Cambridge Climate Emergency Congress

As world leaders gathered in Copenhagen,  Our Fair City held its own climate summit inviting townspeople to gather together and brainstorm ideas on how to reduce local greenhouse gas emissions.

On December 12, 100 Cantabrigians from a high school student to a climate expert spent the day at City Hall developing proposals that included eliminating all street parking by 2020 and incorporating landscaped or reflective roofs into building codes.

The ideas seemed rather ambitious, but if the city plans to start meeting its greenhouse gas reduction goals it will likely need to get creative.  In 2002 city officials launched a plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. Earlier this year, however, they announced that despite their best efforts emissions have not only not decreased, but, have continued to grow.  


City officials will review recommendations from the recent summit and will announce how they plan to proceed on January 23. 


Image: Cambridge City Hall courtesy of Wikimedia

Climate Sleep-Out in Boston Pays Off

For the past seven weeks, college students from around the region have been camping out on Boston Common on Sunday nights calling for Massachusetts to run entirely on clean energy by 2020.  After a final, snowy sleepout last Sunday,  the demands of The Leadership Campaign were answered, sort of.

On December 7, state officials introduced a bill to create a task force charged with proposing ways to get Massachusetts to 100% clean electricity by 2020.

The resolution seems like a nice way of saying we've heard you, now bugger off, but then again Massachusetts relies on coal for only 25 percent of its electric power (about half the national average) and has set a goal of 20 percent renewable electricity production by 2020. 

I wonder what it would take for the state to get to 100 percent "clean electricity"-- the Leadership Campaign seems to include fossil fuel plants that use waste heat capture and recycling in its definition of clean--by 2020.

Image Credit: Ian Maclellan for The Leadership Campaign

Gore at Harvard

Former US Vice President Al Gore wasn't quite ready to give up telling inconvenient truths as he discussed his latest book Our Choice: A plan to solve the global climate crisis at Harvard this weekend.

Gore took the stage to a standing ovation before a capacity crowd at the First Parrish Church Meetinghouse in Harvard Square on 7 November to discuss his compilation of "all of the most effective solutions that are available now and that together will solve this crisis".