A regional resource for Cape & Islands climate activists
November 23, 2020
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Twelve Cape Cod towns have endorsed Climate Emergency articles
Barnstable's affirmative town council vote of last week the most recent
Climate Emergency Declarations have passed in all ten Cape Cod towns where town meetings have been held during 2020 and most recently by the Barnstable Town Council. Brewster's select board voted to ratify the declaration in the absence of a town meeting and three remaining towns — Chatham, Sandwich and Yarmouth — will take up climate articles at their town meetings in Spring 2021.
Community support for the declarations has been overwhelmingly positive. In Truro, for example, the Declaration of Climate Emergency passed by a decisive 220 to 10. At Barnstable's town council meeting, members of the Cape Cod Youth Climate Action Network and others spoke passionately about the need for decisive action, with young voices particularly powerful in effecting the 9-2 vote.
The coordinated campaign to pass declarations of climate emergency Cape-wide was launched in early 2020 by the Cape Cod Climate Emergency Initiative, a coalition of organizations led by the Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative and including 350 Cape Cod, Center for Coastal Studies, Association to Preserve Cape Cod, Sierra Club Cape Cod, and Faith Communities Environmental Network among others.
According to Barry Margolin, the Initiative’s lead organizer, “Grass roots activists have persevered in placing climate emergency declarations in front of every town on Cape Cod despite serious obstacles posed by the pandemic. With devastating fires, floods, and hurricanes of recent months vividly illustrating the reality of the climate crisis and rendering its impacts undeniable, Cape Codders are recognizing the urgent need to act.”
“Looking ahead, we will focus on offering practical strategies in each town to cut carbon emissions to push back this threat to the survival of our communities,” Margolin concluded.
Since launch of the original Climate Emergency Declaration initiative, organizers and activists have formed the Cape Cod Climate Action Network (Cape Cod CAN), a network of the Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative and chapter of the statewide Massachusetts Climate Action Network (MCAN) organizations, both of which focus on town-level action on climate issues and support the work of individual climate action networks Cape-wide.
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Net Zero 2020: REIMAGINE REBUILD RENEW
Held just one month ago today, Net Zero 2020 lives on in video format, and the discussions continue.
Watch 30+ videos and learn from experts around the region, state and country. Join the conversation and get involved!
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Green Zoning in Massachusetts
Watch the recent MCAN webinar
On November 11, 2020, MCAN hosted a webinar about green zoning in Massachusetts, both current successes and future possibilities.
Members of Green and Open Somerville spoke about their roles as advocates for increased green spaces and other sustainable policies in Somerville's most recent zoning overhaul. Dan Bartman, Somerville's senior planner, discussed his experience working with towns to create more sustainable and resilient cities through zoning. Kathryn Wright, Programs Director for Building Energy at the Urban Sustainability Directors Network, spoke about models of green zoning in other states and what that could mean for Massachusetts. Watch the webinar here.
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David Attenborough –
A Life on Our Planet
Take an hour to take in this remarkable film...it's why you do what you do
By Henry Mance, Financial Times, October 31, 2020
David Attenborough was born before the Wall Street crash and filmed his first wildlife documentary in Sierra Leone while the country was still a British colony. It’s possible that no human being, alive or dead, has seen so much of the natural world. In A Life on Our Planet, the 94-year-old natural historian and broadcaster seeks to sum up just how much has been damaged — and just how much trouble we are in. “The natural world is fading . . . It will lead to our destruction,” he says. For anyone unfamiliar with the loss of biodiversity, this is a sobering and essential primer. Read more here. Watch the video here.
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Joint Base Cape Cod Machine Gun Range: Another Round
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Guest Commentary, The Falmouth Enterprise
Machine Gun Proposal At Base Has A History
By Mark Forest and Eric T. Turkington
“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” is a particularly apt phrase to apply to the Massachusetts National Guard and its mission to build a 210-acre machine gun range within the protected 15,000-acre Upper Cape Water Supply Reserve area at Joint Base Cape Cod.
