CUMBERLAND CAT

At its April 23, 2018 meeting, the Town Council, based on the results of a thorough RFP process, voted to accept the proposal of Revision Energy, a Maine solar provider for a solar project on the closed landfill.  Despite local concerns over the visual impact, a final vote of approval by the council on May 14th.  

The CCAT has been very active in this effort and has provided technical assistance to the Town Manager and the Finance Committee of the Council and encouraged Cumberland Sierra Club members and residents to support this effort.

Under this proposal, the Town will enter into a Power Purchase Agreement with Revision to buy all of the electricity produced by a 475 KW solar array on the landfill. For the first six years, the cost of the electricity would be similar to the rate the Town is now paying CMP.  At the end of this period, the Town has the right to buy the solar array at a substantial discount, thus locking in a very low cost of electricity for the next 30 years.  The savings to the taxpayers will be quite substantial and most importantly over 80% of Town Government's electricity needs will be met by a zero-carbon, renewable resource.

The Gorham, still in search of a name, now includes multiple communities in the Gorham, Westbrook and Buxton area. However, they welcome any and all in the surrounding communities to join the group. They are currently focused on hosting a Window Dressers Community Workshop from November 14th-19th in the Gorham area (location TBA - anyone with suggestions for any available large spaces during that time should contact Briana at [email protected]).   

The group anticipates engaging USM students, area high school students, returning volunteers from the workshop last fall in which 398 insulating window inserts were made, new customers, and members of the area communities including Gorham, Westbrook, Buxton, Standish, Hollis, Steep Falls, Windham and beyond. 

While meetings are generally held on Monday evenings in Gorham, an informal CAT pot-luck dinner meeting on June 4th will be held at Miriam Rubin's home in Buxton and will include a short Window Dressers video as a preliminary training about measuring for window inserts.  Spouses/partners and kids welcome - for directions please email [email protected].

PORTLAND CAT

At the May monthly meeting of Portland Cats subcommittees reported in on the various activities that each is working on.  These include announcement of a Window Dressers workshop for organizing a fall build, ideas for a supplement to Maine Uniform Building and Energy Code (MUBEC) to present in the 2019 legislature, supporting the students at the DEP hearing on Climate Change and more.

After months of waiting and discussion the PCAT idea of solar on the closed land fill is possibly coming to fruition. ReVision is planning to break ground on the landfill project in the beginning of July or possibly earlier!

BELFAST  

The City of Belfast's Climate Change Committee is currently gathering information to report to the City Council on local sea level rise, storm and tidal surges, and projections for the city's adaptation needs.  It's a big task but will garner some very useful data as we look to expand our focus within the broader community.  Mayor Samantha Paradis chairs the committee and city council member Eric Sanders is also on the committee, bringing the current membership to ten.

The committee's agendas and meeting times are posted on the City website, and some stakeholders for future sustainability projects have started giving public input.  Building slowly but steadily, we have solid long range goals, and will continue to look to CATs and other community sustainability groups as we move forward.    

YARMOUTH 

Sierra Club Maine's Climate Action Advisory Team has been contacted by a few Yarmouth residents to help them organize a CAT.  Please contact Sierra Club office at 761-5616, [email protected] or [email protected] for more information.  

PARTNERSHIP WITH 350 AND S. PORTLAND SUSTAINABILITY COMMITTEE  

The partnership steering committee recently met with the S. Portland Sustainability Director and volunteer committee to discuss future cooperative activities.  350 and Sierra Club Maine hope to participate in the South Portland Window Dressers build which will be January 4-12, 2019 at SMCC.  Also at a recent partnership meeting, the group discussed the challenges in bringing energy efficiency to landlords and renters of multifamily units.

UPCOMING EVENTS - NOT TO BE MISSED

Brown Bag Lunch
May 23; 12 - 1 pm
Sierra Club Conference Room, 565 Congress St., 2nd floor 
Heather McCargo from the Wild Seed Project will speak on creating corridors of native plants for urban biodiversity.  

Sierra Club Supports Zero Hour Lobby Day & Rally Mobilization 
The mission of the Zero Hour movement is to center the voices of diverse youth in the conversation on climate and environmental justice. Zero Hour is a youth-led movement creating entry points, training, and resources for new young activists and organizers (and adults who support our vision) wanting to take concrete action around climate change. Together, we are a movement of unstoppable youth organizing to protect our rights and access to the natural resources and a clean, safe, and healthy environment that will ensure a livable future where we not just survive, but flourish.

