A regional resource for Cape & Islands climate advocates
January 3, 2022
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Greta Thunberg on the State of the Climate Movement
... and the roots of her power as an activist
By KK Ottesen, The Washington Post, December 27, 2021 (Photo credit: Marcus Ohlsson)
Student and climate activist Greta Thunberg, 18, burst improbably onto the world stage in late 2018 when what began as a one-person school strike outside the Swedish parliament ended up galvanizing a global climate movement to demand immediate action to prevent environmental catastrophe.
Thunberg’s school strike spread in Sweden and around the world, inspiring a youth-led global climate strike movement, Fridays for Future, which urged cuts in carbon emissions. Her speeches at major political gatherings, including the World Economic Forum, the British Parliament, the U.S. Congress and, most recently, the United Nations climate summit known as COP26, have castigated leaders for failing future generations with their “fairy tales of eternal economic growth.” Or, as she said in one speech, “How dare you! You have stolen my dreams and my childhood with your empty words.” Read more.
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A Salute to Our President
(photo credit: Steve Heaslip, Cape Cod Times)
If you follow this newsletter, you know that the founder and president of the Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative, Rich Delaney, was Cape Cod’s Man in Glasgow, reporting back to us from the international COP26 Climate Convention. At the time, Rich wore an additional hat as president and CEO of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.
Last week marked Rich’s final day in that position, in which he has served admirably for 14 years, helping elevate the Center to world-class stature. Read more.
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New England is warming faster than the rest of the planet, new study finds
By David Abel, The Boston Globe, December 30, 2021 (Photo credit: Ron Garan/NASA/FILE)
New England is warming significantly faster than global average temperatures, and that rate is expected to accelerate as more greenhouse gases are pumped into the atmosphere and dangerous feedback loops contribute to climate change, according to a new study.
The authors of the scientific paper, which was published in the most recent edition of the journal Climate, analyzed temperature data over more than a century across the six states of New England and documented how winters are becoming shorter and summers longer, jeopardizing much of the region’s unique ecology, economy, and cultural heritage. Read more.
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Climate Collaborative and partners offer experiential
learning climate program on Pleasant Bay
Climate Collaborative teams with Pleasant Bay Community Boating and AmeriCorps Cape Cod on innovative pilot program
By Hannah Crosby, AmeriCorps Cape Cod Service Member, Climate Collaborative, December 2021
The Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative (Climate Collaborative) and partners Pleasant Bay Community Boating (PBCB) and AmeriCorps Cape Cod welcomed fourteen students and two teachers from Derby Academy in Hingham to the shores of Pleasant Bay in early December for an interactive field trip about climate change impacts on the Cape.
The experiential learning program was piloted for Derby Academy eighth graders participating in “Unstoppable Youth”—a two-week class focused on youth action relating to climate change. The 3-part program — designed by Sarah Griscom, PhD, Climate Collaborative board member and PBCB science advisor—was held on PBCB’s Pleasant Bay campus to focus on climate impacts and climate solutions. Read more.
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Across the Nation & Around the Globe
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As Miners Chase Clean-Energy Minerals, Tribes Fear a Repeat of the Past
Mining the minerals that may be needed for a green energy revolution could devastate tribal lands. The Biden administration will be forced to choose.
By Jack Healy and Mike Baker, The New York Times, December 27, 2021 (Photo credit: Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times)
YELLOW PINE, Idaho — Net in hand, Louis Reuben waded into the frigid waters where his ancestors once fished, long before Idaho’s rivers were dammed and contaminated, before the Nez Perce were driven off their land when white miners struck gold.
“They used to say you could walk across the river on the backs of salmon,” he said one rainy autumn morning as he tallied and measured the depleted stocks of young Chinook salmon that hatch in these mountain creeks. “Now, it’s totally different. It’s devastating, if you think about it.” Read more.
