In this episode of This Is CDR, we are pleased to welcome Boulder County’s Susie Strife, the City of Flagstaff’s Ramon Alatorre and OpenAir’s Chris Neidl to discuss locally ?-ed CDR and introduce the 4 Corners Carbon Coalition.
Hosted by Toby Bryce and Megha Raghavan.
Guest link: https://4cornerscarbon.org/
About Susie Strife: Susie leads Boulder County’s Office of Sustainability, Climate Action & Resilience, providing direction on policies and program implementation for internal and external sustainability activities while managing planning efforts and budgets. She also serves as the key liaison to other county agencies to support existing projects and guide the county towards a more sustainable future. Susie received her PhD from the University of Colorado in 2009, and often teaches courses on sustainability, green design, and environmental sociology.
About Ramon DC Alatorre: Ramón is the Climate Analyst for the City of Flagstaff. He joined the City in January of 2020, and on his second day on the job, he watched as the Flagstaff community completely updated his job description as they gave hours of testimony late into the night demanding that Council adopt a Resolution declaring a Climate Emergency. Things haven’t slowed down since! In addition to helping to advance the development and adoption of the Carbon Neutrality Plan, Ramón is also responsible for overseeing many of the programs and initiatives related to Clean Energy, Electrification, and Carbon Removal. Ramón earned a B.S. in Chemistry and an M.S. in Environmental Science and Engineering. In a prior life, he led climbing and backpacking leadership expeditions, and though it’s no longer his job, he can still be found on the rocks and trails in and around Flagstaff.
About Chris Neidl: Chris is co-founder of OpenAir, a global volunteer collective launched in 2019 to advance carbon dioxide removal (CDR) through member-driven advocacy. In this role Chris has helped lead advocacy efforts at the state level related to low carbon concrete procurement policy, including the Low Embodied Carbon Concrete Leadership Act (LECCLA), as well as carbon removal procurement and incentives, including the New York Carbon Dioxide Removal Leadership Act, the NY Carbon City Property Tax Abatement Act, and the Luxembourg Negative Emissions Tariff. Chris came to CDR and low carbon concrete from a fifteen year career in solar energy, which spanned diverse research, activist and project management roles in North America, South Asia, Afghanistan and East Africa. Chris is an upstate New York native and long-time Brooklyn resident currently based in Austin, TX.