A regional resource for Cape & Islands climate activists
February 25, 2020 | v. 5
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New coalition promotes citizen-led Climate Emergency Declarations at spring town meetings Cape-wide
Cape Cod Climate Emergency Initiative
supports the fight for net zero in every town on Cape Cod
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The
Cape Cod Climate Emergency Initiative
— a new coalition of citizen activists, leading environmental organizations, faith communities and others
— has recently formed to focus attention and action at the municipal level, Cape-wide, on the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero at the earliest time feasible.
Spearheaded by citizen activists at 350 Cape Cod and formed in early February, the Cape Cod Climate Emergency Initiative coalition includes the Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative, Center for Coastal Studies, Association to Preserve Cape Cod, Citizens’ Climate Lobby Cape Cod/South Shore, Faith Communities Environmental Network, Sierra Club Cape Cod, and Extinction Rebellion Cape Cod. The list of local organizational endorsers grows daily across Cape Cod.
The goals of local citizens, supported by the Initiative, are three-fold:
- to educate, activate and mobilize citizens at the local level, across Cape Cod;
- to demonstrate, through town meetings vote, broad consensus for the urgent need for action and net zero goals at the local level; and
- to promote and support sustained civic and political activism in every town on Cape Cod to ensure that local decisions, projects and policies reflect this broad-based consensus and incorporate net zero components in their outcomes.
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Towns asked to declare ‘climate change emergency’
Cape coalition seeks to add petition to spring meeting warrants across region
By Doug Fraser,
Cape Cod Times,
Feb. 25, 2020
Increasingly, town meeting voters are faced with petition articles asking how they stand on issues that go beyond town budgets and schools — national issues such as immigration, gun violence and plastics pollution. At annual gatherings this spring, voters will be asked about something of global import: whether they are willing, as a town, to declare a climate emergency and commit to reducing human-caused greenhouse gas emissions to zero.
“Cape Cod is one of the hot spots for climate change,” said Richard Delaney, who sits on the board of directors of the Global Ocean Forum and is president of the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown.
Read more here.
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Why we can't wait
Change begins at home... and with us
Excerpts from an interview with Rich Delaney, president of the Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative and CEO of the Center for Coastal Studies
Q: Why is this Cape-wide Initiative important now?
RD:
C
limate change and its impacts are emerging faster than scientists previously thought, and it's clear that
threats of climate disruption have been underestimated. It may seem surprising, but Cape Cod and the Islands are at the center of the
worldwide climate crisis and the science is incontrovertible.
We’ve just lived through the five hottest years on record — and the hottest decade
ever.
We simply cannot wait for the federal or state government to lead the way. All Cape Cod citizens, businesses, organizations and towns must start working together to ensure that carbon emissions are reduced to net zero as soon as possible to avert climate catastrophe.
Q: Can individual citizens, businesses and towns really make a difference when the climate crisis is so enormous?
RD: Absolutely! This crisis was man-made over the last 60 years, and we can reverse it by working together. Every action
— by an individual, town or business can contribute to this reversal. And we need to collaborate, at
all levels, to mitigate the crisis. Citizens, organizations, town employees, elected officials and businesses must ensure that project planning and decision-making occur through the lens of climate crisis mitigation and reaching our net zero goal as soon as possible. A Climate Emergency Declaration by citizens of every town on Cape Cod is an important step in that process.
Q: Can you provide some examples of how a declaration might work in a given town?
RD: Sure. By declaring a town-wide consensus, when any municipal project is on the drawing boards
— a new school building, senior center renovation, affordable housing development, or purchase of municipal vehicles, for example
— community attention would necessarily focus on whether and how it reduces our carbon footprint. Civic conversation might include: Does the new police station have solar panels? Is the town purchasing energy-efficient vehicles? Are parking lots, land fills and other appropriate sites being used to accommodate solar arrays? Do local businesses and municipalities know about and take advantage of Cape Light Compact's
free energy assessments for business, and government consumers? The opportunities for constructive dialogue and change are substantial and varied.
Q: Won't these declarations cost towns money they don't have?
RD: These declarations are resolutions by the citizens of each of town. They don’t require any particular plan or action, so there’s no cost associated with passing them. What they
will do is lay the groundwork for advancing more concrete proposals in the towns, with the goal of achieving net zero emission as soon as possible. When passed, they direct town leaders to take necessary and feasible actions to act with a sense of climate urgency. The fact is, if we don’t act quickly, we risk incurring long-term physical, environmental and economic changes to the Cape Cod region that will be irreversible. We can’t let that happen.
Q: Why did the Climate Collaborative decide to help form this coalition?
RD: The citizen-led effort around which the Cape Cod Climate Emergency Initiative has coalesced is entirely aligned with the Collaborative's mission:
to move our region to net zero through enhanced communication, collaboration and activism among organizations, programs and citizens. We wholeheartedly support this movement and will actively support declarations, and their implementation, in each town.
