Climate Action: Local to Global
Small communities are taking big steps to address climate change, setting an example for the rest of the United States, despite the apathy of national government
By Constance Gorfinkle and Steve Wenner for World Ocean Forum
Since a United Nations study announced that global warming was progressing much faster than earlier predictions had shown, efforts to combat this catastrophe have sped up around the world.
No less so on the South Shore of Massachusetts, where community groups in towns such as Hull and Cohasset are urging their municipalities to commit to a goal of achieving 100% clean energy by 2030. Due to its geographic location and land morphology, Hull has suffered worse weather damage than its neighboring communities, including increasingly frequent bad storms, loss of power and heat, flooding from the ocean and rising ground water, lost property, vehicles and utilities from basement flooding, destruction of natural barriers such as dunes, and life-threatening situations in which residents have been trapped in their houses due to flooding.
Having experienced the painful effects of the warming of the planet, Hull’s board of selectmen unanimously agreed to a proposal spearheaded by Hull resident Judeth Van Hamm, to establish a 100% clean energy climate action task force, whose purpose is to develop and make public an operational plan outlining steps to achieve the goal of using 100% clean energy by 2030 for all public, residential and commercial energy uses in Hull, including heating and transportation. …
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