What are the key takeaways from this Up First (NPR) episode?

Key insights include: **District Energy Systems:** Denver is converting its 1880s steam pipe network into a water-based thermal loop using heat pumps, geothermal energy, and heat recovered from sewage wastewater. Two buildings will pilot the system within two years, with full fossil fuel elimination as the long-term target.; **Shared Building Heat Exchange:** Denver's redesigned pipe network allows buildings to trade excess heat — an overheated museum, for example, can transfer thermal energy to a neighboring municipal building. This inter-building efficiency reduces total energy consumption and lowers operating costs citywide.; **Pocket Forest Method:** The Miyawaki planting technique, developed in the 1970s, creates dense mini-forests on plots as small as six parking spaces, fitting up to 350 plants. Fast canopy competition accelerates growth, and the resulting urban forests demonstrably reduce neighborhood heat and absorb flood runoff.

How long is this episode of Up First (NPR)?

This episode is 19 minutes long. SignalCast provides an AI-generated summary so you can get the key insights in about 3 minutes.

Up First (NPR)

Trump is rolling back climate solutions. What can cities and states do?

May 24, 2026

19 min episode · 2 min read

Episode

19 min

Read time

2 min

Topics

Productivity, Fundraising & VC, Design & UX

AI-Generated Summary

Published Jun 17, 2026

Key Takeaways

✓District Energy Systems: Denver is converting its 1880s steam pipe network into a water-based thermal loop using heat pumps, geothermal energy, and heat recovered from sewage wastewater. Two buildings will pilot the system within two years, with full fossil fuel elimination as the long-term target.
✓Shared Building Heat Exchange: Denver's redesigned pipe network allows buildings to trade excess heat — an overheated museum, for example, can transfer thermal energy to a neighboring municipal building. This inter-building efficiency reduces total energy consumption and lowers operating costs citywide.
✓Pocket Forest Method: The Miyawaki planting technique, developed in the 1970s, creates dense mini-forests on plots as small as six parking spaces, fitting up to 350 plants. Fast canopy competition accelerates growth, and the resulting urban forests demonstrably reduce neighborhood heat and absorb flood runoff.
✓Local Climate Action Scale: Research confirms that city and state-level policies on energy, transportation, and building codes produce measurable emissions reductions. An 80% global majority surveyed by Oxford in 2024 wants stronger government climate action, making local advocacy a viable pressure mechanism when federal policy stalls.

What It Covers

With the Trump administration rolling back federal climate regulations, including the endangerment finding and EV tax credits, NPR's Julia Simon highlights how cities and states are advancing concrete climate solutions independently through infrastructure redesign and community-led reforestation.

Key Questions Answered

•District Energy Systems: Denver is converting its 1880s steam pipe network into a water-based thermal loop using heat pumps, geothermal energy, and heat recovered from sewage wastewater. Two buildings will pilot the system within two years, with full fossil fuel elimination as the long-term target.
•Shared Building Heat Exchange: Denver's redesigned pipe network allows buildings to trade excess heat — an overheated museum, for example, can transfer thermal energy to a neighboring municipal building. This inter-building efficiency reduces total energy consumption and lowers operating costs citywide.
•Pocket Forest Method: The Miyawaki planting technique, developed in the 1970s, creates dense mini-forests on plots as small as six parking spaces, fitting up to 350 plants. Fast canopy competition accelerates growth, and the resulting urban forests demonstrably reduce neighborhood heat and absorb flood runoff.
•Local Climate Action Scale: Research confirms that city and state-level policies on energy, transportation, and building codes produce measurable emissions reductions. An 80% global majority surveyed by Oxford in 2024 wants stronger government climate action, making local advocacy a viable pressure mechanism when federal policy stalls.

Notable Moment

A Colombian legislator who has navigated twelve years of shifting administrations — both pro- and anti-climate — argued that sustained local-level pressure keeps climate policy alive regardless of which party controls national government.

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Episode Transcript

I'm Ayesha Rasco, and this is a Sunday story from Up First. Our planet is getting hotter. In fact, the last eleven years have been the hottest on record. And for people working to address climate change in The US, the last year has been a hard one. The Trump administration has been backtracking on rules and regulations meant to reduce planet warming pollution. We are officially terminating the so called endangerment finding. That was president Trump in February announcing his administration was rescinding the scientific finding that underpins many of the nation's rules regulating climate pollution from cars and trucks and coal and gas power plants. And that's not all. In the last year, there have been lots of other changes. The administration has rolled back tax credits for electric vehicles and solar panels. It's cut research to help us understand climate science and help us adapt to more heat and wildfires. But even in the face of these federal actions, there are states, cities, and towns across the country that are still finding innovative solutions for the climate crisis. We're joined now by Julia Simon, NPR's climate solutions correspondent. Julia, welcome to the podcast. So nice to be here, Ayesha. Julia, I I understand that you're going to help us find some bright spots in the midst of all of this kind of doom and gloom for the climate that happened this past year in The US. Yeah. So tell me about that. Ayesha, often the focus is on these big decisions on the federal level. But what's going on locally can be overlooked, and it shouldn't. Right now, I'm gonna take you to a gathering I went to recently that gave me a lot of hope. Well, we could definitely use some hope. We sure can. So last month, I went to the first international conference for the transition away from fossil fuels in Santa Marta, Colombia. Burning fossil fuels, Ayesha, it's the single biggest driver of climate change. So more than 50 countries, they showed up to support finding these concrete ways to transition away from oil, gas, and coal. I'm here in the plenary hall in Santa Marta, Colombia, and I see ministers from Spain, from Nigeria. Was anyone there representing The US or somebody from the Trump administration? There was no one there from the federal government, but there was a state official from California, and there were actually lots of people representing local climate action. You had mayors from Athens, Greece, from Quito, Ecuador, from Cape Town, South Africa. And one of these local politicians I met at the conference was Juan Carlos Lozada. He's in Colombia's House of Representatives and he says right now Colombia's federal government, it's very left wing, very pro climate action. That's why they co hosted this conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels with The Netherlands. The president now, Gustavo Petro, he has a moratorium on new exploration contracts for fossil fuels. They've suspended new fracking projects. …

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