Community Climate Action Plans: a survey of grassroots climate change activism in New England

Abstract: Climate change activism at the grassroots level is alive and well in New England cities and towns. Local governments are adopting resolutions to become a "City for Climate Protection"; CCP is a worldwide campaign of the environmental NGO, ICLEI, which attempts to work with city and county governments across the United States and in other cities across the globe to reduce their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while generating energy efficiencies and improving their community's local environment. Cities and towns are, in effect, joining a worldwide grassroots effort to slow the planet's progress towards a possible GHG-induced globally-warmed world. CCP communities use ICLEI software to conduct audits of the greenhouse gas emissions produced by their municipal operations. These inventories attempt to quantify the energy used by city/town governments to heat, cool, ventilate and light their buildings, including schools and libraries; by the fleet of vehicles used by city police, fire departments and other city staff; and the myriad other ways that municipal operations consume energy. City governments make numerous decisions every year that affect their energy use, from renovating and retrofitting old buildings, to the purchase of electricity, that could include 'green' power options, to adopting energy efficiency standards, traffic idling ordinances, and hybrid vehicle purchase guidelines, and finally, in enacting policies to promote bicycling, mass transit, walking, just to name a few. All of the efforts cited above are increasingly being encapsulated into Climate Action Plans, which are documents that strive to guide cities and their municipal staff and operations to plan and implement actions that will generate energy efficiencies while reducing GHG pollution emissions. The author has been involved in these activities for almost three years with the city of Salem, Massachusetts. This poster will critically survey CAP's from selected cities and towns in New England and will attempt to compare and contrast the various approaches and models for this environmental and urban planning that is occurring regarding our global atmosphere.