December 13th’s Green Needham meeting at the Needham Public Library Community room opened with an update on several key Green Needham projects:
Needham 1,000 is our follow up to last year’s successful 10% Challenge that saw over 450 Needham households commit to energy-saving activities that reduced greenhouse gas emissions, saved money and helped them live more sustainably. For Needham’s tercentennial year, our goal is to reach 1,000 households.
- We’ll be working with community groups, schools, businesses and houses of worship to reach 1,000 households.
- We’re also planning a contest among several of Needham’s service organizations to see which one will get the highest percentage of their members to take the challenge.
- We’ll be working with the Town to place a plaque commemorating all the organizations who participated in one of our Town buildings.
If your organization would like to be included, please get in touch with Jim Glickman.
Becoming a Green Community – Michael Greis summarized his meeting with the Selectmen and our progress toward having Needham become a Massachusetts Green Community.
Eaarth Book Group – Green Needham is putting together a book group (or several) to read and discuss Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth, early next year. Please contact Susan McGarvey if you are interested in participating or would like to know more.
Eleanor Rosellini provided updates from Green Needham partner organizations – detailed information is in this posting.
The main event of the evening was a discussion of Energy Security and National Security by Jon Gensler and Wade Barnes (more information on them here). They talked about:
- How energy and climate connect to National Security
- Defining security threats posed by fossil fuel dependence
- Defining security threats posed by climate change
- How those threats impact our troops on the ground today
- What the US Military leadership is doing about those threats – at home and abroad
- The impact of that response on our local economy – jobs
Jon and Wade’s perspective as combat veterans gave their talk impact, immediacy and urgency. The unfortunate results of our dependence on fossil fuels is brought home when you realize that one American soldier, sailor or airman dies for every twenty-four fuel convoys delivered to our troops. And when you hear that every US military facility has an energy manager whose focus is on increasing energy efficiency and reducing energy use at the base, you wonder why every company, municipality and institution isn’t doing the same thing.
A few slides they used are included here, but we encourage you to watch the rebroadcast of the meeting on The Needham Channel to see for yourself. We’ll post the rebroadcast schedule as soon as it is available.
