Earth Day weekend came to a close, but not due to poor weather. Neither Saturday’s 50-degree chills nor Sunday’s rain could prevent a hundred or so people from gathering on each of those days to celebrate and draw attention to Newton’s actions toward a greener future.
Two events – the Newton Democratic City Committee’s Climate Rally and Visibility on Saturday and Newton’s Earth Day Festival at City Hall on Sunday – each held the door open for conversations about our changing climate.
At the rally at 1PM on April 21, hosted by the Newton Democrats Climate Crisis Subcommittee, almost 100 neighbors, activists, local and state officials converged on Newton Centre Green to discuss the real menace of global warming. Speaking first was Gary Rucinski, who co-chairs the Subcommittee and who organized the event with Martina Jackson, Public Policy chair of the Democratic State Committee (and a member of the board of Fig City News).
Rucinski is also Regional Coordinator for the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL) – a grassroots NGO that helps individual people lobby for climate action. As he said, to take action in our ever-changing climate is a very necessary thing.
“People everywhere are recognizing that society has to do everything possible to avoid the worst effects of climate change while also ensuring environmental, social and economic Justice.”
Just some of the effects, noted Rucinski, include “damaged properties and financial strain on households, businesses, and governments at all levels.” To alleviate those problems, again, there’s one big solution: local action. “We need to make climate protection as easy to pass as Medicare and Social Security. The best way to do that is to keep getting the word out and to keep letting people know.”
That includes young people, by the way, and the second speaker at Saturday’s event was a tenth grader at Newton South High School. Sophomore Tali Wachman shared her experience as a student learning about climate change. “Five or six months ago, my history teacher had us do an assignment concerning climate change. In class the next day, he asked us: ‘Does this make you feel better?’”
“No”, Wachman said, “it doesn’t.”
For Wachman, it was the first time that she had heard the issue mentioned in school. And something about hearing it in the classroom “made it feel real.” She continued: “I began to realize how much needed to be done to save the climate, and it hit me that the only way to make an impact on the climate is to take action myself.”
It was a solemn yet very determined statement. And where environmental activism is concerned, it was telling of just the sort of rationale that one gets from being stuck between a rock and a hard place. That is, “no concessions.” Newton South High School sophomore Haning Lu also spoke.
According to Congressman Jake Auchincloss, who also spoke at the rally, it’s easy to be worried by the challenges that climate change presents. “But this is a day that takes that anxiety and turns it into action, and that is what we need.” Earth Day and its original organizers “were instrumental in creating some of the first Federal environmental protections, including the National Environmental Protection Act, which did so much to start to turn the tide away from pollution and to guarantee clean air and clean water for generations to come.”
Progress in the field of climate has been made, he said. “Last term in Congress, we had a grand slam. We passed the biggest, boldest climate action and clean energy investment in history. That’s $369 million to turbocharge clean energy investment and environmental resilience this whole country over.”
But it’s up to us to see that the progress lasts. “We need to continue to take action,” Auchincloss said, and “we cannot ever be paralyzed regardless of what the government looks like. There’s always places to make progress, and we need to hit singles and doubles and, when the times are right, you hit that grand slam to ensure that the planet that we are leaving to those that we just heard from is one that is sustainable and liveable.”
The best place to start, said State Senator Cindy Creem, is just to let other people know about what’s going on. “People learn things and they make use of what they learn to tell other people about it. Just like anything else, it’s about making people aware. The more people learn about plastic bags, about single use, about the climate, the more use it will have in fighting climate change.”
Awareness is the first crucial step to a full climate recovery. Take the Charles River, for instance, once described by a 19th-century writer to be “unlikely to be mistaken for water” and by local kids as “yucky.” These days, it might even be good for a swim. And that, says Ward 2 Councilor Emily Norton – who is also Executive Director of the Charles River Watershed Association – is because folks in Newton did not give up on the environment. “When we put our minds to it, we can do extraordinary things,” Norton said, “Newton has been a leader when it comes to the environment. It’s important to remember just how much power regular people have.”
“We are a community that other communities follow. People really want to live here and really want to replicate our policies, so there’s even more pressure on us to keep working towards climate goals,.” she said. A climate goal like clean energy, for example, “more of which powers Newton than any other community in Massachusetts.”
With the success of local businesses in providing green products, it’s easy to see why that’s possible – and best seen in person. The Earth Day Festival, which lasted from 1PM to 4PM on Sunday, featured an expansive trade fair of Newton’s best eco-friendly enterprises, conveniently arrayed in vendors’ stands all through the War Memorial Auditorium at City Hall.
Present were organizations like Recycle Right Newton, which “talks with residents and kids about the proper way of recycling materials.” The group encourages people to download the Recycle Right Newton app (Apple, Android), which shows the different kinds of waste along with the best way of disposing of each.
Also present was the Citizens’ Climate Lobby (CCL), represented by the co-head of the organization’s Boston chapter, Yannick Perrette. Perrette said that with climate mitigation, “getting local people involved” is how the job gets done. “Our slogan is ‘political will for a liveable world,’ and it means that climate change is solved when legislators take action – they do so of course at the will of the people.”
Right across from CCL stood a table with two maps, owned by Communities Responding to Extreme Weather (CREW), which showed forecasts of future flooding in the area. The exhibit was staffed by Leigh Meunier, project coordinator at the organization and resident of Somerville. Newton, Meunier said, faces a problem. “The main reason I’m here is because Newton is in the Charles River watershed, which floods and has done so more often with climate change. We’ve watched the flooding and monitored it for people who want to know how to get by it.”
Wherever CREW goes, said Meunier, it brings resources and help for people, and all at a very personal level. Intriguingly, one of the posters on the stand was written in Mandarin Chinese. To Meunier, “it’s all about connecting with people,” and Chinese is Newton’s second most spoken language.
The language of care for our planet, as it turns out, is pretty universal. And at no point is that more evident than on Earth Day.
Video of Marcia Cooper (president of Green Newton) and Andrew Breithaupt (creator of the TicTacGO exhibit) explaining the TicTacGO exhibit:
Andrey Sarkanich is a sophomore at Newton North High School.
Article photography: Jack Prior
