From more severe storms to prolonged heat waves, climate change is here and it’s happening now. Luckily, clean energy solutions like solar panels can help both our planet and our economy.
Maine legislators are working to shift soaring recycling costs back where they belong: onto the producers of unmanageable plastic packaging.
Nitrogen pollution is one of the biggest threats to the Great Bay estuary. A new, comprehensive “Nitrogen General Permit” could help cut that pollution in half.
Since installing solar panels on their barn, Sean Mahoney and his wife have noticed a huge difference in their energy bills. They’ve also been able to reduce their carbon footprint.
Every winter the gas industry tries to scare us, claiming there isn’t enough gas during cold snaps to heat and power our homes. Their solution? More fracked gas and new, expensive gas pipelines. But we don’t have to buy into their propaganda. We have all the power we need without expensive new pipelines.
“We have many options for heating our homes,” says Greg Cunningham, Director of CLF’s Clean Energy and Climate Change program. “Alternatives like heat pumps avoid the use of oil and natural gas furnaces, which pollute our environment and damage our climate.”
Despite many good intentions, curbside recycling has turned out to be a disaster. But that doesn’t mean recycling is dead. We have solutions. One of the best systems for recycling our plastic, glass, and aluminum containers is the bottle return program, also known as the “bottle bill” or deposit-return.
Although some New England states pioneered the bottle return system, they have since fallen behind. But New England can improve its recycling by updating or adopting bottle return systems in each state. This would help reduce litter in our neighborhoods, parks, and waterways; it would keep recyclable material out of landfills and incinerators; and it would lift some recycling costs off of communities.
Our electricity grid was designed over 100 years ago. But times have changed. Today, clean, renewable energy can be harnessed right where we live, so electricity doesn’t have to come from polluting power plants miles away. But we have to update our electricity grid to take advantage of it.
Phelps Turner of the Conservation Law Foundation says one area of concern is the recommendation that Maine adopt federal guidelines for allowable levels of PFAS in drinking water.
