The second EPA Building Blocks for Resilience Workshop will build on the information and insights of Workshop 1 and provide valuable information on resources and solutions to decision makers.

This second EPA Workshop’s objectives are:

• Confirm climate threats and impacts for Cape Ann
• Identify new strategies for mitigation and adaptation
• Understand local and regional capacity and other resource needs for implementation
• Understand potential funding opportunities (state, federal, and private) to meet needs

Professor Charles Waldheim presented the full narrative of The Great Storm of 2038 Scenario and outlined four adaptation measures identified to prepare and mitigate the effects of hurricanes, northeasters, and other storms.

Over 60 leaders and participants from across Cape Ann came together on Wednesday, April 27 from 9-11AM to address the threats to Cape Ann from climate change, including likely damage to roads, water and sewer infrastructure, and natural systems. The EPA Workshop, the first of two, included presentations from the TownGreen-sponsored Harvard Graduate School of Design’s The Case of Cape Ann: Typologies of Vulnerability study.

The Sawyer Free Library will kick off the first annual Gloucester Reads: Many Readers, One Conversation, which will be held from June 22 to Sept. 15.

Letter to the Editor of the Gloucester Times, April 2, 2020, from Marcia F Hart RN, Member of the Cape Ann Climate Coalition

The bills for the damage caused by climate change are arriving now for all of us to see. The costs are no longer theoretical. Costs and damage due to climate change will only get worse in the foreseeable future unless we undertake major actions in our community, our state, our nation and across the world.

TownGreen2025, following our mission to help reduce the carbon footprint of Cape Ann, is excited to support this group-purchasing electric vehicle program, the first to be held here in the Northeast. Electric vehicles can go farther on a full charge than the average car drives in a day, and now the price is right with Mass Energy’s Drive Green program.

…We have demonstrated through extensive research and measurements the power of our scientifically planted tropical forests to absorb massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. So much, in fact, that our tropical forest plantations are sucking up at least 10 times more carbon dioxide, on a per-hectare basis, than the aggregate of all of the world’s tropical forests.…

Can Gloucester and Cape Ann take the lead in developing a clean energy based economy? Can we do it with a goal of reducing our collective carbon footprint by 100% in a decade? A growing group of Cape Ann citizens has been working now for over a year on developing a plan with the assumption that the answer to those questions can be a resounding, yes!