Featured Items

Tuesday, December 12,⋅12:00 noon – 2:00pm
Monthly on the second Tuesday

Via Zoom https://us02web.zoom.us/j/735454252?pwd=QkZMcnA4YVVkcGRDM29PcEN4VnhIUT09
Meeting ID: 735 454 252
Passcode: 223189 (You may have to try more than once)

Our regular, second-Tuesday-afternoon-of-the -month Chapter Meeting is still on Zoom. Join us at 11:45am for time to socialize a bit and maybe have lunch together and make sure you’re all set on Zoom.

Then we start our meeting promptly at noon. We’re into the holiday season, and thinking about gifts for the youngers in our lives. How can we do the holidays up right this year, and make more sustainable choices, with less consumerism contributing to climate change? Our featured speaker from BeyondPlastics.org, Kathy Raiz, will clue us into sustainable ideas for gifts and more in her presentation, Beyond Plastic Toys: Sustainable Gift Alternatives

Kathy is excited to be a member of the Beyond Plastics Speaker’s Bureau. Since attending Judith Enck’s class on plastic pollution, she has become eager to educate people about the negative impact that plastic has on the environment and personal health, while encouraging citizens to take an active role in reducing plastic production and consumption.

Before you go shopping elsewhere, read this: https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/blog/2023/7/21/in-our-real-world-barbies-plastic-is-not-so-fantastic

And click here for another for more background before the meeting, on the topic of banning single use plastics, which we will also cover briefly.

And check out this plastic free gift giving guide from the Plastic Pollution Coalition https://www.plasticpollutioncoalition.org/2023ppcgiftguide  

You can shop online at places like the Waldorf School Store https://thewaldorfschool.org/homespun-store .

We will also host Rep. Jeffrey Roy on the Omnibus Bill, and our Legislative Team will have questions for him, and a report for us too.

To join the meeting click this Zoom link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/735454252?pwd=QkZMcnA4YVVkcGRDM29PcEN4VnhIUT09
Meeting ID: 735 454 252
Passcode: 223189 (You may have to try more than once)

YES! We do record our meetings, and they are usually posted on our web site within a few days.
https://ecamass.org/category/eca-mass-monthly-meetings/ is where you can find those a few days after the meeting.

We send announcements to eca-mass@googlegroups.com which includes all those on our active list. Contact Dawn Edell if you want to confirm you are on our “Active” list.
dawnedell1017@gmail.com

Feel free to forward this invitation to your friends, relatives, neighbors and everyone you want to talk with about the Climate Crisis NOW! Talking with the people around us is one of the Most Effective things we can do every day to raise awareness of the crisis.

The Larry Rosenberg Memorial Webinar Series
All three sessions videos are now available below.

Session I: Nuclear Power: Expensive Menace or
Low-Carbon Solution

This session took place on September 7, 2023
A video of the event is below or by clicking here.

This discussion explored the question of whether next-generation nuclear power should be a significant component of worldwide climate mitigation strategies.

Vick Mohanka, Chapter Director at the Massachusetts Sierra Club, will be articulating the continuing dangers and uncertainties of nukes.

Kaylee Cunningham, MIT doctoral candidate in nuclear engineering and a widely-recognized social media influencer — TikTok’s “Ms. Nuclear Energy” — will present the pro-nuclear case.

Elizabeth Turnbull Henry, Moderator, is the President of the Environmental League of Massachusetts.

Session II: Green Banks: Financing Climate Solutions

This session took place on September 20.
A video of the event is below or by clicking here

This forum featured an informative discussion about green banks on the national level, the workings of an actual green bank, and the plans for the new green bank in Massachusetts.

Paul Mark, State Senator from Western Mass., spoke about plans for the Massachusetts Community Climate Bank, the nation’s first green bank dedicated to affordable housing.

Nenha Young, Director of Policy and Network at the Coalition for Green Capital, provided a national perspective, including the role of the Inflation Reduction Act in stimulating new and existing green banks.

