Axios Expert Voices Event - Community Solutions: Building Houston’s Sustainability Future

An Axios Expert Voices Roundtable Discussion in Houston, Texas

On Thursday, December 14, Axios hosted an Expert Voices roundtable discussion in Houston, Texas featuring leaders across local government, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions. Guests discussed the community-based challenges and solutions around advancing sustainability and environmental protection initiatives in Houston. Axios Houston reporters Jay Jordan and Shafaq Patel led the conversation.

What they're saying: Attendees emphasized the importance of improved transparency and education on environmental issues within the Houston community, both to further the public's understanding of climate-related threats and improve opportunities to incorporate them directly into climate mitigation efforts.

• Abbie Kamin, City of Houston District C council member: "For our private sector, because we're entering this new era, we have a new mayor coming in … As the energy capital of the world, we have to be the energy transition capital, and we have to have the business sector leading at the forefront of that in conjuncture with our universities. We're looking to you to continue to lead and for us to know how we can be of support to you, because our business community is the backbone of our city, and it needs to stay that way."

• Reverend James Caldwell, Coalition of Community Organizations founder and director: "The education of our community when it comes to environmental issues, carbon capture issues, climate change issues, they don't even know what that means. The most difficult task that we've had is trying to educate our communities of how this will benefit them, and in some cases, how it can be harmful to them."
• Paige Powell, Commission Shift policy manager: "I think the two big things for me is transparency in knowing what's in the air, knowing what the new technologies are for chemical recycling or for safe hydrogen … When we're talking about the public interest, there should be no proprietary secrets. We need to be transparent with communities about what's going on so they can be a part of the solution moving forward."
• Mitchell Toomey, American Chemistry Council vice president of sustainability and Responsible Care®: "There is a transparency momentum in our industry as well. We have a program called Responsible Care®, for example … It forces the publication of 30 indicators across environmental emissions and so on for all of our members to be posted transparently."

• Justin Bower, H-GAC director of community and environmental planning: "One of the things that I think we need to improve on is not just looking at 4.6 million people in the city of Houston as a statistic, but as 4.6 million individual stories, and the challenge … is finding ways not just to engage the public and be transparent with the public, but for meaningfully incorporating them into climate processes."
• Priya Zachariah, chief resilience and sustainability officer in the Mayor's office of resilience & sustainability: "There's so many people from so many different walks. We need to share a language and we need to be honest about things that we don't understand … I need to have the humility to say that, and be okay saying that, so we can have a good dialogue and productive discussion which is both educational and points to solutions."

Thank you to the American Chemistry Council for sponsoring this event.