Overview

Global climate change is an issue of enormous magnitude. Today, the earth's atmosphere contains 32% more carbon dioxide, one of the main greenhouse gases, than at the start of the industrial era, and the result is altered long-term weather patterns. For example, average global temperatures, one measure of climate change, have risen by 0.6 degrees Celsius since 1900, and the northern hemisphere is substantially warmer than at any point during the past 1,000 years. By reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, we can reduce pollution and dependency on foreign fossil fuels, save taxpayers money, improve air quality, reduce traffic congestion, and support job creation through the development and deployment of new technologies.

Community-level action is especially important due to the lack of federal leadership on the issue, and towns throughout the U.S. can play a major role in reducing GHG emissions. Local governments have a wide range of responsibilities that can directly impact climate change, including land-use planning, transportation planning and mass transit, reducing local government energy use, local forestry, power generation, residential energy, and solid waste. What's more, communities can be highly effective in influencing individuals to make lifestyle and purchasing choices that can reduce GHG emissions. Communities working cooperatively on the regional level have the added benefit of being able to implement multi-town efforts to reduce GHG emissions.

Government studies have indicated that we need to begin making significant reductions today if we want to minimize the adverse impacts from climate change. Unfortunately, rural U.S. communities have few resources to help them accomplish this, and many community-based efforts throughout the U.S. have failed to engage community members in making the necessary lifestyle changes and personal investments to achieve reductions in GHG emissions.

Recently, through the work of the Carbon Coalition, a group founded in 2003 by Clean Air - Cool Planet, 157 New Hampshire towns passed resolutions urging their towns to take action on reducing GHG emissions. We believe that New Hampshire communities are primed to take aggressive action to address climate change, and we propose a comprehensive, mobilization approach in Cheshire County, New Hampshire, to achieve significant reductions in GHG emissions.

CA-CP/ANEI will establish a Task Force composed of key stakeholders from throughout the region, including representatives from local government, businesses, community organizations, churches, colleges, schools, energy providers, and individual citizens. The Task Force will prepare a regional climate action plan that identifies a range of actions to reduce GHG emissions that can be undertaken on both the regional and community levels.

This regional approach has two advantages. First, many GHG emissions activities such as transportation planning can not be addressed by individual towns alone. This strategy will foster a dialogue on climate change issues among stakeholders in different communities who can have a direct impact in reducing GHG emissions. Second, towns can work collaboratively and achieve economies of scale by implementing community-level solutions, such as compact fluorescent light bulb change-out programs. This approach builds upon existing regional planning processes that local governments have used to deal with issues such as land-use development and watershed management, but have not yet been successfully applied to climate action.

CA-CP/ANEI will provide technical assistance, training, and guidance to the Task Force and other community members to develop and help implement the regional climate action plan. Training topics will focus on how to engage community members, develop a climate action plan, implement specific greenhouse gas reduction programs, explore of regional approaches to climate change, and more. When additional leverage money is acquired through other foundations, CA-CP/ANEI will engage the business and higher education communities through partner forums that bring together key stakeholders in the two respective fields to discuss regional efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Last Updated: 7/27/09