Q. Why is collaboration key? Aren't individual towns and organizations doing enough?
RD: We can't work in silos or at odds with one another. A problem of this magnitude requires collaborative effort at every level, from the individual to the global such as occurred with the 2015 Paris Climate Accord. The Climate Collaborative believes these declarations will help focus community attention, conversation and action on one of the most pressing issues of our time...and will shape Cape Cod's future for the better. We look forward to working with all stakeholders throughout the region. All hands on deck!
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Timetable for Action
December 2019:
First citizen petition declaring Climate Emergency filed for town meeting warrant in Yarmouth
February 2020:
Initiative formed to put climate policy proposal on the town meeting warrant in every town on Cape Cod.
February:
Volunteer coordinators identified in each town; locally based Climate Action Networks (CANs) formed/forming in each town.
Early March
: Local activists complete filing of Climate Emergency petitions in every town.
Late March
: Local Climate Action Networks (CANs) meet in each town to plan for town meeting vote and identify additional concrete climate strategies in their town.
April 6th through May 11th:
Spring Town Meetings held; each town votes on Climate Emergency articles
Ongoing
- Locally based CANs grow and help advance concrete climate strategies and opportunities in each town.
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Four things
you
can do to participate
- Contact us at capecodclimate@gmail.com to connect with Climate Action Network (CAN) leaders in your community.
- Get active with the CAN in your community by serving as a coordinator or participant.
- Pledge to attend your spring town meeting and to vote for the Declaration of Climate Emergency.
- Remain active with your local CAN. And join an energy committee (or start one!), attend planning and selectboard meetings. Stay active.
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What do these town-based Climate Emergency Declarations look like?
While each is different, all town declarations share the basic principles described below
[Sample]
Eastham's Declaration of Climate Emergency
"
The Town of Eastham
recognizes that the climate emergency, driven by human activity including energy consumption and land use practices and leading to global warming, rising seas, deadly storms, dangerous heat waves, acidifying oceans, and melting ice sheets, poses an imminent threat to the health, safety and economic security of the residents of the Town. The Town of Eastham therefore adopts as its policy the objective of reducing net greenhouse gas emissions from human activity within and by the Town to zero at the earliest technically and economically feasible time, and directs that all officers and departments of the Town take such measures within the scope of their respective responsibilities and authority as may be necessary and prudent to facilitate such policy and objective."
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And if you're still not convinced we need collective action, read on.
7 things we learned researching climate change on Cape Cod
by Nestor Ramos,
The Boston Globe
, 9/26/2019
The Globe
spent several months this summer criss-crossing Cape Cod to learn how the effects of climate change are being felt, and what it would mean for the future of the area. In short, we found that climate change is already threatening the Cape in tangible ways, accelerating natural processes like erosion and sea level rise.
Article highlights
- The Outer Cape now loses about 3 feet of beach a year on average — a rate nearly double what it had been for thousands of years.
- The basin whose southern boundary is marked by the Cape is now warming faster than 99 percent of the world’s oceans.
- Wild shellfish populations are at 1 percent of historic levels along the Cape, and commercial farms are struggling to contend with dramatic temperature swings.
- The population of migratory land birds near the Cape has dwindled to half what it was 50 years ago.
- Salt marshes provide a powerful defense against climate change, but sea level rise and other factors are eating away at them.
- Nor’easters are causing uncommon chaos on the Cape, and hurricanes that have hit the Cape in the distant past would today be catastrophic. In 1938, a hurricane put much of the western edge of the Cape under several feet of water and killed 564 people.
- Massachusetts and the Cape have done more than almost anywhere else to prepare for the coastal effects of climate change, but some experts say it is only the beginning of what is needed.
Cape Cod’s unique geographic perch and geologic makeup leave it particularly vulnerable to climate change. But the effects already on display here are just the beginning. People like to say that the only constant on the Cape is change. But unless the world takes drastic action to reverse the planet’s warming, change will give way to loss.
Read the full article here
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On behalf of the Cape Cod Climate Emergency Initiative, the Collaborative thanks Brewster activist and graphic designer
Elizabeth Hooper
for her logo design for the Climate Emergency coalition and all participating Cape Cod towns. Check out her work at
ehooperdesign.com
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Massachusetts Legislative Resources
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. Thank you.
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The Cape Cod Climate Change Collaborative is a 501(c)(3) organization whose mission is to reach carbon neutrality
—
or net zero
—
on Cape Cod and the Islands of Massachusetts by enhancing communication, collaboration, and activism among organizations, programs, and individuals committed to mitigating the climate crisis.
All donations are tax deductible as allowed by law.
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CAPE COD CLIMATE CHANGE COLLABORATIVE
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