This free virtual event will highlight varied climate issues facing the Cape and Islands, with discussions on how YOU can make a difference in such urgent times. NZ-22 conference sessions offer insight, inspiration, resources, and case studies focused on impacts and opportunities for large-scale renewables; energy efficiency and decarbonization tools and incentives; and innovative planning frameworks and resources enabling towns to advance local climate planning initiatives, while acting regionally to meet the climate crisis. Visit our website for continued updates on the conference agenda, presenters and more!

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By Chloe Gotsis, Press Release: Office of Attorney General Maura Healey, September 21, 2022

BOSTON — Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey today joined a coalition of 17 states, the District of Columbia, and the City of New York in announcing an agreement with the Biden Administration’s Department of Energy that updates energy efficiency standards for 20 categories of common consumer products and commercial equipment, including residential furnaces, microwave ovens, room air conditioners and laundry machines. Industry experts estimate that these new federal standards will save American families more than $600 billion on their utility bills by 2050 and avoid more than 90 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions annually by 2040.

In Massachusetts, the new federal standards will mean residents will incur lower costs to power their appliances and will help the state meet its long-term emissions reduction goals needed to combat climate change.  Read More

By Judith Holt, The Enterprise- Sandwich, August 19, 2022 

The unsurpassed dedication to creating beautiful gardens and exquisite museum events at Heritage Museums & Gardens in Sandwich is equally matched in their commitment to sustainability.

A chance meeting I had with Anne Scott-Putney, chief executive officer and president, led to an “all-in” engagement with the entire organization to align with the state’s Decarbonization Plan to cut the emission of carbon dioxide by 50 percent in 2030 and 80 percent by 2050.

From the start, sustainability became part of their strategic plan, which calls for Heritage Museums & Gardens to “model and interpret environmental sustainability.” I have been honored to join their board of trustees, working on this plan together. They are certainly leading the way. Read more.

As Europe careens towards an energy crisis this winter, a Baker administration official said that Massachusetts is in a position more similar to Europe than to other states, and put residents here on notice that the cost of heating their homes and keeping the lights on is likely to skyrocket here this winter as the price of natural gas soars.

“Everybody should be aware that, this winter, Massachusetts is more like Europe than we are from other states because we’re at the end of our national gas pipeline system,” Judy Chang, undersecretary of energy and climate solutions in the Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, said during a meeting Tuesday morning. Read More

By Hadley Barndollar, USA Today Network via Yahoo, Sept 22, 2022

Like the imagery on this single stone, the entire cemetery is chained, bound to the ocean’s whim. Rising sea levels may not have impacted them in life, but inhabitants of Cohasset Central Cemetery were slipping underwater in death. Read more.

By Maxine Joselow, The Washington Post, Sept 19, 2022

For many Americans, climate change can feel like a vast and insurmountable problem. And individual actions to combat the crisis, such as buying an electric car, can seem like they will barely register on a planetary scale.

A new book aims to counteract this mind-set and empower all Americans to become climate activists. In “The Big Fix: Seven Practical Steps to Save Our Planet,” energy expert Hal Harvey and journalist Justin Gillis argue that we can all become “green citizens” and take grass-roots political actions that will make a difference for our climate.  Read more.

By Ben A. Field, The Conservation Companion, Sept 24, 2022

Like many of my fellow wildlifers, my job frequently requires lots of windshield time traveling to and from field sites. While this can get somewhat mind-dumbing, it also gives me several hours to tune into the latest podcasts.

These little snippets of information are one of the best ways to learn passively while listening actively. The available topics are wildly diverse no matter what platform you choose to stream from. I hope you find something you like and share it with your friends and family. Read more

By The Boston Herald, Sept 3, 2022

Seventeen states, including Massachusetts, with vehicle emission standards tied to rules established in California face weighty decisions on whether to follow that state’s strictest-in-the nation new rules that require all new cars, pickups and SUVs to be electric or hydrogen powered by 2035.

Under the Clean Air Act, states must abide by the federal government’s standard vehicle emissions standards unless they at least partially opt to follow California’s stricter requirements.  Read more.

By YCC Team, Yale Climate Connections, September 23, 2022 | Image: Kate Ausburn

People driving down Interstate 95 near Lexington, Massachusetts, will soon pass rows of solar panels. A company called Ko-Solar is working with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation to attach the panels to a short stretch of the existing highway noise barrier.

The project is expected to generate enough electricity to power more than 100 homes. And it’s intended to demonstrate the effectiveness of adding solar panels to noise barriers. Ko-Solar’s managing partner Koray Kotan says the approach helps increase clean energy with minimal land disturbance. Read more.

By Nick Roper, ACEEE News, September 2022

The seventh annual Energy Efficiency Day is rapidly approaching! Join us in celebrating the multiple benefits of energy efficiency—the least expensive, fastest way to meet our energy needs, reduce consumer bills, and cut pollution—on Wednesday, October 5.

Energy Efficiency Day is a nationwide awareness event. There are many ways you can get involved, from posting on social media about the benefits of efficiency to using energy efficiency technologies to cut down on energy waste at home. Read more

This year’s theme is “Climate Challenges and Opportunities for Conservation Commissions." Expect a wonderful line-up of experts providing 13 workshops on stormwater; managed retreat; ecological restorations; green infrastructure, climate-smart forestry, engaging the next generation of environmental leaders, updating local climate bylaws, and much more.

