See where the mayoral candidates stand on environmental issues

Boston-based chapters of Progressive Massachusetts have put together a mayoral candidate survey. Check out what the candidates say about Environment & Transportation issues in section G of each candidate's response:
John Barros
Andrea Campbell
Annissa Essaibi George
Kim Janey
Michelle Wu

Help the climate and your wallet – and maybe win a mug

Find out about getting your electricity from the sun, then tell us you did and you could win a GreeningRozzie travel mug!
 
See how much electricity you can generate from solar panels on your roof – and how much money you’ll earn from generating electricity, how much money you’ll save by not buying electricity and how much credit you’ll get on your taxes.
 
Enter your information to receive free quotes, including a breakdown of all the numbers, from solar installers screened by EnergySage. If you sign up with one of the installers through GreeningRozzie’s portal on EnergySage’s website and get solar panels on your roof, you'll also get a $250 cash back bonus.
 
Come see GreeningRozzie at the Roslindale farmers market this Saturday, the 4th, and next Saturday, the 11th. We’ll be sharing a table with Mothers Out Front.
 
Stop by the table and tell us that you’ve signed up to find out about solar, or email us at info@greeningrozzie.org to enter the drawing for a travel mug.

Be a booster for BERDO

By Tom Mcdonald

Over half of total greenhouse gas emissions from Boston are produced by just 3% of its buildings – around 3,000 big buildings, including hospitals, universities, labs, hotels and corporate offices.

How does the city set and enforce emission standards for big buildings? Through the Building Energy Reporting and Documentation Ordinance (BERDO).

The City of Boston Climate Action Plan 2019 Update, published in October 2019, calls for replacing BERDO’s limited requirements, set in 2014, with a new building emissions performance standard.

When adopted, the updated BERDO will help Boston reach its climate goals. Don’t allow realtors, big building owners, and the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce to veto or weaken the new BERDO emissions standards. Tell your city councilor to stand firm on the language of the amendments as they are written. We need the City to ensure that:

• the building emission performance standards are set high
• enforcement is strict
• the community has a role in decision-making
• the City allocates enough resources to monitor compliance

From our perch here in Roslindale, GreeningRozzie urges you to support the updated BERDO ordinance now under discussion by the city council. Tell the mayor and the city council to advocate for the climate! Sign this petition (at the bottom of the page) from the Boston Climate Action Network.

Talking nature-affirming movies with GreeningRozzie

By Tom Macdonald

GreeningRozzie recently hosted three Monday night “movie talk” Zoom gatherings. We chose three nature-related movies based on our commonly shared desire during these locked-down, pandemic times to watch something both diverting and uplifting about the natural world. We sent out an invitation to anyone on our lists who might feel like-minded on a Monday evening.

Some folks from the neighborhood joined us for enjoyable post-viewing discussions of The Biggest Little Farm (Mon. 2/1), Fantastic Fungi (Mon. 2/15), and My Octopus Teacher (Mon. 3/1). The movies are a quite beautiful colloquy on the magnificence of the natural world, airborne, on and under ground, and under the sea - something of an antidote to our current virus-subjugated world.

There’s always an allure in the story of dropping everything to “get back” to the land. The couple in The Biggest Little Farm leave their LA jobs to start a farm on a 200 acre spread of land. Their commitment to long-term endeavor in biodiversity, and traditional and sustainable farming methods gives a good jolt to this urban dweller - though I suppose with solar panels on my roof I could claim I’m farming the sun.

In Fantastic Fungi, the not so well-known and seldom identified (at least not by non-biologist me) underground mycelium was a revelation about the networked natural infrastructure and its major role in maintaining life on earth. Along with learning about mushrooms, I find comfort in my newly acquired knowledge that trees “talk” and take care of each other, connecting with each other through communication channels above and below ground.

In My Octopus Teacher, spending a year with an octopus in her natural habitat was a spell-binding window into life in the sea. The narrator (and diver) spins a wonderful (and sweetly anthropomorphized) narrative of chancing upon an octopus as she hides among clam shells at the bottom of the ocean bay just down the hill from where he lives in South Africa. It’s the beginning of a year-long documentation of their evolving companionship as she prevails day-in-and-day-out in her beautiful but dangerous environs. The author/diver has since become a climate warrior.

