Partnership to Further Solutions for Northeast Communities

Clean Air-Cool Planet is the Northeast's leading nonprofit organization dedicated to finding and promoting solutions to global warming.

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Hot Fact of the Season:

The good news: U.S. greenhouse gas emissions fell last year, for the first time since 1991; analysts describe a drop of 1.2 percent. Compare this to the average annual change in emissions over the last decade, an increase of 1.3 percent, and you have progress.

The bad news: Given that average yearly increase, U.S. emissions are still up, overall, by 11.9 percent over 1990 levels.

-- Source: the Energy Information Administration (EIA)

Quote of Note

"Our mission at Aveda is to care for the world we live in, from the products we make to the ways in which we give back to society. At Aveda we strive to set an example for environmental leadership and responsibility, not just in the world of beauty but around the world."

-- Horst Rechelbacher, Founder of Aveda™, manufacturer and retailer of plant-based personal care products.

Reminder!
Be sure to visit an Aveda salon or lifestyle store near you during Earth Month in April to learn about Clean Air-Cool Planet’s partnership to stop global warming. You can make a difference! Visit www.aveda.com for salon and store locations.

Plan Ahead! Maple Sugar Season is right around the corner…

A warming climate has accelerated the time of year when sap is running in our regions’ maple bushes. Visit these sites to find a sugarhouse in your neck of the woods.

gonewengland.about.com/
cs/maplesugaring/

www.uvm.edu/
~uvmaple/products.htm

www.massmaple.org/info.html

www.newyorkmaple.com/
html/news.html

www.nhmapleproducers.com/
events.htm

Partnership to Further Solutions for Northeast Communities

In an exciting elevation of the cooperative working relationship they’ve enjoyed in the past, Clean Air-Cool Planet and the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI) recently agreed to a formal partnership with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two organizations.

Noting that the two groups “share the goal of demonstrating climate leadership through local action,” the MOU outlines a partnership whose purpose is to facilitate and spotlight the successes of municipalities that are working to find creative, effective ways to reduce the ways in which they contribute to climate change, using the framework established under ICLEI’s Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) program. The CCP campaign currently boasts 44 participating local governments from the Northeast, and a total of 530 municipalities around the world.

The Cities for Climate Protection campaign features a five-step process:

Conduct an energy and emissions inventory and forecast.
Establish an emissions reductions target.
Develop and obtain approval for the Local Action Plan.
Implement policies and measures from Plan.
Monitor and verify results.

“This is really a natural outgrowth of our past cooperative efforts in working with municipalities in the region,” said CA-CP Executive Director Adam Markham following the signing of the document last month. “We hope particularly to help build more alliances for climate change solutions between our corporate and educational partners and municipalities.”

“We are committed to working with Clean Air - Cool Planet to make climate protection a priority for municipal governments throughout the Northeast,” said ICLEI’s U. S. CCP Director Abby Young. “This is an important development that will help to advance our common goal of reducing the threat of global climate change.”

Creating Networks for Change

Given Clean Air-Cool Planet’s focus on regional leadership and practical, cost-effective climate solutions, the documented partnership with ICLEI has two primary objectives. The first is to strengthen the capacity of all Cities for Climate Protection participants to meet their goals for reducing emissions, via the regional network and new relationships with businesses and colleges in the region.

“We also,” says CA-CP’s senior Campus and Community Programs Officer Ned Raynolds, “want to raise the visibility of CCP partners’ achievements, so that state and eventually national policymakers will realize that acting to protect the climate is not just the responsible thing to do; it’s the smart and fiscally prudent course for governments at all levels.”

Raynolds notes that, since CA-CP was founded three years ago, “it’s always been intended that we work closely with ICLEI in the municipal sector – and we have. This more formal agreement is to assure everyone that we are totally on the same page. In developing this MOU, we’ve achieved that common vision and comfortable relationship.”

Upcoming cooperative efforts between CA-CP and ICLEI include a second meeting of Cities for Climate Protection participants next month in Keene, New Hampshire, and municipality-directed program elements at CA-CP’s Northeast Climate Solutions Conference coming up in May.

To get more information about the role communities play in climate change, or how your local government can get involved in the CCP program, contact Ned Raynolds (603.422.6464 or nraynolds@cleanair-coolplanet.org), or check out our community-focused webpage at http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/for_municipalities.php. To find out if your town or county is a CCP participant, take a look at the ICLEI site, at http://www.iclei.org/co2/.

--Bill Burtis