Climate Good News
Around the world people are taking the initiative to mitigate climate change.
Here are some good news briefs compiled and summarized by
Jayne Freudenberger, climate committee chair,
League of Women Voters of Bellingham-Whatcom County.
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Communities Come Together to Discuss Nooksack River Challenges
by Jayne Freudenberger
On Sept. 4, over 1,300 people attended the First Friday event at the Whatcom County Museum, “Sharing Our Water.” Presented by the Museum, the Salish Current and the League of Women Voters, it was a full day of appreciation for water in stories, drawing, poetry, art and environmental displays. In the evening, representatives from the tribes, farmers, real estate and government officials discussed shared values from different cultures, climate related challenges from floods and drought, and water management.
Increasing floods in the winter and drought in the summer are impacting the lives of all these groups, and it is encouraging that all seem ready to work collaboratively toward solutions. The panels were filmed and are available on the Salish Current’s and League’s websites.
A Big Win for the 2026 WA State Legislature
What exactly does that mean? Utilities aren’t building the power lines the region needs to meet its climate commitments, so the Legislature came up with a new solution.
A bipartisan group of leaders established the Washington Electric Transmission Authority, an independent public entity empowered to prioritize, access public financing for, and facilitate construction of power line projects needed to harness clean, affordable electricity commitments. It will prioritize lines that current transmission developers, including utilities, would otherwise not build.
The new Washington Transmission Authority’s (WETA) mandate is to improve the grid’s reliability, resilience, and affordability by expanding and upgrading Washington’s transmission system. In establishing the authority, the Legislature acknowledged the crucial importance of a robust grid to achieving the state’s climate goals. An improved grid will allow the state to more efficiently tap low-cost solar power in the U.S. Southwest, for example, or wind power from the Mountain West, as well as prepare for rising electricity demand from homes and businesses transitioning away from burning fossil fuels for energy.
How the Authority Is Structured
WETA will be in part self-financing: it will generate revenue by charging project application review fees to developers seeking to partner with it or by selling completed projects to transmission developers or operators, including utilities. It can then use this revenue to manage and acquire land for new projects. The authority will also compensate cities, counties, and tribes whose land a project crosses. WETA and its partners must employ qualified electrical employees or apprentices from certain programs and meet prevailing wage requirements when building lines.
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Department of Commerce: Energy Policy, Standards and Reports, “Energy transmission in Washington” https://www.commerce.wa.gov/energy-policy/
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Talking About Climate Change
Climate activist Katharine Hayhoe noticed that something was shifting this year at the annual climate conference at the UN in New York City. It was particularly interesting because there were more events than usual on climate communication — 48 in all! Many people were lamenting that the narrative had been lost. Hayhoe disagrees — her take: “We never had one.”
Judging by the event at the conference either way, talking about climate seems to have a new focus — perhaps a new urgency given the heat that plagued the Eastern seaboard and the Midwest this summer, the new storms/hurricanes building up in Hawaii, and the drought that is plaguing the rivers of the West.
Hayhoe felt people were shifting to the first step toward climate action: talking about it.
For so long, climate communication has been treated as an afterthought. We tell ourselves the facts are self-evident, that people will act once they understand the stakes. We assume the benefits of action are obvious — but they aren’t if no one’s heard them.
As Sara Peach of Yale Climate Connections puts it, “‘Talk’ is the fertile field in which cultural change begins; in its absence, it’s impossible for a group of people to solve a problem.” That’s why talking about climate change isn’t optional. It’s essential.
Hayhoe is so excited about this that she has formed a new organization called Talking Climate Collaborative (TCC ). Its aim: to connect, resource and support people doing climate communication.
From their website: “Climate communicators are doing a lot with limited funding, but they often work alone, share what they learn infrequently, and their activities and platforms — writing, giving talks and posting on LinkedIn — tend to reach insiders more than everyday communities. What climate activists say they need most, after funding, is stronger connections and to learn what works. That’s exactly what we are building at TCC.”
So, rest assured, there is a new resource which can help you to speak out on an assortment of climate subjects with information that is factual and unbiased. Thanks, Katherine!
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Talking Climate: “Conversations catching on at Climate Week,” by Katharine Hayhoe, Oct. 07, 2026: https://substack.com/@katharinehayhoe
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Another Plus for Old-Growth Forests
There is a new finding in the ongoing fight to save old-growth forests. Older trees have more gnashes and hollows than new forests, and these crevices have been discovered to be remarkable, as temperatures soar, in saving animals from extreme heat. Clearcutting may result in the death of hundreds of forest animals and birds who cannot turn on the air conditioner when temperatures skyrocket.
In recent years, scientists have documented mass die-offs of various species in the midst of heatwaves. In 2014, a heatwave led to the deaths of some 46,000 flying foxes on a single day in eastern Australia. Four years later, another scorcher claimed 23,000 gray-headed flying foxes in the Australian city of Cairns, a third of the species’ population on the continent.
After seeing a difference in the lives of bats in natural crevices vs. bat boxes, a team at the University of Illinois at Urbana found that when peak temperatures cross into heatwave territory, these holes are often more than 4°C cooler than the outside, according to a review of dozens of studies recently published in Forest Ecology and Management. The team found 36 studies from continents that had the necessary data to further study temperatures both inside and outside the crevice.
The analysis showed that the natural shelters consistently provided shelter against both high and low temperatures. Inside the refuge, the temperature was 2.7 C degrees cooler than outside. On hotter days, the difference was even greater, measuring 4.1 degree.
They also provided shelter when it was cold. The resting places were 2.8 degree warmer than outside temperatures. Besides bats, the shelters provided a warmer pace for birds, insects, and other mammals like squirrels — just proving, after all, that Nature knows best.
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Forest Ecology and Management: “A global review of the capacity of tree cavities to buffer temperature extremes” by Cotten et. al., Aug. 25, 2026: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S037811272600678X.
