Tampa’s Efforts to Combat the Climate Crisis

By Maddi Dolan, Faith Rister, Caitlin Ziegler

Published December 11, 2019

In the midst of the global climate crisis, the Tampa Bay area has been taking initiatives to combat climate change, which has been an international threat since the early 1990s.

Back in September of this year, Tampa participated in an international climate strike in front of City Hall. The purpose of this international strike was to fight against the use of fossil fuels and to declare the climate crisis as a national emergency.

Tampa was one out of 4,500 locations to participate in the strike internationally. A total of 150 countries were involved.

University of Tampa student and Political Director of The University of Tampa College Democrats, Alondra Vidal Diaz, was one person that participated in the Tampa climate strike.

Diaz said that around 60 people participated at Tampa’s location.

“I think mostly High School students attended the strike. I noticed a lot of young men and women, but also many older women too. I saw one woman with a baby and it was breathtaking,” Diaz said.

The Tampa strike consisted of different guest speakers, mainly discussing how climate change affects Florida in a different and faster way than other states in the U.S. One speaker mentioned the increase of high category hurricanes due to climate change and the actions that must be taken to reverse climate change effects.

Diaz said that Tampa is moving in a positive direction when it comes to combating climate change.

“I feel like Tampa is very progressive compared to other cities in Florida. Our new mayor acknowledges the climate crisis and was present at the strike,” Diaz said. “Tampa’s congresswoman, Rep. Kathy Castor, is also the chair of the Climate Crisis Committee in the U.S.Congress so I can tell that Tampa is very much in the forefront of this fight.”

Tampa has also adopted a program known as “Green Tampa,” where officials and employees are creating a sustainable energy efficient future. American Institute of Certified Planners GreenOfficer, Thomas R.P. Snelling, has been working as Green Tampa’s official since 1992. The job of the Green Officer is to create strategic plans to make Tampa more sustainably efficient.

Green Tampa has created operations to fight climate change and reduce the footprint Tampa isleaving behind. In recent years, Tampa has implemented the use of solar power energy. The city placed solar power pay stations for street parking all across Tampa.

Tampa also took over the McKay Bay Refuse-To-Energy Facility in 2011. This facility manages the City of Tampa’s 360,000 tons of municipal solid waste that people generate each year. Energy created in burning this waste is converted into electrical power that supplies homes and buildings in Tampa with electricity.

According to the City of Tampa Annual Sustainability Report, The McKay Bay Refuse-to-Energy Facility uses about 94% of the City’s post recycled waste as fuel to produce clean, renewable energy.

In 2013, Tampa put in 10 electric vehicle charging stations around downtown and Ybor City. These charging stations were free of charge because The City of Tampa participated in a Department of Energy monitoring program.

The City of Tampa has also taken action to mitigate sea level rise in the Tampa Bay area. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration estimates that sea level rise will impact the Tampa Bay region in the next 25 years. The Tampa Bay Climate Science Advisory Panel has created a plan through Stormwater Services to prevent flooding and reduce pollution due to runoff.

In the October 2019 Tampa Stormwater Projects and Program Quarterly Report, it showed that there was “major capital improvements” in flooding relief in the Tampa Bay area. The report includes all construction plans for different roads in Tampa. According to the report, the City of Tampa estimates the cost of all construction will be over $250 million.

Not only is the City of Tampa taking action to fight the climate crisis, but The University of Tampa is joining the efforts.

UT campus organizations such as the Student Environmental Action Coalition, UT Roots &Shoots, and Live Well UT, are helping bring awareness to the climate crisis.

Alana Ziegler, Vice President of the Student Environmental Action Coalition, said their main goals are educating students, bringing in speakers to learn more about recycling and the climate crisis, and brainstorming ways they can make a positive difference in the area.

Megan Osgood, the organization’s president mentioned the ways they work with campus officials to make the area more sustainable for the students while repurposing the waste created on campus.

“Our biggest role is through our partnership with the national organization, Food Recovery Network, to help our campus minimize food waste and fight hunger at the same time,” Osgood said. “We partner with a lot of other organizations on and off campus as well as take on the hugeissue of food waste, which many do not realize is a large issue impacting the environment.”

Osgood said the group is currently working with the UT dining hall and on-campus Einstein Bros. Bagels to eliminate waste by collecting leftover food at the end of every week and bringing it to a local after school care facility in the lower funded areas of Tampa. The bagels from Einstein’s are collected and given out to students for free in Vaughn Courtyard at the end of every week.

“By doing this, the resources put into making the food will not be wasted and will then be used to help the environment,” Osgood said. “My favorite concept to share is that the world doesn’t need everyone becoming sustainable or zero-waste, it needs millions of people trying to reduce their current impact.”

