By Jacob Stern, Deputy Director, Massachusetts Chapter
While the Massachusetts state government favors an incremental approach to dealing with the climate crisis and the Trump administration was literally moving in reverse, Massachusetts cities and towns are leading the charge on clean energy and climate issues. Since 2017, the Massachusetts Sierra Club’s “Climate Leadership Project” has sought to empower municipal leaders’ efforts to increase clean energy commitments in their own communities. Well over two hundred municipal leaders have participated in one of our workshops or summits in the past three years.
Sierra Club and Environment Mass worked together with a group of committed mayors, led by Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone, Worcester Mayor Joseph Petty, New Bedford Mayor Jon Mitchell, and Easthampton Mayor Nicolle LaChapelle to release a statement of support calling for Massachusetts to begin a rapid transition to 100% renewable energy for all uses, including electricity, heating, and transportation, by 2045, as well as an accelerated timeline to achieve 100% renewable energy for the electric sector.
In January 2020, Sierra Club participated in a Massachusetts Municipal Association Annual (MMA) panel discussion at a gathering of hundreds of municipal leaders from all across the state. Deputy Director Jacob Stern facilitated presentations by Carol Oldham of Massachusetts Climate Action Network, Eugenia Gibbons of Green Energy Consumers Alliance, and Mark Sandeen, a Lexington Select Board member. Topics included embracing community choice energy programs and building electric-powered energy efficient schools.
In February, we hosted one of our last in-person events of the year, Newly Elected Municipal Officials Climate Leadership Workshop. We gathered in our Boston office with approximately a dozen newly elected municipal champions for a climate workshop, plus others who attended via Zoom. The purpose of the workshop was to share information about opportunities to act on clean energy and climate issues, while continuing to build a network of municipal climate leaders across the state.
What’s next?
Following the COVID-19 outbreak in March of 2019, we were forced to pause some of our climate leadership work. However, we are very excited to share the future of our municipal advocacy.
Climate Research Team
In September 2020, we launched a climate research team who will work to put together a new training for members of the public and municipal officials. This new volunteer team has been diving deep and learning about a number of key issues. Most notably, helping to identify and share resources for municipal climate action. With the public health and economic Covid-19 crises, we’re working with municipal leaders and volunteers to identify and communicate state programs to support climate action. Especially now, green investments can lower emissions while stimulating economic investment and creating jobs. We’re excited to leverage the power of this new Climate Research team to build power to influence the Governor’s 2020 Clean Energy and Climate Plan by bringing in municipal stakeholders to advocate for aggressive clean energy goals and investment.
Municipal Climate Resource Network
This same team is busy at work researching environmental and climate efforts in municipalities across the state. The goal here is to create a public facing database that can help point municipal climate action planners to other municipalities who are working on the same issues. The idea is to create a resource network for environmental and climate action planners across the state.
Want to stay up to date?
Despite the uncertainty of the pandemic, cities and towns across Massachusetts continue to make tremendous strides to reduce their carbon footprint and eliminate the use of polluting single-use plastics. Every month our Chapter puts together an e-newsletter that highlights key clean energy victories and ongoing campaigns across the state. You can visit https://www.sierraclub.org/massachusetts/climate-leadership-newsletter to read older issues and subscribe!