1/11/21
Do you have a favorite neighborhood tree? Want to learn how to protect it, care for your own trees, and see if you qualify for a free tree from the state? Tree experts will discuss all of these issues and more in a panel discussion on January 21 at 7 pm. The Thomas Crane Library, a co-sponsor of the event, will host the discussion on Zoom, YouTube and Facebook (details below). Continue reading
Imagine a machine first built in John Adams’s time that has chugged along without a hiccup for 200 years. It would undoubtedly be treated with kid gloves, and every effort would be made to preserve and protect it. Perhaps the Quincy History Museum would display it so that people could stand in awe of the engineering marvel and feel a visceral connection to the past in the rhythmic shifting of its components.
Well, such a machine actually exists – right here in our fair city. Not only that, but this machine has been proven to make people happier, healthier, and wealthier, to prevent flooding, and to fight climate change. What is this astonishing contraption? It’s hiding in plain sight, an unsung hero that makes a city street feel like part of a neighborhood: a mature tree. Continue reading
10/16/20
At its October 5 meeting, our City Council urged the MBTA to switch to zero-emissions electric buses on all bus routes in Quincy, a change that would happen in 2024, on completion of the planned South Quincy bus barn. In a resolution cosponsored by Councilors Brian Palmucci, Noel DiBona, Nina Liang, and Anne Mahoney, the councilors point out that electric buses have one quarter the carbon footprint of the diesel hybrid buses the T is planning to bring to Quincy, a footprint that promises to diminish and eventually disappear as the electricity supply comes more and more from renewable sources. So switching to electric buses would be another step towards protecting us from the worst effects of climate change—things like the flooding and droughts, hurricanes and wildfires we’ve been seeing here in Quincy and around the world.
10/15/20
The Thomas Crane Public Library presents architectural engineer Ron Judkoff speaking about how we can save the world from climate change with the benefit of technologies developed at the National Renewable Energy Lab.
8/27/20
Get out your reusable shopping bags again!
It was 10 days before a state of emergency was declared by Governor Baker. A small band of members of Quincy Climate Action Network were spending our Sunday at a Stop and Shop, handing out reusable bags QCAN had purchased to raise awareness of the new prohibition on single-use plastic shopping bags. Despite awareness campaigns by the city and QCAN, many people walking into the store that day were surprised that the single-use bags they were accustomed to getting were now banned by a new city ordinance. What we members of QCAN could not have known on that day was how short-lived the new policy would be. Within two weeks, we’d all be educated on social distancing, PPE, essential workers, and eventually mask-folding techniques. Continue reading
August 24, 2020
At 7 p.m. on Tuesday September 15, 2020, Quincy Climate Action Network and the Thomas Crane Public Library will cosponsor an online lecture by Ron Judkoff, who recently retired as chief architectural engineer of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), a US Department of Energy facility.
The lecture is free, and all are invited to watch and listen via the library’s Facebook page; on its YouTube channel; or via the Zoom meeting platform. The Zoom meeting ID is 873-8149-9949, and you can access the audio over the phone by dialing 646 558.8656. Continue reading
For those who didn’t get a chance to Zoom in to QCAN’s first online lecture, cohosted with the Quincy library, here’s the video. The topic is the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the politics of climate change, and the lecturer is Prof. Zyg Plater of the Boston College Law School, who headed up the state of Alaska’s probe into the causes of the disaster.
Quincy Climate Action Network 