Twenty years ago, Cape Cod was embroiled in a huge fight over whether to continue to allow military activities on the base at all, as it became clear that the National Guard’s previous negligence had resulted in pollution of millions of gallons of groundwater in Cape Cod’s sole source aquifer.
This pollution rendered municipal drinking water wells in Falmouth, Mashpee, Sandwich and Bourne unusable and cost the federal government hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up. Read more here.
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Online Poll
Was Massachusetts right to adopt new rules limiting financial incentives for solar projects on sensitive lands?
Read two views and vote in the Boston Globe's online poll.
By John Laidler Globe Correspondent, Updated November 12, 2020
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YES
Heidi Ricci
Director of Policy at Lincoln-based Mass Audubon; Shirley resident
The Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources recently revised its financial incentives for solar arrays to reduce the loss of forests, rare species habitats, and other sensitive lands. The incentives, with some exceptions, will no longer be provided for large projects built in those areas. This was a smart decision, and more still needs to be done.
Solar power must be rapidly accelerated. We are running out of time to transition to clean, renewable energy and avoid the worst impacts of climate change. Rising seas, increased temperatures, more frequent droughts, and storms of greater intensity are already impacting people and nature in Massachusetts and globally. Read more here.
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NO
Ilan Gutherz
Vice President of Policy and Strategy for Borrego Solar Systems
It’s difficult business developing solar in Massachusetts. In our experience, the state has one of the toughest permitting environments in the country, with both local and state agencies scrutinizing every aspect of these projects. State leaders have set strong climate targets, most recently a goal of zero net emissions by 2050. But when it comes to solar, the state’s current policy misses the forest for the trees.
Reducing emissions to near zero by 2050 is a huge task. The Brattle Group estimates New England needs to install as much as 7 gigawatts of clean generation each year to stay on track with its regionwide climate goals — as much as eight times more than we currently install. Read more here.
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Broto: Affinity
Art-Climate-Science collaborations zeroing in on better affinity of society and nature
Saturdays, December 5 and December 12
Free and open to public
Broto: Art-Climate-Science is a unique and unaffiliated conference of international experts in art, science, sustainability, philosophy, business, advocacy, public health and other multidisciplinary fields. We focus on substantive, mutual, credible and real-time art-science collaboration that inspires innovation to address the climate crisis. In life and in science, "Affinity" is about closeness, alignment, rapport, mutual interest, attraction, symbiosis. How does art-climate-science collaboration bring clarity and new ideas to building a mutually affirming society-nature partnership? Three sessions will be held on each day with live Q&As:
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December 5 - "Affinity: Between Art and Science", "Bank of Nature" and "Symbiosis - Art's Knowledge of Nature"
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December 12 - "Interaction, not Extraction," "Business-Nature-Policy" and "Denatured/Renatured"
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Connecting Faith, Climate, and Justice— A Virtual Conversation
A Union of Concerned Scientists Conversation
Tuesday, December 8
Time: 7:00 p.m ET
Climate change does not exist as its own calamity—it is deeply interconnected with the inequities and injustices that pervade our society, both in the United States and globally. The Union of Concerned Scientists invites you to a virtual conversation among faith leaders to learn how they have come to connect the call of faith with the need for action on climate change and racial justice.
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Quarterly Energy Meeting for Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard
Presented by Cape Light Compact, CVEC and the Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative
Thursday, December 10
4:30 p.m.
Cape Light Compact, Cape and Vineyard Electric Cooperative and the Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative invite you to a virtual Zoom meeting for Cape and Vineyard town energy committees, organizations, and stakeholders working on energy and climate related issues. The meeting's goal is to enable participants to share information on current goals and projects and to identify potential areas of collaboration.
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Massachusetts Legislative Resources
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The Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative is 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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CAPE COD CLIMATE CHANGE COLLABORATIVE
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The Climate Action Alerts newsletter is written and produced by Fran Schofield,
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