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Climate Crises Dominated 2021. But These Innovations Offer Some Hope
By Alejandro de la Garza, Time, Dec. 28, 2021 (Photo: Arnaldur Halldorsson—Bloomberg/Getty Images)
After a rare pandemic-related dip in 2020, global carbon emissions bounced back with a vengeance. Climate disasters seemed relentless over the summer, from flooding in Western Europe and China to wildfires in Siberia and the American West. And although world leaders made some headway at the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow, their new emission-reduction commitments aren’t nearly enough to get the world back on track.
Even so, it was also a year in which individuals, organizations and governments started to come together to respond to the climate emergency. It’s unclear whether that momentum will lead to the sweeping systemic changes the world needs to rapidly zero out greenhouse-gas emissions, but from international agreements to technological advances, some progress is being made. Here, some of the most important climate advances of 2021. Read more.
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Mark Your Calendars!
AmeriCorps Cape Cod's 2022 MLK Day of Service Event!
Partnering with CARE for the Cape & Islands and the Center for Coastal Studies to host a Cape-wide beach cleanup!
Monday, January 17, 2022
Multiple Times & Locations!
AmeriCorps Cape Cod invites you to join them to honor and celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. With CARE for the Cape & Islands and the Center for Coastal Studies, volunteers will be cleaning eight beaches from Sandwich to Provincetown and working together to keep Cape Cod's shoreline healthy and clean. More info here.
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Mayor Wu’s moonshot: The Boston Climate Challenge
Such a challenge could make the most of the region’s established brain trust — local universities and innovative companies — but it can also engage a much wider network of local and international participants.
By Carlo Ratti, The Boston Globe, December 28, 2021 (Graphic: Globe staff/Antonio Rodriquez/Adobe)
Michelle Wu could be America’s first great climate mayor. One of the centerpieces of her electoral campaign, the Boston Green New Deal, galvanized her supporters and caught the attention of international observers. Wu is now poised to join the growing ranks of municipal leaders across the world 一 from Anne Hidalgo in Paris to Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr in Freetown, Sierra Leone 一 who have come to realize that the path to a sustainable future must run through our cities. Yet to succeed, Wu and her peers must overhaul the decision-making processes that animate how governments act and innovate.
Cities are at the front lines of the climate crisis. They cover just 2 percent of the planet’s surface but account for 55 percent of the earth’s population and around 70 percent of CO2 emissions. Read more.
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NZ-21 CONFERENCE
Missed the conference?
Not to worry!
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Straight out of Cape Cod: The origin of community choice aggregation and its spread to other states
David Hsu, Science Direct, April 2021
This policy history describes how community choice aggregation was created in Massachusetts by a small group of advocates and subsequently spread across the US. Twenty-one interviews with key participants, primary materials from government and personal archives, and newspaper articles were used to attribute and corroborate these events.
A new finding is that community choice aggregation was created as part of electric sector restructuring efforts in Massachusetts in 1997, but that this new policy was barely perceived by many stakeholders in the larger restructuring process, and was included by legislators in response to advocates who organized local governments through direct democracy strategies. Kingdon’s multiple streams approach provides a useful framework to understand how organizing by advocates led to successful passage of legislation in Massachusetts.
The spread of community choice aggregation to other states occurred through organizing that combined advocacy with policy learning and emulation. CCA has since been adopted by more than 1800 local governments that represent more than 36 million people in six states. Read more.
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Wellfleet’s Long-Awaited Solar Array Is Up and Running
The project stalled because title to land for a utility pole was unclear
By K.C. Myers, The Provincetown Indepen- dent, December 22, 2021 (Photo: kc Myers)
WELLFLEET — After a two-year delay, Wellfleet’s solar array is “on.” The power company Eversource and the solar contractor Ameresco flipped the switch on Dec. 9, bringing online 2,400 solar panels that have been sitting idle on top of the capped landfill since 2019.
Wellfleet now joins nearly every other Cape Cod town in hosting solar panels on the hills that have covered buried trash for decades. On the Outer Cape, Provincetown uses town land nearby for the purpose, because the landfill itself is on Cape Cod National Seashore property. Eastham has hosted solar panels since 2014. Truro has not leased out the top of its capped landfill.
