By Taylor Maag
The Yampa Valley of Colorado is breathtaking – with the Flat Top Mountains and the Yampa river. It is a region of deep history and natural beauty. But it’s not hard to see the effects of climate change. It is getting hotter and drier, the snowpack is changing and wildfire risk is at an all-time high. And this isn’t unique to that area of the state. A majority of Colorado has warmed 1 to 2 degrees Fahrenheit in the last century. In 2020, 625,000 acres burned in forest fires, and warming temperatures are decreasing the snowpack in the southern Rockies.
To solve these challenges, the state and the nation at large need a workforce that is prepared to address the concerns of today, find solutions for tomorrow and transition the country to a more climate-conscious economy. Unfortunately, the rapidly growing clean-energy sector is bumping up against serious labor constraints, having difficulty filling jobs and ensuring that workers have the needed skills. In the next seven years, there are expected to be over 550,000 new energy-transition jobs in the U.S. In 2022 alone, green job postings on LinkedIn jumped 20% — yet the pool of workers with the skills required to fill them grew by only 8.4%.
Regions like the Yampa Valley need help attracting and developing talent that can combat this worsening crisis. A leader in this initiative is Lyra, a nonprofit that seeks to reimagine education by designing and broadening climate-driven career pathways and empowering school communities to drive their own reforms. The organization does this through three main efforts: innovation zones, mission accelerators and the Climatarium initiative that is increasingly pertinent to solving some of the state’s most dire challenges.
