Sustainable Concord Coffee at Home
New Year
New Sustainability Director
New Urgency
Speaker: Amanda Kohn
Tuesday
January 18, 8-9 am
Via Zoom (registration required)
Please join ConcordCAN to welcome Amanda Kohn, who started recently as Concord’s new Sustainability Director. Amanda will talk about Concord’s progress and plans towards meeting the 2020 Climate Action Plan goals.
Concord
Special Town Meeting
Vote to Fund
A New Middle School
Tuesday,
January 20, 7pm
Concord-Carlisle
High School
Special Town Meeting has been scheduled for 7:00PM on Thursday, January 20, 2022 at the Concord Carlisle Regional High School, located at 500 Walden Street, Concord, MA 01742. The Snow date is the following Thursday, January 27, 2022, at 7:00PM at CCHS. There will be multiple locations in the building to allow for social-distancing, and free child care for parents who need to utilize that service.
There is one article on the Special Town Meeting Warrant: appropriate a sum of money for the construction of a new middle school. The Concord Middle School Building Committee had completed its evaluation phase design, which will be a single building located at the Sanborn school property housing grades 6-8, which is designed for the team teaching model currently used. The building design is very energy efficient, more than 5 times lower energy use than the existing middle schools, so that it could take it’s all-electric energy from an on-site solar array. An open question is when and by whom that solar array will be built.
We encourage you to look at the information about the middle school on the project website cmsbuildingproject.org, Project updates, meeting minutes, presentations on design and schematics, and recordings of public forums, amongst other things, can be found at that website. The committee has also been providing periodic updates to the public through Instagram, Twitter and Facebook as “CMSBCinConcord”.
Concord-Carlisle
Community Education
Choosing
Sustainable Action
Tuesday, January 18
7:30-8:30 p.m.
With Kim Slack
On Zoom
(registration required, Fee: $35)
In this one hour presentation, you will learn about a number of sustainable efforts Concordians have taken to improve health, save money, and reduce greenhouse emissions. Join the class to learn about a few areas where your decisions can make the most impact personally, financially and for the broader community. Upgrading to heat pumps, home weatherization, and driving an electric vehicle are three primary topics, and you’ll hear about community resources available through CMLP to help.
For more information and to register, click here.
Help Get
State Climate Bills
Out of Committee
by February 2nd!
January is a crucial month for state legislation. There are many important climate bills at the State House that need to be moved out of committee by Feb. 2 or they will “die” and we will have to wait two years before similar legislation will have a chance to be passed.
What you can do? – Contact key legislators between December 27 and January 15. The greatest impact we can have is through our collective voices! Pick one, two as many as you like – whatever you do is immensely important and appreciated.
Here are key bills that need legislative action in the next 30 days:
- How will we reach our recently set Massachusetts climate goals and pay for the steps needed to achieve them?The Green Futures Act (H.3292) provides solutions.
- Is 100% green energy for electricity, heating, and transportation in our future in MA? The 100% Clean Act (H.3288, S.2136) lays out clear steps and a just transition.
- Tired of seeing plastic bottles littering the landscape? Each bottle represents wasted, climate-changing energy. For many reasons the Expanded Bottle Bill (H.3289/S.2149) makes sense.
- “If you have to light it on fire, it isn’t renewable.” Do you agree? The Biomass Burning Bill (H.3333/S.2197) prohibits labelling woody biomass as a renewable resource.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
- Contact Joint Committee on Telecommunications, Utilities, and Energy Co-Chairs Senator Mike Barrett: Mike.Barrett@masenate.gov and Representative Jeffrey Roy: Jeffrey.Roy@mahouse.gov
- Communicate with your legislators encouraging them to indicate their support for this bill to committee co-chairs:
Senator Cindy Friedman: Cindy.Friedman@masenate.gov (617) 722-1432
Senator Mike Barrett: Mike.Barrett@masenate.gov (617) 722-1572 (Mike is the Committee Co-Chair)
Representative Michelle Ciccolo: michelle.ciccolo@mahouse.gov (617) 722-2210
The Ministry for the Future is a masterpiece of the imagination, using fictional eyewitness accounts to tell the story of how climate change will affect us all. Its setting is not a desolate, post-apocalyptic world, but a future that is almost upon us. Chosen by Barack Obama as one of his favorite books of the year, this extraordinary novel from visionary writer Kim Stanley Robinson will change the way you think about the climate crisis. ‘A novel that presents a rousing vision of how we might unite to overcome the greatest challenge of our time’ TED.com
In case you were wondering,
We’re Not Out of the Woods Yet!
Three hopeful things I’ve heard recently, maybe too good to be true?
The arrival of a new year is a good time to assess where we are and where we’re going. If you have ‘climate on the brain’, you might be wondering whether progress towards climate neutrality is proceeding quickly enough. President Biden seems to care about climate and there is media attention to it every day. These are positive signs. However, three positive sounding ideas I’ve heard recently do not square with reality as I see it.
Read the rest of the article: click here.
By Brad Hubbard-Nelson, a member of the ConcordCAN Steering Committee