“The Great Salt Pond is one of the state’s pristine environmental gems, and a huge expansion of the marina would permanently scar it,” senior attorney Jerry Elmer said in a statement. “After almost two decades, this should be the end of this effort.”
At the corner of Allens and Thurbers avenues in Providence, Rhode Island, sits a less-than-four-acre lot that could soon be home to a massive garbage depot. The proposal has nearby residents in South Providence and Washington Park worried and angry – and with good reason. These communities are already burdened by daily pollution from other nearby industrial facilities.
The Act On Climate 2020 bill is the bold action Rhode Island needs now to address the climate crisis. It provides mandates that are consistent with current science, an accountability mechanism to make sure the state is taking action, and transparency through public metrics and an online dashboard.
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.
CLF’ers Elena Mihaly and Tom Irwin show that you don’t have to live in a major city, or even on a paved road, to benefit from driving an electric car.