I make these short reviews by way of saying that the three documentary movies met our intention to talk about things positive in the natural world. The pandemic rages and the planet overheats, but it’s good to talk with each other about the wonder of soil and sea and the age of trees that still stand tall and mushrooms that don’t stop their work of renewal. The intricate networks of connection that we humans navigate are aspects of the larger and indispensable networks that keep our planet spinning.

Now back to work cooling it off… Come join us, if not as a member of GreeningRozzie, at least as a Monday “movie talk” participant. Do you have any other films to recommend in a similar vein to our first series? Give us a shout! Let’s watch, let’s talk!

(Rozzie’s the name, Greening’s the game…)

Fantastic Fungi

GreeningRozzie held its second Movie Discussion Group session on Monday, February 15th. We talked about Fantastic Fungi, a documentary that has a lot of stunning time lapse photography that illuminates the biology of fungi, including mushrooms. The movie showed how fungal mycelium, the dense underground networks of hair-thin root-like structures that make up the of bulk of each fungi, embody the interconnectedness of living things in ecosystems.

The next GreeningRozzie movie discussion is tomorrow, Monday, March 1, about the documentary My Octopus Teacher. Watch on Netflix then RSVP to join the discussion.

Biggest Little Farm

GreeningRozzie held its first Movie Discussion Group on Monday, February 1st with an enjoyable chat about the movie, Biggest Little Farm. All of the Discussion Group participants had watched the movie prior to the Zoom discussion and agreed that both the movie and discussion were an uplifting way to spend quarantine time.

Apricot Lane Farm, 40 miles north of Los Angeles, was converted from degraded acreage to a productive sustainable organic farm as documented by the videographer/owner over about seven years using regenerative and biodynamic techniques including lots of animals. Even small Boston gardeners can be inspired!

Two more GreeningRozzie movie discussions are upcoming:
February 15 - Fantastic Fungi
March 1 - My Octopus Teacher

More info: info@greeningrozzie.org

Legislature approves key climate bill

Here’s some good news – a step forward on the climate front.

The Massachusetts Legislature has approved a key climate bill: An Act Creating a Next Generation Roadmap for Massachusetts Climate Policy (S.2995). Governor Baker now has until the 14th to sign or veto the bill.

Here’s an article from ClimateXChange that details what’s in the bill.

Here’s Massachusetts Climate Action Network’s information for urging Baker to sign the bill.

Searching for solar panels in Rozzie

By Suzane Mrozak 

I learned about the Rozzie Solar Challenge in late July and volunteered to help count the buildings in Roslindale that already have solar.

My own street had already been inventoried, so I didn’t get to count my own solar panels myself, but I’ve had fun exploring other streets in Roslindale since the beginning of August. I took a break in the fall, but I’m getting ready to start again in January, so I took time over the holidays to think about my experiences so far and to figure out what I can do better this time around.

On the plus side, I really enjoyed walking around Roslindale and seeing things I never noticed before – funky lawn ornaments, beautiful hidden gardens, and a wide variety of political signs. I’ve been on streets that I’ve never knew existed, although I’ve lived here over 20 years. I even walked the entire length of Beech Street for the first time. I had no idea it was so long – or that it had so many houses with solar panels on it! 

I also had a memorable conversation one evening with two little girls who were busy working in their garden when I walked by with my notebook and pencil in hand. They asked me what I was doing and when I told them, they said they didn’t think they had solar panels (they didn’t) but their grandfather thinks they are a good thing.

We chatted for a while about their garden, the kinds of trees in their back yard, and the goldfinches visiting the sunflowers at the house across the street. Then the older one asked me if I was a scientist. I loved it!

On the minus side, I realized that I really should have scouted out the streets on Google Maps before I went out. Having done that after my inventory of Beech Street, I noticed that there was one house (at least) that had panels on the back side, out of view from the street. Plus I was initially not great at counting how many houses there were on the street. Short streets are easy, but I found long streets more challenging! And sometimes the view of the roof was obscured by trees.

So when I head out again, I’ll be doing some online research first, creating a checklist I can fill in (instead of writing things down on the fly), and bringing my binoculars with me!

I’m really looking forward to inventorying again. With the trees bare, some panels should be easier to see, and a big plus, every day there will be more light to see by!

I would love to hear from you about your own experiences. Any advice would be most welcome. And if anyone wants to come join me—appropriately masked and distanced, of course—please let me know! The walks I’ve enjoyed most have been the ones where I had company.