There are 100 acres of ground-mounted solar panels installed on Cape Cod as of 2014, most of them on “previously disturbed sites such as landfills,” according to the Cape Cod Commission, a regional planning and land use agency. Read more.
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More on Chatham's Climate and Energy committee and future economic impacts of climate change in Chatham
Town Urged To Act Now To Address Climate Change Impacts
By Tim Wood, Cape Cod Chronicle, December 29, 2021 (Photo: Cape Cod Chronicle FILE PHOTO)
CHATHAM – The effects of climate change could cost the town $3 billion by 2100 if nothing is done to mitigate sea level rise and a host of other potential impacts. Those findings were extrapolated by the town's energy and climate action committee from a recent Cape Cod Commission climate change report, which put the total impact to the region at $50 billion.
The figure for Chatham was reached by applying a projected 6.3 percent loss in property taxes to other impacts of climate change, including road damage, decreases in land value, loss of tourism and damage to buildings, said committee chair Robert Wirtshafter. Read more.
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Conservation, Land Use, Sequestration |
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Sea level rise is killing trees along the Atlantic coast, creating ‘ghost forests’ that are visible from space
By Emily Ury, The Conversation, April 6, 2021
Trekking out to my research sites near North Carolina’s Alligator River National Wildlife Refuge, I slog through knee-deep water on a section of trail that is completely submerged. Permanent flooding has become commonplace on this low-lying peninsula, nestled behind North Carolina’s Outer Banks. The trees growing in the water are small and stunted. Many are dead.
Throughout coastal North Carolina, evidence of forest die-off is everywhere. Nearly every roadside ditch I pass while driving around the region is lined with dead or dying trees. As an ecologist studying wetland response to sea level rise, I know this flooding is evidence that climate change is altering landscapes along the Atlantic coast. It’s emblematic of environmental changes that also threaten wildlife, ecosystems, and local farms and forestry businesses.
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This tree has stood here for 500 years. Will it be sold for $17,500?
By Juliet Eilperin. The Washington Post, December 30, 2021 (Photos and video by Salwan Georges)
TONGASS NATIONAL FOREST, Alaska — The Sitka spruce soaring more than 180 feet skyward has stood on this spot on Prince of Wales Island for centuries. While fierce winds have contorted the towering trunks of its neighbors, the spruce’s trunk is ramrod straight. Standing apart from the rest of the canopy, it ascends to the height of a 17-story building.
This tree’s erect bearing — a 1917 publication called the Sitka species “the autocrat of timbers” — is what helps give it such extraordinary commercial value ... Even when the top and branches are lopped off, a tree this size would yield at least 6,000 board feet of lumber, said industry consultant Catherine Mater, who assessed the spruce’s potential market value for The Washington Post. It would fetch around $17,500 on the open market.
But there’s another value the spruce holds: the carbon dioxide locked inside its fibers, in its roots, in the soil and in the vegetation that clings to it from its branches to its base, where berry bushes proliferate. Read more.
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Education, Communication & Outreach |
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Young people in the Bay Area use hip-hop to demand climate action
The Hip-Hop & Climate Justice program helps youth express their feelings about the problem.
By Yale Climate Communications Team, December 20, 2021 (Photo: Youth Versus Apocalypse video)
Young climate activists march in the streets, lobby elected leaders, and make hip-hop.
Music clip from “Where’s the Money At”: “Oh my, oh my / Power to the people / So the people gon’ climb / We gon’ keep flowin’ / Like the rivers and the sky / Generations of resistance / Be the reason for the rhyme”
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Climate change is the greatest threat to humanity. Here’s how filmmakers have tried to make sense of it all.
Over the past 20 years, directors have increas- ingly put out movies that help viewers process a crisis of existential pro-portions
By Sonia Rao, The Washington Post, December 21, 2021
A few years after “Indepen-dence Day" premiered in theaters, Roland Emmerich faced immense pressure to write and direct a sequel. His sci-fi disaster movie was the highest-grossing film of 1996, raking in more than $300 million at the domestic box office and $800 million worldwide. It set a new standard for Hollywood blockbusters. Naturally, executives wanted another. But Emmerich’s concerns lay elsewhere. Read more.
