The Creation of Teton Climate Action Partnership
August, 2021
One particularly cold January night in 2020 wasn’t just any night. A group of Jackson Hole community members ventured downtown, walked through the door of the Pink Garter Theater, shook off the cold and stepped into a new chapter of their lives in the Tetons.
That evening, Jackson’s former mayor, Pete Muldoon, took the stage to call audience members to action. Under the glow of a single theater light, Mayor Pete rallied attendees to confront the growing impacts of climate change in the town. Filling many rows of the Pink Garter, those gathered knew that their community required greater resiliency to face the impacts of a changing climate. It was time to get to work. An updated Jackson/Teton County Comprehensive Plan and this chilly night’s call to action spurred the formation of the initiative that would bring dozens of local, regional and national partners together in a ground-breaking effort.
A week later, a small group from that gathering committed to action. First, they successfully encouraged the Town Council to pass the Net Zero Carbon 2030 Resolution and solidify a mission and vision for their work in the years to come. The group dared to dream big and quickly laid the groundwork for real, equitable impact in our community. As the calendar turned to 2021, the small group had grown into a public-private partnership that included government and non-government organizations.
Since April 2021, the partnership has been working to bring expertise and perspective to the vision. It is designing a partnership framework whereby local and regional partners can identify and implement priority projects that will make real progress towards net zero carbon by 2030. Partners in the effort recognize that this scale of climate action is only attainable regionally and through cross-sector collaboration. The partnership framework is the hub to the spokes of the wheel, holding the space for all partners to approach climate action and resilience work together with confidence and urgency.
