environment

New England Mayors & Local Leaders Urge Federal Climate Action 08/18/2021

Join Mayors and City Councilors from around New England for a panel discussion about the impacts of climate change, opportunities for action at the local level, and the need for aggressive action from the federal government. These local leaders are seeing the impacts of climate change firsthand in their communities. Hear about the climate actions they’re taking locally, and why they are calling for significant federal investments in climate, clean energy, justice, and jobs.

Who:
Elizabeth Turnbull Henry, Environmental League of Massachusetts
Mayor Anne Watson, Montpelier, Vermont
City Councilor / Former Mayor Sarah Nichols, Bangor, Maine
City Councilor Jesse Lederman, Springfield, Massachusetts
Mayor Joyce Craig, Manchester, New Hampshire

Standing Trees Vermont: Grassroots Resistance to Industrial Logging on Public Lands 05/13/2021

Standing Trees Vermont hosts a presentation and discussion with Danna Smith, executive director of Dogwood Alliance, coauthor of “The Great American Stand," and one of our nation's leading forest advocates. At Dogwood Alliance, Danna has worked successfully across the southern United States to build grassroots resistance to the wood pellet industry and industrial logging in a region rich in biodiversity but long targeted for extraction. Learn about the history of southern forests, strategies and tactics for resistance we can adapt to the Northeast, and opportunities for the future.

The People's Law School: Earth Day and the Environment 04/21/2021

This free, virtual presentation provides a primer on environmental law, presented by lawyers from the Attorney General’s Office and Jen Duggan of the Conservation Law Foundation. Participants should leave the session with a basic understanding of environmental law in Vermont and an awareness of where to go for more information. The session includes:

1. an overview of how environmental law works at the federal and state levels, including Vermont’s Global Warming Solutions Act

2. descriptions of the different areas of environmental law in Vermont (land use, water, hazardous materials, environmental health, etc.)

3. explanation of the roles of different agencies and the Attorney General's Office in protecting Vermont's environment

4. tips on where to find more information or report concerns about specific issues as well as concrete examples from cases

5. a discussion of the history and meaning of Earth Day.

Standing Trees Vermont: Proforestation - A Simple Solution to an Urgent Problem 02/24/2021

What is Proforestation? How does it compare to what is happening on Vermont's federal and state public lands?

For years we have listened to the forest industry speak about sustainable forest management, afforestation and reforestation, and various other terms - all of which ultimately involve logging.

But a new word and a new concept - Proforestation - is gaining traction and deserves our support. Learn about it in this presentation from a proforestation pro! Bill Moomaw is part of a team who is working to change the narrative about forests and their capacity to sequester and store carbon, produce high quality water, provide diverse habitats that serve a full range of species from mushrooms to spring salamanders, and retain drought and flood resilience in a rapidly changing climate.

William Moomaw is Emeritus Professor of International Environmental Policy, Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, Fletcher, Tufts University. He was a lead author of five Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. He currently serves as co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts, which he co-founded, and he is also a Visiting Scientist at Woodwell Climate Center. He received his B.A. degree in chemistry from Williams College and Ph.D. in physical chemistry from MIT.

Standing Trees Vermont: Public Screening of Burned - Q&A with the Filmmakers 01/28/2021

Renewable energy is a key to addressing climate change, but there is a dirty secret hiding in plain sight! The acclaimed documentary “BURNED – Are Trees the New Coal?” explains how logging forests and burning trees is supported and subsidized as “clean,” “carbon neutral” and “renewable” even as it is leading to deforestation, polluting our air and making climate change worse!

Standing Trees Vermont, a new coalition working to protect, preserve and restore forests on our state and federal lands, presents this online event with the support of our many allies in the region. Coalition members as well as filmmakers Lisa Merton and Chris Hardee respond to questions in this portion of the event.

About the film “BURNED - Are Trees the New Coal?”: Through interviews with activists, experts, and citizens, along with verité-style footage shot across the U.S. and in Europe, BURNED interweaves the science of climate change, energy-policy disputes, the biomass industry practices, forest ecology, the conflict over jobs, and the actions of activists and citizens who are working to protect their health and that of their communities, the forest, and our climate.