Mobilization takes place in Washington, DC

July 19th 2018- The Youth Climate Lobby Day 
July 20th 2018- Art Builds & Community Building
July 21st 2018- The Youth Climate March

FMI: http://thisiszerohour.org/the-march/

CONTACT FOR MORE INFORMATION: [email protected] or [email protected]

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IN THE NEWS

The Northeast MegaDam Resistance Coalition Supports Nonviolent Land Protectors Against the Muskrat Falls Megaproject

The Northeast MegaDam Resistance Coalition, which includes Sierra Club in solidarity with the communities living downstream of the Muskrat Falls mega project under construction in Labrador, supports the nonviolent Land Protectors participating today in a national day of nonviolent direct action, organized by the Ontario-Muskrat Solidarity Coalition on Parliament Hill in Ottawa - which is unceded Algonquin territory.

Since 2011, Indigenous people and settlers living in the Happy Valley/ Goose Bay region of Labrador - which is unceded Innu and Inuit land, have been excluded from a process that has allowed the Muskrat Falls mega dam construction to proceed, despite their grave concerns about methylmercury poisoning of their traditional food web and the daily threat of dam collapse 

Justin Trudeau recently apologized for a past act of Labrador cultural genocide, yet his government supports this impending act of cultural genocide with a $9.2 billion federal investment." Much of the fight against the Muskrat Falls dam has taken place with very little media attention here in the United States. Members of the Labrador Land Protectors, https://www.facebook.com/labradorlandprotectors/ and, the Grand Riverkeeper Labrador http://www.grandriverkeeperlabrador.ca/, along with supporters and residents in Labrador have been criminalized (and some, including Elders, jailed in maximum security penitentiaries) for peaceful acts of resistance and sacred ceremonies on traditional land.

The mission of the Northeast Megadams Resistance Coalition is to block imports of hydroelectricity produced by mega dams, such as Muskrat Falls, which are causing irreversible harm to ecosystems and to Indigenous communities. We recognize our responsibility as citizens of the States of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and New York, which have been complicit in promoting the expansion of mega dams on Indigenous lands, by negotiating for contracts to import electricity from Hydro Quebec and Nalcor Energy in Labrador. 

The proposed new transmission corridors, Central Maine Power's New England Clean Energy Connect, the Northern Pass into New Hampshire, the New England Clean Power Link into Vermont, and the Champlain Hudson Power Express into New York, if built, would deliver hydroelectricity from Quebec and Labrador to the region. This will certainly incentivize new mega dam construction on Indigenous lands. "We ask the citizens of northeastern states to pay attention to the struggle underway in Labrador over Muskrat Falls. Hydroelectricity from large dams is neither clean nor green. 

Our energy policies must be based on respect for social justice and human rights. Large dams destroy forests and wetlands, contributing significantly to climate change and biodiversity loss," stated Alexis Lathem, a Vermont member of the Coalition. "We should be using electricity that is carbon-emission free and fully renewable, and these mega dam projects are neither," says Coalition member Steve Crowley, Energy Chair of the Vermont Sierra Club. "The only way to consider these projects renewable is to completely ignore the elimination of that vast forest resource that is not growing back on any schedule. Beyond this, when you consider poisoning the fish, and the people who consume them, with methyl mercury, and disrupting the lives of Indigenous communities, there's no way this is the right thing to do. By using this mega dam power, we are directly responsible for impacts that would be completely intolerable if they were here in our backyard." The northeast States must expand and promote local renewable energy and energy efficiency programs to achieve long term energy sustainability. We don't need to import electricity produced by destructive mega dams 1000 miles away. 

Portland's Casco Bay High School Hopes to Become "Greenest" in Maine

Students at CBHS have been involved in Terra Matters and were participants in the Earth Day events in Portland.  Now it looks like the High School is off and running to become Maine "greenest High school in Maine".  

According to school officials and according to a draft plan, the overall goal of the work is to "identify the highest leverage ways to evolve our facility, our policies, our curriculum and our behavior so that they are more in line with our aspiration to be an environmentally sustainable and just community."   Sierra Club Maine congratulates their students, teachers and administration for their commitment to becoming a "green School".

"If global food waste was a county, it would be the third largest emitter, just behind China and the United States." 

1.8 billion tons a year, enough to feed Africa, Europe and the Americas for a year.

Less food waste means less trees cut down for agriculture.
Less water pumped. 
Less fossil fuels burned to make chemical fertilizers and to chill and transport food. 

Here are some interesting videos on the topic: 
9m overview.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RlxySFrkIM&t=2s

Denmark has reduced waste 25%.  Leader of that Selina Juul has 2 Ted Talks.
17 minutes, wonderful, elegant,  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6mi-ZFCprs  
8 minutes, same lady, more political, focus more on world hunger than climate  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIIhbjY4s8A
15min Ted, wonderful  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cWC_zDdF74s

1.3 min  1.8 billion tons of waste a year, enough to feed Africa, Europe and the Americas for a year.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kTz_uIqNoY