01/16/20

Dear Governor Baker:

I urge you on behalf of the Quincy Climate Action Network to convert the MBTA buses that operate in and around our city to battery electric buses. As climate activists QCAN members are working first of all to reduce the greenhouse gas pollution that threatens the property and lives of Quincy residents, and converting the fleet to electric buses is a critical part of achieving that goal. Electric buses have one quarter the carbon footprint of diesel hybrid buses, a footprint that will grow increasingly small and eventually disappear altogether as the electricity supply comes more and more from renewable sources. Today one Quincy bus route alone, the 215, daily emits 2,000 pounds of CO2 equivalent. Continue reading →

01/27/20

Dear Editor,

In his shameless attack on a group of concerned Quincy citizens (letters, January 23), Councilor Brian Palmucci accuses Quincy Climate Action Network of making up facts in our push to amend the city’s plastic bag ban, though he conveniently neglects to identify any made-up facts we have disseminated.

We suggest that the councilor check his own facts. For example, in his letter, at the city council meeting where the ban was passed, and in emails between the councilor and QCAN members, he has repeatedly asserted that QCAN members want an outright “ban” on paper shopping bags. In fact, we are calling for a modest charge on paper bags, of a kind that’s been enacted in Boston, Cambridge, and several whole states, including California, Oregon, Vermont, and Maine, as a way to encourage the adoption of reusable shopping bags. Continue reading →

Harvard Extension School graduate student Vanessa Goh has done a huge service to Quincy by preparing a greenhouse gas inventory and mitigation plan as a capstone project for her Master of Liberal Arts in Sustainability. This type of report – Quincy’s first ever – helps set a baseline for all the sources of our community’s greenhouse gas emissions so that we can set future targets and create appropriate policies to meet them.

Ms. Goh will present her report to selected city officials and the public on January 9 at 6:30 pm in the lower level of Old City Hall at 1305 Hancock Street. In advance of the report’s release, QCAN asked her to fill us in on this exciting first step for Quincy.

Please tell us about your project and how you got started. Continue reading →

January 1, 2020

Late last year, at a time when governments everywhere were working on solutions to the worldwide climate emergency, the Quincy City Council took a vote that will only worsen the situation.

The problem: The city’s new ban on single-use plastic bags, as currently worded, will drive consumers towards paper bags, whose manufacture results in four times as much greenhouse gas pollution as that of single-use plastic bags.

The good news: The ban doesn’t take effect until March 1, so it’s not too late for the city to revise the plastic bag ordinance. Continue reading →

12/11/2019

Dear Editor:

The year 2019 has seen massive floods and wildfires in the US and around the globe. Glaciers and the polar ice caps continue to recede, raising sea levels ever higher. A summer heat wave in Europe caused killed thousands of people. Crops died in the fields from lack of rain or too much of it, and from increasingly unpredictable weather patterns. Plant and animal species went extinct, with the World Wildlife Fund estimating up to 100,000 extinctions per year in recent years–between 1,000 and 10,000 times the natural extinction rate. Continue reading →

On October 17, 2019, QCAN held a Candidates’ Night at United First Parish Church exploring local environmental issues. Eleven city councilor candidates participated, along with mayoral candidate Brenda Ryan and Mayor Koch’s chief of staff, Chris Walker. They discussed responding to climate science, recycling and food waste collection, net-zero building standards, electric vehicles in Quincy, climate preparedness, and leading by example. Several incumbents mentioned QCAN’s advocacy in connection with the city’s progress in addressing climate change.

View a video of the full program on QCAN’s Youtube page or click these direct links for shorter videos of: Continue reading →

Update: Dr. Templer’s talk is online here.

New England is known for its forests. For the blaze of color that explodes every fall, the dazzling stillness of a newly fallen snow, the austere refuge that drew Thoreau to “live deliberately” by Walden Pond.

But what will become of these iconic landscapes in a warming world? Pamela Templer, a biology professor at Boston University, will discuss her research on the topic at a free public lecture on Tuesday, October 29, 2019, at 7 pm. The talk will be held at the Thomas Crane Library at 40 Washington Street in Quincy and is co-sponsored by the Quincy Climate Action Network, Fore River Residents Against the Compressor Station, and the library.

(Image: bluepoint – Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

The research has important implications for New England. “I think of our forests as natural filters,” says Templer. Trees pull pollutants out of the air, draw the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and lock it in their wood and roots, and soak up pollutants from soils, preventing them from contaminating waterways.

Continue reading →