Winter Climate Activities: Education and Beer

In This Issue

• Upcoming Events

  • 2/11: Data Centers in Illinois: Webinar by Third Act Illinois

  • 2/12: How to Travel Sustainably: Webinar by Chicago Environmentalists

  • 2/25: Chicago Climate Connect’s 3rd Birthday Celebration

  • 3/5: 350 Chicago Happy Hour at Eris Brewery

• Action Center

  • IEC Lunch and Learn

  • Online Petition: Climate Safe Pensions

  • Online Petition: Utility Transparency Act

• Climate News

  • The EPA’s Enforcement of Pollution is Declining During Trump’s Second Term

• Main Article

  • How We Make a Difference: Speaker Series and Education

Upcoming Events

Data Centers in Illinois: Webinar by Third Act Illinois

• Wednesday, February 11, 7:00pm - 8:00pm

• Via Zoom

• RSVP HERE

Data centers are rapidly expanding across Illinois - bringing both economic opportunities and serious concerns for our communities. Join Third Act Illinois for an informative conversation on the current state of data centers in our state, including pending legislation and local efforts to ensure these developments protect resources, neighborhoods, and public interests. You’ll hear from experts about what’s happening on the ground and how you can get involved and make a difference.

How to Travel Sustainably: Webinar by Chicago Environmentalists

• Thursday, February 12th, 6:30pm - 7:30pm

• Online event

• RESERVE A SPOT

Join the Chicago Environmentalists and their featured speaker, Travel Advisor Nicole Stratman, to learn about regenerative tourism and transformational travel practices! You will leave this webinar with a new “green” lens to apply to your travel planning in 2026 and beyond.

Chicago Climate Connect’s Third Birthday Celebration

• Wednesday, February 25th, 6:00pm - 8:30pm

• Pilot Project Brewing - Wrigleyville: 3473 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60657

• RESERVE A SPOT

Chicago Climate Connect is hosting a casual, open networking evening to celebrate their third anniversary. This is a free event, open to all, but registration is highly recommended as space is limited.

350 Chicago Happy Hour at Eris Brewery

• Thursday, March 5th from 5:00pm - 8:00pm

• Eris Brewery: 4240 W Irving Park Rd, Chicago, IL 60641

Whether you’re curious about what we do or have been volunteering with us for years, happy hours are a great way to come get involved. Feel free to sit and drink with us and ask questions or just say hello to fellow climate nerds. Every one of our happy hours so far has been a blast, so come join us, grab a brew, and spend some quality time with other 350 Chicago members!

Action Center

IEC Lunch and Learn

During a lunch and learn with the Climate Safe Pensions Illinois (CSPI) Coalition, we discussed the importance of fossil fuel divestment in Illinois.

Thank you to the Illinois Environmental Council (IEC) for hosting! If you want to learn more you can watch a recording of the talk at bit.ly/whydivestIL and check out the divestment coalition website.

Here are some highlights from the talk!

Online Petition: Climate Safe Pensions

Investments in fossil fuels are driving climate change, and they are becoming increasingly risky financial liabilities as well. On behalf of the Climate Safe Pensions Illinois coalition, we are asking Illinois legislators to sign the Fossil Fuel Divestment Act and protect our pensions! Lean more and sign: Climate Safe Pensions Petition!

Online Petition: Utility Transparency Act

Over the years, utilities have made it acceptable to recover some of their costs from ratepayers that we believe should never be passed onto ratepayers, such as their political lobbying efforts. We are asking our legislators to support the Utility Transparency Act and protect Illinois ratepayers. Learn more and sign: Utility Transparency Petition!

Climate News

The EPA’s Enforcement of Pollution is Declining During Trump’s Second Term

A recent report published by the Environmental Integrity Project found that there were only 16 lawsuits against polluters in 2025, which is far less than the first year of the last three administrations.

There are a few reasons causing this decrease:

• Lack of employees - The Trump administration furloughed EPA staff working on on the enforcement of anti-pollution laws.

• Lack of enforcement - EPA officials are prioritizing a “compliance first” approach which attempts to informally correct violations instead of mandating enforcement.

• Lack of penalties - even when enforcement is taken, the EPA has been issuing smaller penalties for violators.

This all comes at the helm of Lee Zeldin, the lead Administrator of the EPA who has proudly advocated for deregulating environmental protections in favor of economic gains, especially for the auto industry.

via Inside Climate News: “Our nation’s landmark environmental laws are meaningless when EPA does not enforce the rules” -Jen Duggan, executive director of the Environmental Integrity Project

How We Make a Difference: Speaker Series and Education

by Christine Skolnik

This article, focusing on our education initiatives, is the third of a three part series on what we do and how we make a difference in Chicago and Illinois. You can read the first part, on divestment, here and the second part, on utility justice and clean energy, here.

One of the core missions of 350 Chicago is transforming despair around climate into hope. There is a lot of bad news out there about climate, but it’s important that people know that we still can make a difference and that the battle is worth fighting. One important way that we try to fulfill this mission is to empower people with the knowledge that progress is being made, and that we’re all in this together. So for the last few years we have hosted regular speakers, often professors and experts, to discuss various topics around climate change in our 350 Chicago Speaker Series.

Many of our biggest and most memorable speakers have focused on the big picture, discussing our progress towards a cleaner future. For example, Bill McKibben (co-founder of 350.org) spoke about the mass deployment of solar power around the globe. We’ve also had a number of excellent speakers lay out what the path may look like to deploy clean energy at scale, such as Dr. Seth Darling’s talk Watt's Next for Energy, and Dr. Daniel Kammen’s talk Climate Change and the Just Transition. We have also focused on progress in Illinois with the talk by Dr. Trent Ford, as well as highlighted progress worldwide with talks on China's Green Energy Revolution by Changhua Wu, Dr. Peiyuan Guo, Jun Ma, as well as India’s clean energy development (the video for this will be online soon).

We also learned about potential new climate technologies, such as regenerative agriculture by Gabe Brown (from the documentary Kiss the Ground), natural hydrogen energy from Dr. Geoffrey Ellis, and enhanced geothermal energy by Lauren Boyd. Jenny Cassel and Pam Richart spoke on whether Carbon Capture is a potential cure, or a false solution.

In addition to learning about the big picture, it can sometimes be even more helpful to focus on our own lives. Jordana Composto discussed the psychology of climate action, applying the big picture to our own lives. And sometimes it’s just nice to know that we’re all in this together and we aren’t the only ones anxious about these issues. Marilee Feldman spoke specifically about this in her talk The Climate Crisis and Mental Health. And for those going to Thanksgiving and preparing to talk with your uncle who watches too much Fox News, you might find Dr. John Cook’s talk Fine-Tune Your BS Detector useful. Or, possibly our first official speaker series event by former GOP Congressman Bob Inglis on The Need for Climate Action.

We’re always bringing in new speakers, so if you are interested in learning more just keep an eye on this newsletter (we have one on Data Centers on the 11th), and check out our archive of previous talks!