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.…

In response to questions from people interested in our ongoing Gloucester Solar Challenge and to a letter in the Gloucester Daily Times on Dec. 9, 2015 (”Seeing red over Town Green solar company”), I would like to clarify some facts about the initiative called the Gloucester Solar Challenge. Gloucester Solar Challenge is one program of the grass-roots initiative called TownGreen2025. TownGreen2025 is a community-wide effort of volunteers working to minimize Cape Ann’s carbon footprint in a decade through energy conservation, replacing fossil fuel use with alternative energy resources, and a strategy using carbon-reducing offsets to help heal the planet. TownGreen2025 was organized for the betterment of our environment through the Gloucester Meetinghouse Foundation, a nonprofit acting as a civic hub and community education center. We believe in the power of private citizens and the local economy to harness Cape Ann’s creative and innovative spirit to address the most pressing legacy issue of our time: the warming of the planet and rising oceans due to excess carbon in the atmosphere.

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!