Needham residents who attended Green Needham’s May meeting featuring Brian Swett, Chief of Energy an Environment for the City of Boston, came away impressed by the leadership, commitment and results being achieved by the city towards its energy and climate goals.
Although we in Needham won’t be faced with the challenge of sorting through the many priorities and even larger number of candidates vying to succeed Mayor Menino in Boston, we do have an interest in what happens there. All too often, issues of energy and climate are pushed to the back burner or ignored during an election. Thanks to Boston’s leadership on energy and climate under Mayor Menino, that is certainly not happening during this mayoral race.
A front page article in the August 26th Boston Globe features a range of ideas from mayoral candidates on adapting to rising sea levels, reducing emissions, increasing recycling and more. Nine of the twelve candidates provided detailed, thoughtful and creative ideas for continuing the progress Boston has made. As with what we heard from Brian Swett in May, many of the ideas could be applied in our metrowest communities. The complete answers to all ten questions from Felix Arroyo, John Barros, Dan Conley, John Connolly, Rob Consalvo, Charlotte Golar-Richie, Mike Ross, Bill Walczak and Martin Walsh are available here.
Updated 11/5 13: This post Commonwealth Magazine the day before the election assesses the climate plans of John Connolly and now Mayor-elect Marty Walsh.
