• Chapter Meeting Details
• Deep Dialogue Details
• Make Polluters Pay Petition Drop Photos
• Plastic Recycling Doesn't Work
• Legislative Priorities Update
• What We've Been Reading

Katherine Nadeau

Deputy Executive Director for Policy and Programs

Environmental Advocates NY

Dr. Richard Birdsey

DEEP DIALOGUE

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17 (1 week early)

4 - 5:30 PM on Zoom

Register here!

The Potential of Forests in Massachusetts to Address Climate Change

We have invited Dr. Richard Birdsey back so we can delve into the many questions we didn't get to discuss when he presented to us at our October 14 chapter meeting. 

Here is a link to that October 14 chapter meeting if you missed it or would like to review the slides.

Here is some background reading material Dr. Birdsey has shared:

• Birdsey, Richard, Andrea Castanho, Richard Houghton, Kathleen Savage (2023). Middle-aged forests in the Eastern U.S. have significant climate mitigation potential. Forest Ecology and Management.
• Mildrexler, D. J., Berner, L. T., Law, B. E., Birdsey, R. A., Moomaw, W. R. (2023). Protect large trees for climate mitigation, biodiversity, and forest resilience. Conservation Science and Practice.
• Thompson, J. R., Laflower, D. M., Plisinski, J. S., MacLean, M. G., Chu, H., Carpenter, D., Antos, K., Cooper, S., Gaertner, K., Judge, M., Mittelman, M., Ryor, J., Van Doren, W. 2025. Forest Carbon Study: The Impact of Alternative Land-use Scenarios on Terrestrial Carbon Storage and Sequestration in Massachusetts.
• US communities ‘LEARN’ the carbon value of their trees

Come with your questions and what you want to understand better - this will be your chance to get into it.

Photo credits Stan Eichner

The Make Polluters Pay (MPP) coalition had a successful petition drop event at the MA State House on October 21. More than 80 people attended the event, including many college students from the Sunrise coalition. Petitions were delivered to the offices of the Governor, Senate President Spilka, Speaker Mariano, and Chairs and members of the Environment and Natural Resources Committee. 

Tina Grosowsky

Plastics recycling doesn’t work, never has and never will. Only 5% of US plastics are recycled. The petrochemical and bottling industries have duped us in much the same way as the tobacco and the energy sector of the fossil fuel industry did. Plastics chemistry works against recycling as does curbside collection.

Plastics are long chains (polymers) of repeating molecules (monomers), with a stew of chemicals added in. Think of the polymer as a train where the cars are the individual molecules that cannot be separated since the bonds between repeating molecules are strong. Even if heat is applied to plastics, so called ‘chemical recycling,’ the polymer does not uncouple into individual molecules, but rather breaks into chunks of smaller repeating units, often touted as synthetic fuel, and leaves an extremely toxic residue.

Mechanical recycling involves washing the plastic, grinding it into a powder and combining it with virgin monomer to make a new product. But this requires a clean stream of only one type of plastic, which rarely happens. In curbside collection, plastic streams of all types are commingled with paper, cardboard, aluminum and metal cans, a practice which even limits the effectiveness of recycling aluminum cans. Once a plastic bottle is commingled, it loses its ‘food grade’ status and can only be downcycled. 

With our MA landfills at capacity, single-use plastics, which are about 40% of plastics production, are hauled out of state at considerable cost.

The petrochemical and beverage industries should be held responsible for the burdens they’ve placed on society and the environment. A few cents per container in handling fees seems justified in moving us towards longer term sustainable practices.



For more information about ECA’s plastics legislative priorities see here, particularly updating the decades’ old Bottle Bill.

Jeanne Krieger

Critical News

On Monday 11/10 you will receive an ECA Mass Action Alert requesting that you call and then email your state Representative to urge them to oppose an effort to push back our state climate goals. Chair Cusack of the Telecommunications, Utilities and Energy Committee is calling on the House to abandon our commitment to cut GHG emissions by 50% by 2030 because he thinks we cannot do it. Read about it here. The Action Alert will provide more detailed instructions, but if you feel confident, send a message to your Representative saying that for the sake of our children's future, we will not let the Massachusetts climate goals be pushed back. We need hundreds of calls and emails to flood the legislature in the next few days to stop a very real threat.

Massachusetts is making real progress towards our climate goals and giving up on them does nothing to make energy more affordable. This is not the time for giving in. 

