Several QCAN members met with Massachusetts Senator John Keenan (Norfolk and Plymouth District) during his office hours on December 7 to discuss some of our organization’s priorities and learn about how we might help him advance climate-friendly legislation.

Board member Joe Murphy described our work to convince the Quincy City Council to transition away from single-use plastic bags; to raise public awareness about climate change through co-hosting an environmental fair, lectures, and film nights at the library; to present on climate change to every sixth-grade classroom in Quincy public schools; and to work with Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station to fight the construction of the fracked-gas compressor station in North Weymouth.

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.

Continue reading →

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.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-yakAOiw2zQ

08/13/2020

Environmental degradation, including the effects of climate change, disproportionately harms disadvantaged communities, especially communities of color. QCAN is committed to fighting for these communities’ right to a safe and healthy environment and to making our organization as inclusive as possible.

Quincy has two environmental justice communities: Germantown and Quincy Point. QCAN supports action, including state legislation, that empowers these communities and gives them a voice in local environmental decisions. We also stand with Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station and the City of Quincy in defending our EJ communities against the harm posed by the Weymouth compressor station.