For the last few years, I’ve been publishing a weekly listing service on Energy (and Other) Events (http://hubevents.blogspot.com) that happen around Cambridge, MA in the colleges, universities, and the community.  This week, I noticed that there is a lot of practical activity around energy and the churches.  From now until Thanksgiving, there will be three energy upgrade parties at three different churches in three different neighborhoods of Boston and two “sustainable house of worship” workshops, one in the suburbs and one in the city.  

The energy upgrade parties are organized by the Home Energy Efficiency Team or HEET (http://www.heetma.com/) which for years now has been  teaching volunteers hands-on skills in lowering their energy bills and carbon emissions while making the building they’re in more energy efficient.

The workshops are organized by Massachusetts Interfaith Power & Light (http://www.mipandl.org) which has been helping houses of worship reduce energy costs through energy efficiency and a heating oil buying club through MA Energy Consumers Alliance.  One of the workshops will be happening in conjunction with a HEET energy upgrade party.

I’ve always thought that this is how energy organizing should be done: practical efforts that increase end use efficiency, save people money while making them more comfortable in their own neighborhoods, and speed the transition to renewables.  Solar barnraisings, energy upgrade work parties, we should be building our energy future now, as an act of protest against the status quo and a mechanism of liberation from it.  

Power to the people, as an actual practice.

http://www.sierraclub.org/sier…

7 of the 162 Sierra Club “Green Schools” were in MA, in order of standing:

Harvard 16

UMass Amherst 27

BU 88

Hampshire 89

Mount Holyoke 124

Worcester Polytechnic 125

Suffolk University 148

It was the seventh year the Sierra Club has asked colleges and universities to fill out their questionnaire.  According to one source, MIT didn’t participate.

On Monday January 30th, the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA) held a public meeting at Suffolk University, halfway between the State House and City Hall, to change the Boston zoning laws to allow for agriculture throughout the city, making it easier for local residents to grow and sell fresh, healthy, foods in Boston and the greater Boston Metropolitan Area.  Nearly 300 people attended.  Boston currently has about 150 community gardens serving 3000 gardeners, the highest per capita of any US city.  Now the city is trying to figure out how to change zoning to increase urban agriculture beyond gardening and household use into businesses and economic development.

Mayor Menino, the newly appointed chair of the food policy task force for the US Conference of Mayors, opened the meeting and the keynote address was given by Will Allen, Founder and CEO of Growing Power Inc. (http://www.growingpower.org), non-profit based in Milwaukee, WI which also does work in Chicago, Detroit, Ghana, and around the world.  Growing Power addresses social justice and food access issues through building local agriculture and farm-based businesses and Mr. Allen won the 2008 McArthur Foundation “Genius” Grant for his work on urban farming and sustainable food production.  Growing Power has grown an underutilized 2-acre lot into a farm that produces enough produce, eggs, honey, fish and other meats to feed more than 10,000 local residents and employs more than 100 people on 20 farms, 13 farmstands, and a year round CSA.  

This idea may be moot after all the forced evictions of the Occupations from public spaces but I thought I’d share it anyway.

I’ve visited the Occupations in Wall Street, Boston, and Providence, RI.  Every time I go to one of them, I try to connect with somebody about making the Occupation green with, as yet, little success.  In New York, I saw the greywater treatment system Mobile Research Labs set up and talked to a couple of people about using some simple solar techniques.  In Boston, I’ve tried to connect the winterization team with the student Energy Clubs at some of the local colleges and universities and alerted my own network of solar enthusiasts to Occupy Boston’s  efforts.  I’ve also tried to do the same by contacting OWS’s Sustainability Group.  In Providence, I talked with the only occupier I saw up and around early on a Sunday morning.  He was picking up trash around the park and was disappointed that the group hadn’t organized themselves enough to do recycling.  I gave him my card and my elevator pitch for a green occupation and he said he’d pass it on.

I look at the Occupations and see economic refugee camps and a possible test-bed for emergency response and sustainable economic development around the world.  Some may say that’s crazy but the links are there if you look.

In less than 2 minutes, Gil Friend, CEO of Natural Logic, Inc and author of The Truth about Green Business, makes a clear business case against coal:

http://www.youtube.com/v/Eqifc…