A Christmas Card for the Coast: Inside Jim Blackburn's 2022 Texas Coastal Holiday Newsletter

December 25, 2022

A look back at the major moves 2022 brought to the TX coast!

In this holiday special, hosts Peter Ravella and Tyler Buckingham dive deep into Jim Blackburn's 2022 Texas Coastal Newsletter with Jim Blackburn himself! For over 30 years, Jim has authored his Texas Coastal Holiday Newsletter, a detailed rundown of the issues facing Texas's coastal resources ranging from the specific to the thematic. Jim is the CEO of BCarbon, a non-profit ecosystem services registry that catalyzes widespread ecological regeneration by leveraging the power of soil, forests, and wetlands to fight climate change. He is a professor in the practice of environmental law in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department at Rice University as well as a Rice faculty scholar at the Baker Institute. At Rice, he serves as the co-director of the Severe Storm Prediction, Education and Evacuation from Disaster (SSPEED) Center and as director of the undergraduate minor in energy and water sustainability.

Show Transcription
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Peter Ravella & Tyler Buckingham

Peter and Tyler joined forces in 2015 and from the first meeting began discussing a project that would become Coastal News Today and the American Shoreline Podcast Network. At the time, Peter and Tyler were coastal consultants for Pete’s firm, PAR Consulting, LLC. In that role, they worked with coastal communities in Texas, Florida, and North Carolina, engaged in grant writing, coastal project development, shoreline erosion and land use planning, permitting, and financial planning for communities undertaking big beach restoration projects. Between and among their consulting tasks, they kept talking and kept building the idea of CNT & ASPN. In almost every arena they worked, public engagement played a central role. They spent thousands of hours talking with coastal stakeholders, like business owners, hotel operators, condo managers, watermen, property owners, enviros, surfers, and fishermen. They dived deep into the value, meaning, and responsibility for the American shoreline, segment-by-segment. Common threads emerged, themes were revealed, differences uncovered. There was a big conversation going on along the American shoreline! But, no place to have it. That's where CNT and ASPN were born.