This summer is an uncertain time. Although restrictions on movement and interpersonal contact are gradually lifting—Habitat reopened trails on June 8!—the risks of attending group events are still too high for many readers. Once again, here is a list of ways to think about our environment, energy, and our world without putting yourself at risk.
Think you’ve seen everything around Belmont? I bet you haven’t. The Friends of Fresh Pond Reservation publish lists of all the animals, birds, plants, algae, lichens, and fungi found at Fresh Pond. Bulbochaete and spirogyra await algae fans! Dust off your hand lens, polish your binoculars, and go take a look.
If you’re too busy to get out, you can cut your travel time to nature by watching the Friends of the Middlesex Fells’ “My Fells” one-minute challenge, where Fells admirers post 1-minute videos and other art celebrating the Fells. The Friends of the Middlesex Fells are also posting slightly longer videos on their Youtube channel every week, including videos about Jack in the pulpit, how to identify poison ivy, and vernal pools.
And how will you get around after the epidemic peaks? The Environmental League of Massachusetts has posted a video on The Future of Public Transportation Post-COVID, recorded on May 21 with Monica Tibbits-Nutt, who sits on the board of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation, is the vice chair of the MBTA’s Fiscal Management Control Board, and serves as the executive director of 128 Business Council. Addressing the inequities in public transit access and implementing programs like the Transportation and Climate Initiative are even more important now that the current public health crisis has exposed our vulnerabilities. She called on viewers to take this opportunity to rethink our commutes, transit routes, and the space we allocate for biking and walking throughout our cities and towns. As Tibbits-Nutt said, “This is an opportunity to allow humans to be central to the communities we’re living in.”
COVID-19 isn’t the only factor affecting our health. The Environmental League of Massachusetts has posted an April 20 webinar titled Climate + Health. Dr. Aaron Bernstein, interim director of the Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, discusses the interconnectedness of climate change and human health, parallels between the COVID-19 crisis and our climate risks, and how public policy can ameliorate or exacerbate these problems.
For an in-depth look at how climate change is affecting our health, check out Climate Exchange’s March 20 webinar, Why Carbon Pricing is a Public Health Issue. New research shows that smart climate policy, particularly carbon pollution pricing, can have massive positive health impacts. Climate ExChange released a report in March that quantifies the public health benefits resulting from California’s cap-and-invest carbon pricing program, the Western Climate Initiative, which has been in place since 2012. This policy has created benefits that amount to five times the cost of the program. American Public Health Association’s Rachel McMonagle and Dr. Jonathan Buonocore discuss public health as it relates to the climate crisis and dive into the vast array of public health benefits that carbon pollution pricing can have on local communities.
Of course, human health depends on having a healthy planet. Climate Resilience for Activists, a video presentation from May 7, 2020, by the Charles River Watershed Association, talks about how to make our environment more resilient to climate change. Many of the most effective and inexpensive solutions to building climate resilience involve bringing nature back into our built environment. Nature-based solutions include restoring urban tree canopy, restoring wetlands, and daylighting buried streams. “Green infrastructure” solutions include bioswales, rain gardens, and permeable pavers that absorb water, thereby reducing stormwater runoff and flooding and recharging aquifers. These options offer protection and the benefits of cleaner air, cleaner water, and the psychological uplift of living in and around green space.
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