Community Environmental Council Campaigns for the Future

'Protect Our Climate' Initiative Aims to Raise $15 Million for Climate Progress

CEC staff gathered for a team-building retreat in August 2022. | Credit: Sarita Relis Photography

CEC is constructing the Central Coast’s first Environmental Hub — an 8,000-square-foot state-of-the-art gathering and working space directly on State Street. The Hub will serve as a kind of living laboratory for people from all walks of life to design equitable climate solutions and put nature’s solutions to work. | Credit: Andrulaitis+Mixon Architects

“We have to do twice as much, twice as fast to reverse climate change on California’s Central Coast and across the globe,” said Sigrid Wright, in announcing the Community Environmental Council’s campaign to raise $15 million toward its work in equitable solutions for green energy and the conservation of natural resources. The Protect Our Climate campaign, which has quietly raised $11.7 million already, is part of a five-year plan to accelerate the CEC’s initiatives.

Started in Santa Barbara in 1970 as an organization that pioneered recycling, the CEC now intends to dovetail its efforts with President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which it calls “the strongest tailwinds for climate progress that the United State has ever experienced.” The funding will anchor CEC initiatives, among them: clean energy and transportation in the tri-counties, electricity in new homes, limits on single-use plastic water bottles, partnerships with farmers and ranchers to restore the carbon cycle, and collaborations with restaurants and hotels to limit food waste. In addition, the CEC is building 8,000 square feet of meeting and working space on State Street “where people of all walks of life can solve climate change together,” a space that is expected to open next spring. For more, visit cecsb.org.

Support the Santa Barbara Independent through a long-term or a single contribution.