, little forest. It could be on a neighborhood blocket, it could be a few parking spaces even.

“Mini forest or is there sometimes called pocket forest?”

Now I've never heard of a pocket forest.

But does this sound adorable? Yeah, they do. Like polypocket. Oh, polypocket. Yeah.

They are really small, but they can be great for neighborhoods. And these pocket forests, they're spreading across the U.S., all across the world really. And I mean, when you say they're really small, like how small are we talking? Sometimes an area is big as six parking spaces can fit 350 plants. And this density makes the trees race towards the sunlight before they can be overshadowed

by the other.

So this method essentially fast tracks forest growth.

“So so this is climate solution week, are these pocket forests a climate solution?”

Well, trees suck up carbon dioxide, but trees don't last forever. They can burn up in fires or die other ways. And then they can release that carbon dioxide again. There's a lot of debate about how trees are used to fight climate change. But as a climate solution, what is clear is that when it comes to adapting to a hotter planet,

there's more convincing scientific evidence, I guess, that planning trees can really help cool people down. Oh, so this is more of like adaptation than just like mitigation. Exactly. Mitigation, that would be reducing emissions.

At this point, scientists have more evidence that planning trees helps with adaptation. And it's not just about heat. There's something else these pocket forests can help with when it comes to adaptation. In Adoburo, that town in Massachusetts, so is doing the planting, they had a flood in that area in 2023, residents in Adoburo spoke about terrible flooding.

In the nearby town of North Adoburo, almost a foot of rain fell in town. And that water didn't drain, around 200 homes were flooded or damaged. And as we know from climate science, that atmosphere is getting hotter because of those greenhouse gases, and that hotter atmosphere holds more moisture. And this makes rain storms and flooding more intense.

So residents hope that these pocket forests, like the one they just planted, will be able to soak up more moisture from future floods. Well, it sounds like pocket forests can do a lot, and a little forest in a neighborhood, I mean, it can just make you feel better, right? Totally, the quality of life. I love looking at trees.

Yeah, exactly. You know, so often, I think it seems like if the federal government doesn't do it, it won't get done. But these stories seem to suggest that each individual can make a difference.

Yeah, you know, the reality is people want their federal governments to do more, according

to a survey from Oxford in 2024, 80% of people worldwide. You want stronger climate action from their governments. But if you're in a place like the US, where your federal government isn't acting on climate change in the way you like, what these stories show us is that there are ways to take local level actions that will have concrete impacts on climate emissions and on adapting to climate

change right now. Since P.R.'s climate solution correspondent Julius Simon, Julia, thank you so much for these glimmers of hope. Oh, thank you, I appreciate it. This episode features reporting by Ishantokor CPR in Denver.

Bianca Garcia, W.V. U.R. in Boston, Courtney Flat, Northwest Public Broadcasting, in Kenowik Washington. Lauren Gallup, Northwest Public Broadcasting, in Tacoma, Washington. You can find these stories in more at mpr.org/climateweek. This episode of the Sunday Story was produced by Justin Yan.

It was edited by Janice Schmidt and Sadie Babitz, with help from Liana Simstrom and Rachel Waltolls. Back checking by Aida Poverside, the engineer was Jimmy Keely. The Sunday Story team includes Andrew Mombo and our executive producer Irene Nagucci.

“I'm Aisha Roscoe, and up first is back tomorrow with all the news you need to start”

your week until then, have a great rest of your weekend.