The Climate Minute - The Energy Exodus, and Vermont Yankee's Long Goodbye.

If it's Friday it's the Climate Minute, your source of climate news and views from Massachusetts and beyond.  This week Rob and Ted talk about the Energy Exodus march, Vermont Yankee's closing and decommissioning, and naming hurricanes after climate denier politicians. Ted marched on the first day of the Energy Exodus march, and brought along a voice recorder and captured some interviews which we put in a podcast yesterday.

photo by Wen Stephenson

The kick-off was covered in the media, you can check it out here.  In a supremely ironic twist, there was a small diesel spill in New Bedford harbor the same day the march reached that city. In other news, the Vermont Yankee plant will be closing by the end of 2014.  According to this story, the owners will have up to 60 years to fully decommission the plant and remediate the site.  Two generations to clean up the site of a plant that's only run for 40 years! From Vermont, we segued to the arctic ice melt.  Ted found this neat video showing the melt from May to mid-August.  Here's an interesting Slate piece about the quadrupling of commercial sea traffic along Russian's northern coast, made more accessible due to shrinking icecaps. Speaking of videos, here's a touching / funny / serious piece suggesting we stop picking on innocent people names Sandy and Katrina, and begin naming hurricanes after climate change-denying politicians. You can sign their petition at ClimateNameChange.org. Finally, there was a story in the Globe this week highlighting the environmental positions of the candidates for Mayor of Boston.  You can also watch the video below, this is from the forum sponsored by several environmental groups in Boston back in July.  There will be another forum in late October before the final election.

Mayoral Forum from Ken Pruitt on Vimeo.

Likewise, there will be a forum for the candidates for Senator Markey's old congressional seat, which will occur in late September.  Keep tuned in for more details! Remember, for more climate activities near you check out our MCAN climate action calendar.  You can enter events as well as browse for interesting things to do. As always, it’s been a pleasure sharing climate news and views with you.  You know, you can subscribe to our iTunes feed and get our podcasts automatically here.  Feel free to give us your thoughts on our Facebook page, or through old-fashioned email.  You can even follow us on twitter @MassClimate , so there are lots of ways for you to listen and participate in the dialog. When you are on the website, please contribute to MCAN. Every dollar you give will be doubled by a generous backer, so long we reach our fundraising goal.  We’re three quarters of the way there, can you help? So we will close the way we always close, by saying that because we recognize the necessity of personal accountability for our actions,  because we accept responsibility for building a durable future and because we believe it is a patriotic duty as citizens, we insist that the US put a price on carbon. Good bye and see you next week…