Some of the roads in Quincy look different lately – they are decked out with green paint and green posts. What’s going on? The answer is that Quincy streets are slowly becoming more complete. A “Complete Street” is one that provides safe and accessible options for all travel modes – foot, bicycle, public transit, and vehicles – to people of all ages and abilities. If a street has bike lanes like the ones newly installed in Quincy, biking is the fun choice to get where you’re going – as well as the environmentally friendly one! 

In 2018 Quincy adopted a new Complete Streets policy, and in 2019 the Commonwealth awarded Quincy over $300,000 of Complete Streets Grant Funding. The locations redesigned with that funding include:

The QCAN political committee has gotten off to a strong start in 2021. We’ve outlined our goals, including: 

• Try to meet with every Quincy elected official or environmental policymaker and begin a dialogue about collaborating on our shared goals. 
• Alert our network to important climate legislation and the opportunities to contact legislators to ask them to act in favor of our climate.
• Hold community forums to highlight opportunities for positive mitigations for the environment.
• Be a resource to the community, leaders, and other environmental groups.

A forest ecologist who grew up in the logging area of British Columbia, Dr. Suzanne Simard has found that forest trees share carbon and nutrients, and even communicate, via a network of underground fungi. In Finding the Mother Tree: Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest – an extension of her well-loved TED talk – Simard chronicles her journey of discovery, where she begins to see trees as interdependent, cooperative creatures rather than solely a source of timber and pulp. 

QYouth Climate Movement, QCAN’s youth chapter, has been working to bring more vegetarian and vegan lunch options into QPS schools. More than a third of the world’s greenhouse gases come from food production, according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization. Beef has by far the largest carbon footprint, followed by lamb, mutton, and dairy. Scientists say that a shift in our diets is necessary if we hope to keep global warming under 1.5ºC.