Michael and Kyla discuss preparing for the climate emergency

00:01 Hello, my name is Kyla Foley and I am here today interviewing my dad, Michael Foley. I'm currently doing this interview from Ann Arbor, Michigan, but my father is at his home in Traverse City, Michigan. The date today is January 30, 2022. And before we begin, dad, do I have your consent to be recording this interview?

00:30 Yes, you do.

00:32 Great, thank you. So I know that we talked a little bit about this beforehand, but to put you back in the scenario, imagine that it is now the year 2030. Your neighborhood has successfully responded to the climate crisis, climate emergency by coming together as a community and changing your behaviors. And you've done it successfully. You've reached carbon neutrality. So congratulations.

01:03 Thanks.

01:05 So I would just like to hear from you, how did you get there? Like what triggered this response to kind of start tackling the climate emergency like a decade ago now?

01:19 Yeah, so I was thinking back about it when you said we're going to do this and you know, it's kind of funny if you remember back in, you know, the beginning of this decade that, you know, 2020 is when we had the COVID crisis and we had a neighborhood organization for the neighborhood where we live. It's called Slab Town. And they, we would meet like once a quarter and discuss issues around, you know, that were important for the neighborhood and how it links back to Traverse City. But everything got suspended during COVID and meetings weren't being held. And so I think it was in early 2022 that we kind of got the ball rolling again and actually started to have neighborhood meetings. So that was one thing. I think another thing that came out of COVID was the fact that so many people transitioned to working from home. Yeah, for sure. And I think that was a really kind of a big wake up call for people around mobility in the neighborhood and how important it was to have, you know, places to recreate, but also to be able to, you know, a lot more people were walking their kids to school from the neighborhood and seeing how important it was to have good sidewalks, to have trails connecting to things. I think there were a couple of things that actually, despite all the bad things that happened during COVID there were a couple of triggers coming out of the forced change in our lifestyle from the pandemic. I think as a little bit more background to that, early on, even five years earlier, Traverse City itself started making a big push towards getting all their power to be from renewable sources. The whole momentum shifted and there was really, really strong support to build more trails, to make more connections, multi use trails, non motorized to really allow people to commute by either walking or riding bicycles. To. Yeah. To recreate, to do all that. And I think it was a. I think the background of Traverse City and our city officials starting to push for things that contributed to Net zero. And then I think the neighborhood meetings starting up again.

04:07 I appreciate you finding, like, the positive light in such a negative time during the pandemic. So, I guess at these neighborhood meetings, when you were discussing this transition over the next 10 years to become carbon neutral, what PRA did, like, envisioning, like, what did your neighbor. What did your neighborhood see as, like, their goal? What did they want to reach beyond carbon neutrality? Were there specific things that you, as neighbors envision for. For your own community within, like, the larger context of Traverse City?

04:41 Yeah, so there were a few. I mean, a few organizations that were doing different things around town, but to really participate and take advantage of those, like community gardens and composting and things, you know, you really almost had to get in your car and drive to those things.

05:04 Yeah.

05:04 And so, you know, one of the topics that came up in the meeting in one of those early meetings was, wouldn't it be nice if we had something really local? So, I mean, those are local as well, but really local in the neighborhood to facilitate that a little bit. And so there was a little park that was located Right. There's an elementary school in the neighborhood called Willow Hill. There's a little park called Ashton park just outside of Willow Hill. And so the idea came up to, you know, could we put a community kind of composting facility in there that would allow people to. Yeah. You know, generate compost? They could use it. At that time, it was thought, you know, we didn't have a space for a community garden, but it was thought that, you know, at least we could have compost for everybody's local garden. You know, it's not. It's not a. Not a community one. Or we could contribute it to the bigger community gardens that were over at the historic Barnes park and stuff like that so it wouldn't go to waste, but it also wouldn't go to a landfill.

06:12 Very, very interesting. So do you think that composting contribute to other behaviors? Like, once people started composting, they started talking about other behaviors that they change within the community.

06:28 Yeah, So I think, you know, we. Well, it's called Traverse City, but I mean, it's actually, it's. It's an area that has a lot of agriculture around Traverse City. We have a pretty good farm hat, you know, have always Had a pretty good farmers market and everything. But I think the push or the idea of composting got everybody talking even more about local food. And so, you know, I think there was a. It kind of triggered a behavior to want to participate more in the farmers market. And, you know, there's a winter location and a summer location, and actually, you know, Slabtown neighborhood is pretty well located to those. So with the additional trails that were being built to make them more bike friendly, you know, there just kind of became more of a recognition amongst people in the community that we should take more advantage of those markets, buy our produce and buy products from the local vendors. And I think that actually had an impact on some of our local businesses, like the Oleson food store, which is also in the Toms food market, which are both located just not very far away from Slab Town, to expand their spaces that they provided for local farmers to sell their products. And so I think it all started to. With the feedback that we were seeing in the news, and I think it just kind of the momentum, it didn't happen all at once, but over a period of time, you started to see, you know, the topic would come up at the meetings and people would say, yeah, they, you know, Oleson's is now carrying all this stuff from, you know, this farm up in Leelanau, and they have really good produce.

08:31 And that's awesome to hear. You know, this kind of spillover of behavior not only within your own neighborhood, but how, like, as your neighborhood kind of changed what was important to them or started talking about new things that were important to them, that it helps kind of influence the behavior of neighboring organizations and businesses. And we don't have much time left. So with the final question, I just want to ask you, someone who has previously worked in the oil business as you have now, you've done 10 years working towards carbon neutrality. For people who are listening to this interview, what advice would you give to people who want to do something similar in their own neighborhood or community?

09:16 Well, I think, you know, we need energy. There's no doubt about that. I mean, we need energy for different things that we like to do, but maybe we don't need as much energy as we thought we did at one point in time. And, you know, it wasn't always easy, but, you know, when you get into a routine of, you know, not getting in a car and actually getting on your bike and going over to the store, and when you have good, safe trails that make it possible for people to do that without, you know, fear of injury, or, you know. Yeah, you just, it becomes your routine and it becomes more normal to just not do those extra, extra trips that, you know, years ago you used to jump in your gasoline powered car and you know, fortunately now we all have electric cars because that's all there is. But even that, you know, you don't have to use it that much. You can really get by. You know, I can remember in the past, you know, we probably had four or five cars in the family and now we're down to just one car. So you can manage with a lot less. It takes a little effort at first to get into that kind of routine, but I think, you know, like I say, with people working from home and things like that, you know, I think we just discovered we didn't have to be driving around all over the place to enjoy, to enjoy a really fulfilling life.

10:52 That's so wonderful to hear and I can't thank you enough for your time today. And congrats again on reaching carbon neutrality.

10:59 Thanks. And let's hope we can get into the negative.