Aside from her responsibilities alongside Osgood as a leader of the club, Ziegler is in charge of the campus engagement portion of the group which includes the events they organize and how they can bring awareness to students.

“A lot of what we do involves educating people at UT on the proper ways to recycle and go green using fun activities because it’s an easy way to get the campus engaged,” Ziegler said.“We also do beach clean ups to help with the pollution problem in marine environments.”

Ziegler said the organization holds on campus events around the year, starting with the fall semester energy festival. Their organization partners with Live Well and Roots & Shoots to provide participants with incentives, such as free reusable straws, to learn more about sustainability through answering questions. They also partake in the Pirate Fest located on the Riverwalk in downtown Tampa before the events of Gasparilla.

“There we talk about how the beads and plastic that gets thrown in the river during Gasparilla is really bad for the river system,” Ziegler said. “After Gasparilla there’s a lot of people who snorkel and pick up pounds of beads from the river that could cause entanglement to the organisms in the water.”

Ziegler talked about a campaign that she organized called the,“Recycling is BeaUTiful Campaign.” This campaign was meant to bring awareness to the limited amount of recycling bins around UT’s campus.

For this campaign, members of the organization ask willing participants to sign a petition in favor of more recycling. A member then photographs them with a sign that says, “we want more recycling on campus.” Members then create a mosaic out of the petitioners to display the involvement.

“It was a really cool visual showing that our community does want better access to recycling even though President Vaughn doesn’t agree with the change,” Ziegler said.

She said the organization has sent letters to UT’s president before about the recycling issue inwhich there was no response.

Ziegler said she is mainly concerned about the rising sea-level conditions surrounding the Florida area in places like Miami due to Earth’s increasing temperature. She said UT has no plans to tackle the issue as of right now, but wants to make people more aware of it.

“UT is right on the Hillsborough River so I think this should be a huge concern,” Ziegler said. “In the Tampa community I’d like to see more involvement, but for that to happen I think people need more incentives to motivate them to want to help.”

Osgood and Ziegler both said that the community is starting to acknowledge the crisis more due to influences like social media and the efforts being made in their organization to educate those around the area.

“I think we are slowly moving in the right direction as far as making individual changes,” Osgood said. “The change needs to be faster, however, any change is still a change.”

The Student Environmental Action Coalition has been responsible for bringing in a multitude of speakers throughout the fall 2019 semester. One of them was Alan Brand, owner of Solar Shepard Incorporated.

Brand’s business does solar power consulting for anybody wishing to put solar panels on their businesses or homes.

Brand said that he thinks people should be investing in solar panels because, “in the last decade, in Florida, solar energy panels have gone from being a bad investment for home owners to a very good investment.”

He said the reasoning for this is because the price of the technology used for solar panels has gone down 25%. Because of this decrease in price, solar panels have the capability to pay for themselves four or five times over in their 10 to 15 year system life, whereas they used to pay for themselves just once over.

Brand said that he emphasized this topic in his speech at The University of Tampa because he wants his audience to understand that it’s possible for anyone to have solar panels.

It’s important for people to have solar panels because, “solar energy is good for the environment… if someone puts a solar power system on their rooftop or sets up a solar power farm, that means that somewhere else there is no fossil fuel being burned to make energy,” Brand said.

Brand said that he believes if more citizens in Florida decided to use clean energy it could make a huge impact on the environment.

Brand is also involved in an organization called the Ready For 100 Campaign. He was involved in the St. Petersburg campaign and also led the campaign in Glen Eden.

The Ready For 100 Campaign is a nationwide movement of different cities, states, and counties making a commitment for their own operations to be powered by 100% clean, renewable energy by the year 2035.

Brand said that Jane Castor, City of Tampa Mayor, has, “expressed that she is willing to make a commitment to the Ready For 100 Campaign on behalf of Tampa sometime early next year.”

Brand said that Castor leaning towards making this decision on behalf of Tampa is a big step toward Tampa becoming a more environmentally sustainable city.

He said that if citizens care about the environment and want to make a big difference, they could encourage their mayor towards joining the campaign.

Michael Slattery, a marine science professor at The University of Tampa, said that he believe staking action to protect the environment should be a top priority among citizens.

Slattery said that people need to stop discussing climate change like it’s a matter of activism orpolitics, but begin to understand the science behind it.

“The most important thing that will make an impact is the choices that consumers make on a daily basis,” Slattery said. “Citizens could make decisions like buying cars that get over 30 milesper gallon because the technology exists for every car on the road to have this capability.”

Slattery said that people need to start learning the facts behind climate change and take action against it before it begins to impact their lives in a direct way.

Brand shares this quote from Gus Speth with his audience every time he presents about clean energy and environmental sustainability:

“I used to think the top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse, and climate change. I thought that 30 years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed, and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”