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Use your voice, vote and wallet for climate action
Halla Tómasdóttir, Ted Talk, December 2021
Recently back from the COP26 UN climate conference in Scotland, former Icelandic presidential candidate Halla Tómasdóttir sums up the outcomes of the gathering, the progress she saw and the work that's left to be done this way: "The most difficult work of our lifetimes has to happen in the next few years."
In conversation with TEDWomen curator Pat Mitchell, Tómasdóttir urges us all to recognize our power and to use our voice, vote and wallet to catalyze meaningful climate action. Watch the video.
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Could Roads Recharge Electric Cars? The Technology May Be Close.
But challenges await, including technical issues, regulatory barriers and many miles of highway.
By Kerry Hannon, The New York Times, Nov. 29, 2021 (Photo credit: Matt Williams)
Electric vehicles are getting a lot of buzz. Yet sales of electric vehicles, or EVs, are expected to amount to less than 4 percent of passenger vehicle sales in the United States in 2021. One reason: the inability to easily recharge on long trips, known as range anxiety. And the concern is valid: Range, charging time and availability of charging stations all still have a long way to go.
EVs are getting a boost, though: They are prominently featured in a $7.5 billion initiative from the Biden Administration, signed by the president earlier this month, with the goal of building a nationwide network of a 500,000 high-speed electric vehicle charging stations by 2030. Read more.
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Cape Cod car buyers are charged for electric vehicles, but they're in short supply
By Denise Coffey, Cape Cod Times, December 28, 2021 (Photo credit: Ron Schlerb, Cape Cod Times)
HYANNIS — Ford’s entry to the all-electric car market, the Mustang Mach-E, recently won EV of the Year for 2021 from Car and Driver Magazine. With a mileage range that can reach 305 miles depending on options, a fuel economy that averages 100 miles per gallon, and a list price that starts at $43,000, the car has plenty of admirers.
Jason Arruda is one.
The general manager of Balise Ford of Cape Cod had the opportunity to test drive it for several days when the car was first delivered to the Hyannis lot. In spite of his initial skepticism, he found it responsive, quiet and quick.
“It was interesting finding out how much performance came with the car,” Arruda said. “The Mach-E was awesome.” Read more.
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Energy & The Built Environment |
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The US could reliably run on clean energy by 2050
A new simulation highlights the stability of wind, solar, water power.
By Nikita Amir, Popular Science, December 20, 2021
The Biden administration has pledged to create a carbon-free energy sector by 2035, but because renewable resources generate only around 19 percent of US electricity as of 2020, climate experts warn that our transition to a green grid future needs to speed up.
A group of researchers at Stanford led by Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering, has set out to prove that a 100 percent renewable energy grid by 2050 is not only feasible but can be done without any blackouts and at a lower cost than the existing grid. Read more.
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After years of doubts, hopes grow that nuclear fusion is finally for real and could help address climate change
By David Abel, The Boston Globe, Dec. 22, 2021
DEVENS — It’s been compared to everything from a holy grail to fool’s gold: the ultimate solution to clean, readily available energy or an expensive delusion diverting scarce money and brainpower from the urgent needs of rapidly addressing climate change.
For decades, scientists have been trying to harness the energy that powers stars, a complex, atomic-level process known as nuclear fusion, which requires heating a plasma fuel to more than 100 million degrees Celsius and finding a way to contain and sustain it. Read more.
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We are an all-volunteer 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to reach carbon neutrality — or net zero — on Cape Cod and the Islands of Massachusetts by enhancing communication, collaboration, and activism among organizations, programs, and individuals committed to mitigating the climate crisis. We depend upon the generosity of our stakeholders to conduct our work. All donations are tax deductible as allowed by law.
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The Climate Action Alerts newsletter is curated and crafted by Fran Schofield. If you have a climate story from your home, school, workplace, town or organization, please be in touch! And don't forget to share this action alert with your friends and suggest they subscribe here.
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