This Fall, The Parents’ Climate Community has joined a coalition effort alongside Texas Sierra Club, Public Citizen, Creative Action, and several other community groups and nonprofits to make sure that the Austin City Council recommits to its climate equity and clean-energy goals and rejects a proposed new gas plant in east Austin. This decision would endanger kids’ health–one potential site is near Decker Elementary School–and undermine the City’s own goal of carbon-free by 2035.
How can you help? Take one minute to email City Council before their Dec. 12, 2024 vote on the future of Austin Energy’s Resource Generation Plan.
Over the past two months, The Parents’ Climate Community has collaborated with Creative Action on a towering, 10-foot-tall sun puppet that represents our collective vision for a solar-powered, clean-energy Austin. At events across town, from Festival Beach Food Forest’s Tree Planting Celebration to Windsor Park’s EcoFest to Waller Creek Show, hundreds of community members, from preschoolers to seniors, have added words of hope for Austin’s future on slips of gold foil. These words form a “power chain”: the rays or arms of the sun puppet. This dazzling sun puppet debuted at a Nov. 19, 2024 rally outside of City Hall, an expression of intergenerational art-making and collective imagination.
As PCC founder Eileen McGinnis observed at the rally, “Kids and young adults approach the world with fresh perspectives; they do the necessary work of challenging the status quo and helping us to imagine what’s possible. In return, we owe kids here and around the world the imagination to step outside of our old patterns and actively work to achieve a fossil-fuel-free Austin.”
Looking for more?
- Read an interview with community artist Stephanie Chavez Noell, who is the creative force behind the sun puppet.
- Check out our curated list of videos, books, and hands-on activities to teach kids about solar energy.