Greater Burlington Women's Forum: Water - Our Vital Resource 10/17/2019

Water is one of our most basic needs. The greater Burlington community is fortunate to have the water of Lake Champlain at our doorstep. We drink it, play in it, irrigate with it, move people and things in it. Our shared use and history help bring our community together. But recently, water quality issues have been an increasingly big challenge. How has this impacted our community's health, well-being, and culture? Can we manage this incredible resource, balancing the many different needs of residents, farmers, businesses, and tourists, and still preserve our water quality?

A panel of scientists, policy experts, and advocates share ways that we as a community can support our waterways for generations to come.

Panelists: Ashley Eaton, Watershed and Lake Education Coordinator, University of Vermont; Lori Fisher, Executive Director, Lake Champlain Committee; Megan Moir, Public Works Division Director of Water Resources, City of Burlington

Moderator: Olivia Pena, Greater Burlington Women's Forum Leadership Team

Nuclear Free Future: Voices From Hibakusha Atomic Bomb Victims: Why We Say With Them “Never Again” 09/06/2018

Dr. John Reuwer, with Physicians for Social Responsibility and a leader in the anti-nuclear peace movement, talks about an exciting opportunity for Vermonters to meet two of the few remaining hibukusha, the Japanese word for the survivors of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan in August of 1945. They'll visit our state from September 18-21 for a series of educational programs.

In this Nuclear Free Future conversation, Reuwer talks about why learning from these special people is so important to our survival, especially as the world faces a fork in the road leading to either a new nuclear arms race or an adoption of the Treaty to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.

Nuclear Free Future: Gender Matters in the Atomic Era 07/30/2018

Mary Olson, Director of the Southeast Office of the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, talks about the greater danger faced by women and girls exposed to ionizing nuclear radiation. This includes trans-generational DNA damage. An expert in highly radioactive spent fuel policy, she discusses the dangers of transporting nuclear waste from nuclear power reactors and nuclear weapons facilities.

Mary Olson’s research and activism is a driving force for the Treaty to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. This Nuclear Free Future conversation takes heed of this topic 73 years after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9, 1945.

Nuclear Free Future: Mobile Chernobyls, Revving Their Engines?! 06/25/2018

Kevin Kamps, Radioactive Waste Watchdog with Beyond Nuclear, talks with host Margaret Harrington on Nuclear Free Future. They discuss the dire consequences of shipping Entergy Vermont Yankee nuclear waste to a proposed federal facility at Yucca Mountain, Nevada, and “interim” parking lot dumps.

Representative Peter Welch has signed HR 3053 - The Nuclear Waste Amendments Act of 2018 which provides for transporting nuclear waste from all around the United States to a federal facility by road, rail, and waterways through vulnerable communities.

They discuss U.S. Senate companion legislation and the U.S. NRC licensing proceedings regarding centralized interim storage facilities for irradiated nuclear fuel targeted at the Texas/New Mexico borderlands, which are a blatant environmental justice violation. (Large Hispanic communities are already heavily polluted by fossil fuel and nuclear activities.)

Nuclear Free Future: Picking Up the Pieces from Atoms for Peace 05/10/2018

Nuclear Free Future host Margaret Harrington talks with Maggie Gundersen, President of Fairewinds Energy Education, and Arnie Gundersen, Chief Engineer of Fairewinds, about decommissioning nuclear power plants, “just transitions” for communities losing their nukes, costs, and long-term radiation after site clean up. They discuss “Interim Waste” storage in Texas and New Mexico, transportation problems, the cleanup of bomb factories and mining sites on native land, and the reality that the cost of nukes is astronomical.

For more information, please visit: www.fairewinds.org

Featured Story

CCTV Receives NEH Grant to Support Community Archives

CCTV Center for Media & Democracy is pleased to announce receipt of a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources grant alongside 32 peer archival institutions across the country. This $49,927 grant award will support efforts to preserve and expand access to audio/visual community history materials in the CCTV Archives. Read more about this opportunity here!