Arizona is “ground zero” for the impacts of climate change and for fashioning fixes for the problem, say national environmentalists who met in Tucson last week to map strategies. For two days, representatives of 16 Arizona and national environmental groups held private, closed-door sessions at a Catalina Foothills-area resort to set priorities for next year’s round of environmental struggles and to figure out how to best fight them. For the groups, it was the most recent in an ongoing series of quarterly meetings held around the country on these subjects. In an extended interview with the Arizona Daily Star away from those sessions, three environmental leaders, including one from Tucson, hammered home their view that taking on climate change, particularly trying to transform our energy sector, is their top priority, nationally and locally. The leaders were Laura Dent, executive director of Chispa AZ; Fred Krupp, president of the Environmental Defense Fund; and Michael Brune, national executive director of the Sierra Club. Participants in the meeting at the Hacienda del Sol resort would not identify who the other groups involved were. The meetings were kept private to encourage people involved to speak candidly, interviewees said. To view the full article visit Tucson.com.
