The vision, policy, and legislative group works to plan for a greener future by researching and advocating for legislation and policies that slow climate change and build Cape Ann’s climate resilience.
Individual responsibility to the challenges of climate change is important, but not sufficient because climate change is a systemic global issue. The Vision, Policy and Legislation’s (VPL) work is geared towards advocating for actions within three focus areas: Vision, Policy, and Legislation.
Vision: The Vision group’s goal is to develop a vision of how Cape Ann communities might collaborate in planning for the challenges of climate change. In March, 2020, VPL members Dick Prouty, Greg Federspiel, and Valerie Nelson drafted a vision statement and set of guiding principles for the VPL action group, as found Here. A Harvard study of Cape Ann’s vulnerabilities to hurricanes and potential adaptation and resilience actions that VPL members helped launch are found Here.
Policy: The Policy group is collecting data for case studies in the areas of Net Zero Housing, Waste Treatment, and Managed Retreat.
Legislation: The Legislation group reviews local, state, and federal legislation and advocates for bills that support mitigation, adaptation, and resilience to manage the challenges of a changing climate. A very important part of this is accomplished by backing natural solutions that support biodiversity and a healthy ecology. A history of recent state and federal climate legislation can be found HERE .
How to communicate with legislators HERE .
2023-2024 session priority bills can be found HERE.
2025-2026 Bill Priorities: These will be posted here as soon as we complete our review of this new session’s bills.