March Featured Climate Actions
Wow, there’s lots of news and action this month related to Climate Change! Each month we present suggestions for actions YOU can take to address climate change and increase resiliency in a changed climate. We urgently need to act on many levels at once: personal, community, state/national/global, and keeping ourselves informed and inspired. Would you pledge to yourself to carry out one or more of these monthly actions? These featured actions are brought to you by the Climate Action Group of the Unitarian Society of Northampton and Florence. To learn more contact Molly Hale at hellomolly@comcast.net or 585-0791.
1. Personal: Set a goal to eat less meat and dairy, especially from industrialized meat and dairy production. Globally, “the livestock sector accounts for 9% of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65% of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure. And it accounts for respectively 37% of all human-induced methane (23 times as warming as CO2), which is largely produced by the digestive system of ruminants.” (1) “Fossil fuels … are [also]used to grow grain to feed to cattle, to make processed feed cake for cattle to eat, to pump water for cattle to drink, to refrigerate meat, to transport refrigerated meat, and to sell meat in supermarkets in open fridges and freezers.” (2)
2. Community: This is a crucial time to focus on the Keystone Pipeline because Secretary of State John Kerry will be issuing his National Interest Determination to President Obama soon, probably within the next 60 days or so. Consider signing the Pledge of Resistance against the Keystone Pipeline, in which you pledge to risk arrest or support others doing so if Kerry recommends the project go forward. Then sign up here to attend the Civil Disobedience training on March 15 in Springfield in preparation our local Pledge action. The training will prepare you for the protest likely to occur in late April or early May in Springfield. For more info about the protest or training contact Molly (see above).
3. State/National/Global: IMPORTANT: MARCH 7 DEADLINE. Call, email or send a postcard to Secretary of State Kerry telling him to reject the Keystone Pipeline. General info about the pipeline can be found here and the Final Environmental Impact Statement that Kerry must consider is here. Just a brief note is all that is needed and you input is important! For email comments use this link. For text you can copy and paste to use in a letter or email click here:
U.S. Department of State
Bureau of Energy Resources, Room 4843
Attn: Keystone XL Public Comments
2201 C Street, NW
Washington, DC 20520
4. Inform yourself: Get involved with Climate Action Now MA, our grassroots, Pioneer Valley climate action group. To receive their weekly newsletter that is a clearinghouse for climate actions and info in the valley go the website at www.climateactionnowMA.org and click on “How we communicate”. Archives of past Monthly Climate Actions can be found here:
