VX News is the editorial voice of the annual VerdeXchange Conference, featuring in-depth interviews with industry leaders and policymakers driving innovation in clean energy, water, transportation, and climate policy.

VX News here features excerpted keynote remarks by Wade Crowfoot, California Secretary for Natural Resources, delivered at the inaugural Resilient California Summit. Crowfoot argues that the state can no longer treat climate mitigation and adaptation as separate efforts, and points to on-the-ground examples, from schoolyard heat-island retrofits and tribal-led cultural burning to Sacramento Valley floodplain restoration and the Klamath dam removals, as models that now need to scale statewide. With a gubernatorial transition ahead and federal environmental protections under pressure, he casts community leaders, not officeholders, as the durable drivers of California’s climate agenda.

Talia Yohai 10/28/26 Talia Yohai 10/28/26

Resilient California Summit: “What If We’re Successful?” – Sara Dutschke, Ione Band of Miwok Indians

VX News here features excerpted remarks by Sara Dutschke, Chairwoman of the Ione Band of Miwok Indians and partner at Kaplan Kirsch, where she leads the firm’s tribal practice, delivered at the inaugural Resilient California Summit hosted by the Indigenous Futures Society. Taking up the summit’s theme, “Imagine what’s possible: What if we’re successful?”, Dutschke argues that traditional ecological knowledge should help shape the direction of California’s climate, land-stewardship and resilience work, not simply be added to efforts already underway.