Meet the new members of the Whatcom committee on climate change
Two new members have joined the Whatcom Climate Impact Advisory Committee. Regina Jefferies and Suneeta Eisenberg will officially become members at the committee’s meeting Thursday, Feb. 15.
An educator with a focus on transportation
Eisenberg has lived in Bellingham for 21 years, and graduated from Western Washington University with a BA in cultural anthropology and sociology with an emphasis on race and ethnic studies. She also has a masters degree in education from Western Governors University.
Eisenberg has taught at schools around the area such as Western Washington University, Whatcom Community College, Bellingham School District and Ferndale School District. Currently, she runs a non-profit women’s indoor soccer team, Whatcom Waves.
While noting she is not a climate scientist, she understands the danger.
“It (climate change) is real,” Eisenberg said. “It is human accelerated and I believe that we have the tools and capacity to fix this problem with various solutions. I think it is going to take all of us together making a commitment to change our consumer behavior and our systems in both education and business to work together as a first world nation that is lagging behind a lot of other countries right now.”
Transportation is one of her main concerns, and she thinks having forms of public transportation and a city that encourages walking and biking is important to the fight against climate change. Eisenberg is supportive of bringing hemp into the mainstream manufacturing and growing to be used as a building material. She has been working with Swiftwater spc to make this possible.
Eisenberg also has experience working with green builders, with TC Legend Homes in Bellingham, which received and honorable mention at the the U.S. Department of Energy’s innovation awards. This achievement was specifically pointed out by Climate Impact Advisory Committee Chair Ellyn Murphy in an email to The Bellingham Herald.
A lawyer who knows transboundary issues
Regina Jefferies has a background in law, and has been working on transboundary immigration. That involves looking at how people move across borders, and how countries or entities create legal frameworks around issues that cross over borders. The COVID pandemic or the Nooksack River flooding are examples of how issues impacts multiple entities.
Jefferies has noticed an increase in the amount of these issues that are caused by climate change, whether they be wildfires or floods, and has decided to join the Climate Impact Advisory Committee to stop these disasters.
“It was only in the last two years or so that I realized the work I had been in terms of governments and regulation was also really relevant to climate change and to disaster management and response,” Jefferies said.
Jefferies’ experience working on transboundary issues is going to be useful when the committee has to work on projects regarding the Nooksack River or the Salish Sea, Murphy said.
Jefferies earned her law degree at Arizona State, and then held her own legal practice in Arizona for a decade. She moved to Sydney, Australia to earn her PhD, before moving to Bellingham to become an assistant professor at Western Washington University.
“Suneeta and Regina will bring a high level of energy and knowledge to the committee. The technologies for climate mitigation and adaptation are evolving rapidly so it is critical to have new perspectives,” Murphy said.
The committee was established in 2017 and provides opinions on climate action to the Whatcom County Council and Executive. The committee created the climate action plan that was finalized by the council in Nov. 2021, which advises the county on climate related issues in five sections. The committee continues to advise the council on climate issues in the county.
