Mike Wharton: finding balance in sustainability efforts
By Makenna Reavis
Mike Wharton is the sustainability officer for the Sustainability Office in Athens-Clarke County Unified Government, which has been working since 2017 to promote clean energy, education and cooperation with the natural environment.
Q: I read on your website that Athens-Clarke County plans to obtain all energy from clean, renewable sources by 2035. How has the progress been on that?
A: As you can imagine, it’s not quick, but, I mean, we feel like we’ve made some pretty substantial inroads. We’re trying to move as a community to understanding how the built and natural environments interact in a way that preserves and conserves for future generations and we leave this earth in better shape than what we found it in. It’s a huge challenge. It requires a lot of education, a lot of promotion and time. So, we’ve had some significant strides compared to where we were, but we have such a long way to still go.
Q: What has been your biggest accomplishment as an organization, so far?
A: We have several that I would say. We are managing our natural resources now, as a government, which is not common for local, smaller, our size governments. We have a whole component and a person dedicated to our ecosystem services. We have a cleaner, renewable energy plan that the community has reviewed, evaluated and voted to accept. We have projects that are underway that are making some significant changes in both the way we approach our government and our managing of resources, as well as the impact on our planet as we go forward. So I would say we have a variety of those. We have a lot of people who are interested in and passionate about it in Athens, which is great.
Q: And where do you find that you received the most pushback on making those changes?
A: Part of it is, when you’re in a situation like we are, which, it’s really a wonderful situation, but it’s also extremely stressful because you have a whole host of opportunity to make good changes, but your resources don’t match the need, by even a fraction. Some of the tough things that you do, for me, is not so much against those who deny, or aren’t interested because that is, I guess, having that perspective is understandable. And that’s just a matter of working it and hopefully having an open mind in people. You have so many good things that you’re doing that you can’t do them all, and you have a choice between doing a lot of things halfway, or a few things really well, or some balance in between. And that’s the challenge.
Comments trimmed for length and clarity
Why I Wrote the Story:
Being new to both the sustainability beat and Athens at the time, for this assignment I wanted to learn more about overall sustainability in Athens and the main goals for sustainability here. So, I chose to interview the sustainability officer for Athens-Clarke County Unified Government. He was able to tell me about the initiatives that his office has that will make Athens more sustainable, as well as a lot of the “why” around the mission of his office. Interviewing a government official was a great learning experience because he had a lot of hands on experience in the field of sustainability but also about the agendas surrounding sustainability and how to implement changes in times of resistance against new methods of preserving the earth.
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