Eric Shrago, Vice President of Operations at the Connecticut Green Bank, spoke about the experience of the nation’s first Green Bank, established in 2011.

Lee Harris, Moderator, is a staff writer at The American Prospect with many bylines in her name about green banks and capital markets.

Senator Edward Markey joined us via a pre-recorded video to say a few words about his work to create a green bank at the national level.

Session III: Creating Sustainable Systems: Soil, Carbon, and Food

This session took place on September 28, 2023
A video of the event is below or by clicking here

This panel will highlight some of the technical/economic/political/practical challenges and opportunities that we need to honestly face in order to make nature-based climate-improving strategies actually work at scale. Our hope is to raise the level of discussion about these important strategies, acknowledging the unknowns and limits while suggesting ways forward.

David Montgomery, Professor of Geology at University of Washington and an expert on regenerative agriculture, will focus on farming for soil quality as a way to both feed our growing population and reduce or even sequester greenhouse gasses.

Walter Willett, from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, who is currently the co-chair of the EAT-Lancet Commission on sustainable nutrition will summarize their findings about what we need to eat to survive in a climate-endangered world.

Ilan Zugman, 350.org’s Latin America Director, will provide an overview connecting the pressure on land use with fossil fuel extraction from a Global South perspective.

Danielle Nierenberg, Moderator, co-Founder and President of Food Tank, has a long history of making discussions exciting and insightful.

Larry Rosenberg was a lifelong progressive activist. He was an early member of both 350 Massachusetts and the Elders Climate Action – Massachusetts Chapter. From union organizing to central American solidarity work, from advocating for a just Middle East peace to pushing for climate action, his insightful analysis and enduring commitments made him a meaningful contributor to positive change. His sharp intellect also led to jobs programming wind farm software, leading an anti-military weapon proliferation research team, and supporting health-focused international development projects. After years of living with lymphoma, shortly after the COVID pandemic began, Larry’s cancer turned virulent. He died in 2022 after arranging to donate his body to the U.Mass Medical School. These three webinars are a tribute to Larry.

Sponsored by:

Session I Video
Nuclear Power: Expensive Menace or Low-Carbon Solution

Session II Video
Green Banks: Financing Climate Solutions

Session III Video
Creating Sustainable Systems: Soil, Carbon, and Food

It takes all of us to continue the advocacy and education work of our organization. We are asking you now, as a supporter, to help with some of these expenses, if you are able.

Please consider donating to ECA Mass to support chapter activities, educational programs, and materials.  The only way to donate now is by check to ECA National and note in the MEMO section of the check: ECA Massachusetts Chapter.

Please mail your check to:
Elders Climate Action
9012 Village View Dr.
San Jose, CA 95135

Be sure to designate any checks to ECA Massachusetts or funds will go to the National ECA.

Thanks in advance for your support!

Our Small Budget
Our chapter’s expenses are not great: for 2023 we estimate our total expenses at about $5,000 – a small increase from previous years. We have no paid staff, no office, and we don’t pay ourselves for mileage or incidental expenses. Rather, we have the expected, but escalating costs of producing written materials, subscribing to services for our legislative advocacy work, paying occasional consultants for help with our website and other media projects, and mailing services for our newsletter and other communications. Resources permitting, we also hope to purchase equipment to enable us to offer hybrid meetings (Zoom/in person) as pandemic worries recede.

Our Fundraising Goal
Our hope is to raise about $2,600 from you, our members, and match this amount with monies donated by the leadership team and others who have already shown support of ECA’s mission by joining teams, writing reports and articles, and regularly attending meetings. If you have attended even just a few meetings which were valuable to you, when you learned something or were inspired, please donate even a modest, minimum amount in return to help us carry on.

It’s rare for us to ask for anything from our general supporters, besides your actions to help address climate change. Our actions today are more critical than ever as we enter a dangerous period where hopes of keeping global warming below 1.5 ℃ seem to be fading fast. We’ll need all hands on deck as we push local and state governments to implement the steps set out in the Next Generation Roadmap Bill with even greater urgency.