Part of living in the Trump era is to find the points of resiliency — the parts of government we can still influence for the better, amidst the onslaught of bad faith, disenfranchisement, and kleptocracy that will issue from Washington. The swamp will flourish; but we still have gardens to tend at the state and local levels.
Trump will try to reverse the Obama administration’s environmental progress at the federal level. That means that we should try harder, and stretch farther, in our local efforts.The action is now here. There is no reason why Massachusetts, its cities, and New England generally can’t keep on the path to renewable energy and climate resiliency — and even encourage other states to take up the charge as well. Since cities produce 75% of greenhouse gas emissions, there is plenty we can do at a local level. It does add up, and cities all over the country are indeed taking the lead. Witness the commitments made by 14 Greater Boston mayors: By 2050, Greater Boston will be net-zero in carbon; efficient/low energy buildings; smart growth; and so forth. This is great, and ought to be expanded and followed by others.
In doing so we’ll bring a number of other states along. We’ve had the highly successful Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for several years now. There’s also the Transportation and Climate Initiative, comprising eleven northeastern states, whose purpose is to reduce emissions from the stubborn transportation sector. (One of their current initiatives is to install electric-car charging stations along the major highways of the Northeast.)
We need to fix the things that were left behind from this year’s energy bill. Specifically, we need a higher Renewable Portfolio Standard growth requirement — that simply means that the state’s utilities have to buy more energy from renewables, at a 2% year-over-year increase.
And needless to say, in order to de-carbonize transportation, we need to revive and sustain the MBTA. With a Governor and a Speaker of the House that refuse to provide anything other than Band-Aids to the T’s ongoing, maddening decay, one isn’t optimistic. We need the pressure of the gubernatorial race in 2018 to highlight the deficiencies in Baker’s no-revenue approach: He hasn’t fixed anything yet, and he’s not going to without a real commitment to the system.
These may all seem trivial by themselves, until one realizes that municipalities all over the country are doing many of the same things, coordinating with each other, learning best practices, and hopefully now moving with a sense of real urgency — panic — since we’ve got an actual madman at the helm.
What is your town doing to lower emissions?
Christopher says
Trump+GOP Congress=either nothing done at best or rolling back at worst. The states that still value the things we have come to take for granted will need to step up and not assume federal assistance. This means welfare, infrastructure, parks, education, etc.
Charley on the MTA says
since essentially it’ll be a clawback of the GOP’s reverse-Robin-Hood tax cut.
jconway says
n/t
Peter Porcupine says
We built an enormous solar farm on top of our decommissioned town landfill. It generated around $500,000 on electricity last year and municipal electric costs are approaching net zero.
The MBTA does less than nothing for us, as it does for most of the Commonwealth.
Charley on the MTA says
is an invaluable part of the Greater Boston economy, which provides much of the tax revenue for the entire state. It gets people to work and play.
That’s like saying Rt. 6 does nothing for me, since I never drive on it. (Well, rarely.)
Peter Porcupine says
…is that the T Swamp sucks up revenue statewide which supposedly prevents the green initiatives you advocate for.
So we went ahead and added to the municipal environmental resilience anyway, secure in the knowledge that nobody would notice or help. That’s how municipalities outside 128 get by.
SomervilleTom says
Comment like this really do make me think its time for the “T Swamp” to stop paying for the roads on the Cape.
I encourage you, once again, to try the following exercise:
1. Draw an imaginary line around your city or town.
2. Measure the net flux of state and federal tax dollars through it — how much federal and state money flow inward towards your town minus the amount those inside the town pay that flows outward.
3. Do the same around the cities and towns served by the MBTA.
I think you’ll find that your town receives far more than it pays.
Perhaps it’s time to end the practice. We should also stop calling Massachusetts a “Commonwealth” when we do that.
Charley on the MTA says
That is awesome. I’ve seen that in other places … Acton?
HeartlandDem says
I don’t have a response formulated to your question yet. I do want to thank you for your opening paragraph that struck me as eloquent if not poetic.
bmass says
I have been in Europe for the last three months looking at the strategies in Nordic countries for rapid decarbonization. These countries are roughly the same size as Massachusetts (which has 6.6 million people) – Sweden has 9.6 million and Denmark has 5.6 million. Sweden’s goal “is to reduce GHG emissions compared with 1990 by 40 per cent by the year 2020, and to have a vehicle fleet completely rid of fossil fuels by 2030.”
Denmark gets 42% of its electricity from wind, and is on track for 50% by 2020 (three years). I recently stood on the base of the Middelgrunden wind farm in Copenhagen Harbor, an array of 15 windmills owned by a cooperative of thousands of Danish citizens that generates 40MW of virtually free power steadily for sixteen years. The bid for the most recent wind farm in Denmark came in more than 30% lower than anticipated.
In other words: Massachusetts could start thinking of itself less as a state and more like a country and push for world leadership in eliminating carbon and creating new technology and construction jobs. We can’t say that it’s not possible because it is already been done in Europe.
Charley on the MTA says
Yesssss, that. California, thank goodness, already does that, and it’s *vast*. But we are partnering with other states, and we can make a huge dent even without federal help or involvement.
Again, I want to fight the idea that everything we do is minuscule compared to the size of the problem. The Trump agenda is *not* a majority agenda. There are a *lot* of people trying to move the right direction. We have to think like termites — everyone chews on their own thing, but there is strength in numbers.
jonsax says
Good post. I would only add that one lesson of this election is that our “we” is not expanding enough, not just in MI, PA, etc., but right here in MA. So, for instance, if you look at the “we” of perhaps most of our core Democratic town and city committees and the State Committee, our “we” appears to be pretty static and often isolated from community-building engagement. And demographically often simply aging rather than growing and diversifying. Because it is the activity of civic engagement that provides the experience of living and creating a better, more inclusive community and society, we need to be “WE” bigger!