To combat climate change, the Wellfleet Energy and Climate Action Committee is hosting the third in a series of three workshops on how individuals can reduce greenhouse gases to help reach net-zero emission goal by 2050. This workshop is on: Solar Photovoltaic Arrays - How it works, how much can you save, how to get started, and a Q&A session with PV vendors. Read more here.

By Hadley Barndollar, Cape Cod Times, September 25, 2022

After murky water from the Mamaroneck River gutted the sanctuary, the rotting pews in First Baptist Church sat empty for months. h When the faithful returned, they wore whatever remained of their Sunday best. A blush pink blazer. A dress shirt buttoned tight around an Adam’s apple. Ladies white gloves. h Some parishioners were still displaced from their apartments and houses, lives scattered across hotel rooms, shelters, friends’ couches. Read More

Supporting youth leadership and advocacy in collaboration with youth-led and youth-serving organizations has been a top priority of The Ocean Project since 2009. They are committed to radically collaborating with others around the world to develop a broad, diverse, active, and united youth constituency for our blue planet.

This past year The Ocean Project has collaborated with youth organizations and youth leaders worldwide to help secure national commitments for 30x30, providing diverse youth with training and support to push for stronger conservation policies, provide platforms for them to share their stories and have their voices heard with national and world leaders and decision-makers.

The Ocean Project, Semi-annual newsletter, September 2022

Over the last year, The Ocean Project has continued to support the global movement towards "30x30," the goal of protecting at least 30% of our blue planet's lands, waters and ocean by 2030. Collaborating with our partners, we have been promoting 30x30 as the Conservation Action Focus for World Ocean Day for the third straight year; integrating 30x30 into our global youth engagement and leadership initiative; and advancing 30x30 within the zoo, aquarium and museum (ZAM) community, including through coordinating a 30x30 working group in the United States.

This 30x30 working group has created a comprehensive set of tools and resources available at no charge for other organizations to use in their own outreach and engagement efforts around 30x30, including a messaging kit that has proven especially popular as a training tool for staff and volunteers, two videos that are being used to introduce 30x30 to various audiences, and a creative concept for a 'recording booth' used to capture visitor opinions so that they can be shared with decision makers. Read more

By Allison Nicole Smith, Bloomberg News, September 21, 2022

Aarey Colony, a pocket of lush wilderness in Mumbai, has long been considered the city’s only “green lung.” But a plan to build a train car shed on the land, as part of a larger project to construct a 14-line metro system, has pit two competing priorities against each other: the need for more — and safer — public transportation, and the need to protect green space.

The proposed system, which is already under construction, would bring much-needed relief to Mumbai’s aging suburban rail network, which operates beyond capacity. But environmentalists and indigenous communities say cutting down trees for the shed would displace hundreds of residents, threaten the fragile ecosystem, and invite future development. The question of whether to proceed with the controversial project now rests with India’s Supreme Court.

By Kriston Capps, Inside Climate News, September 21, 2022

The apartment building at the end of Cosmonauts Street in the small Lithuanian town of Marijampolė is flashy for the neighborhood. Built in 1993, the narrow nine-story building is newer than a lot of the Soviet-era apartment blocks to be found across the city. After a renovation in 2018, the 54-unit building looks fresh, with alternating columns of peach- and cream-colored siding to distinguish it from towers of drab concrete.

Yet changes at the Cosmonauts Street building go beyond the cosmetic. Before the work-up, its energy use was typical for a building of its age, which is to say, not great. But after the retrofits — including new windows and insulation, solar and geothermal heating systems and all-weather glazed balconies — costs for heating the building fell from 140 kilowatt hours per square meter to 28, a decline of 80%.  Read more. 

Alon Tal, JPost, Sept 25, 2022

It is time to consider how to change course. This year, it needs to be a birthday celebration for the planet where we make some significant commitments.

According to Jewish tradition, Rosh Hashanah marks the birthday of the world. As we welcome in the new year, it is well to ask what sort of a year our earth had in 5782, and what sort of 5783 birthday greetings we might want to wish the only planet on which we will ever live. Read More

By Lizzie Stein, RAC Blog

Climate change is more just an issue of the trees and oceans around us. There is a real human cost associated with the warming of our planet.

As we approach the High Holidays, a time of celebration of the earth and deep reflection on the past year, we remind ourselves of the devastating human costs of climate change that exasperate inequalities in our communities. Our Jewish texts and tradition teach us that we have a dual responsibility to “till and tend” to the earth and to “love your fellow as yourself”.

St. Mary's Episcopal Church Season of Creation Forum

Join via Zoom here or attend in person

Sunday Forums at St. Mary's focuses on environmental issues confronting Cape Cod.

Andrew Gottlieb, Executive Director of the Association to Preserve Cape Cod (APCC),

will speak at this upcoming forum. All are welcome.

We are a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is reduce the Cape & Islands' contributions to climate change and protect our region from its potentially devastating impacts. 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 Collaborative's Climate Action Alerts newsletter is curated and edited by Fran Schofield with production assistance by Lauren Gottlieb. We welcome climate news from your home, school, business, town, faith community, or organization. Please submit your news, events, or article ideas to info@capecodclimate.org.