Bills on the Move

Some of our priority bills are already on the move. The Municipal Reforestation Bill (S. 553) got a favorable report out from the Environment and Natural Resources (ENR) Committee, and bills banning plastic bags and some Styrofoam have been wrapped into Senator Rausch’s multipart plastics bill (S.2541) and moved on to the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

There is concern that the bottle bill (H.3464, S.2245) may yet again be stymied by Speaker Mariano, who is under pressure from beverage bottlers to kill the bill. Advocates are considering ways to put pressure on Polar Beverages to back off of its resistance to the bill.

Bond and Affordability Bills

The Municipal Reforestation bill will need funding, and supporters are aiming to get that into the Environmental Bond Bill, which is still undergoing review in ENR. Advocates for the Zero Carbon Renovation bill are also making the case for including funding for retrofitting affordable housing in the bond bill.

We will be following that bill closely, preparing to advocate for our priorities as it heads to the Joint Committee on Bonding, perhaps in the new year. Two other forest preservation bills have yet to be acted on in ENR.

Healey’s energy affordability bill (H.4114) is expected to be reported out of Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy (TUE) soon to House Ways and Means. We are eager to find out what is in the bill as we gear up to advocate for our priorities. The bill may be a vehicle for other energy legislation we support (e.g. mandating performance standards for large buildings, reforming the gas system, expanding the Green Communities program, solar siting, etc.).

Climate Bank Blitz

November is a critical month for the Climate Bank (CB) bills (S.786, H.3937). The Joint Financial Services (FS) Committee will hold a hearing on the bill in mid-November, and getting a favorable report out ASAP is critical. The CB coalition is targeting a number of legislators on the committee and is looking for constituents willing to help with advocacy (see here for more info). The coalition is also encouraging us to submit testimony supporting the bill, and has prepared a tool kit to help you do this. Check out the tool kit here and take action!

Roger Luckmann

Photo Credits Rick Lent

Were you at one of the over 2,700 No Kings protests on October 18? Here are just a few photos from Leadership Team member, Rick Lent. Peaceful protest is a hallmark of our democracy - and these protests were entirely peaceful.

Leadership Team

Congressman Jake Auchincloss stopped by the ECA Mass table and talked with Tina Grosowsky at the Brookline Farmers Market.

Tina Grosowsky

Packed with the latest research, practical guidance, and enlightening graphics, Not the End of the World by Hannah Ritchie will make you rethink almost everything you’ve been told about the environment. Not the End of the World will give you the tools to understand our current crisis and make lifestyle changes that actually have an impact. 

An exploration of climate change that uses nine different emotions to better understand the science, history, and future of our evolving planet, Human

Nature by Kate Marvel is a deeply felt inquiry into our rapidly changing Earth. In each chapter, Marvel uses a different emotion to explore the science and stories behind climate change. As expected, there is anger, fear, and grief—but also wonder, hope, and love. With her singular voice, Marvel takes us on a soaring journey, one filled with mythology, physics, witchcraft, bad movies, volcanoes, Roman emperors, sequoia groves, and the many small miracles of nature we usually take for granted.

Fire Weather by John Vaillant is an expansive book that is at once a gripping tale of calamity, a deft primer on the science of fire, a historical account of the rise of the fossil fuel industry, and a profoundly humane examination of the biological and political drivers of the climate crisis. Through its central story—an intimately told account of the catastrophic 2016 wildfire in Fort McMurray, a booming oil town in Alberta, Canada—John Vaillant offers a haunting and deeply-researched vision of our combustible future.

In The Language of Climate Politics, Dr. Genevieve Guenther explores the origins and implications of the false belief that the world can keep using oil and gas and still cope with climate change. She offers tested messages that undermine the propaganda and raise support for fossil-fuel phase-out. The book is an inspiring call to arms that equips readers with powerful new terms to fight more effectively for a livable future.

I Want a Better Catastrophe by Andrew Boyd is an existential manual for tragic optimists, can-do pessimists, and compassionate doomers. 

Our sister ECA chapters around the country are reading some of these books and several have organized book clubs to discuss them. If being part of a book club interests you, please let MaiyimBaron@gmail.com know and we'll try to organize some groups, either online or in person at local book shops.

Maiyim Baron

If you would like to become more involved with ECA Mass on one of our teams (Communication, Education, Legislative, Membership or Research) please contact Tina Grosowsky, tgrosowsky@verizon.net.

Tina Grosowsky

We send announcements of our meetings and Action Alerts to eca-mass@googlegroups.com, which includes all those on our active list. 

Please contact Dawn Edell if you want to confirm you are on our active list.

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Did you miss an ECA Mass chapter meeting or deep dialogue? Or do you want to share one with friends and family? 

We have you covered! Videos of past chapter meetings are here and videos of past deep dialogues are here.