Today, youth leaders from across the Commonwealth and the globe will participate in a Climate Strike. They will travel to major cities (and the solidarity rally in Northampton) with people of all ages supporting their work. They will make demands of their government that will require bold action to address a climate emergency, and they are right to make these demands.
According to the International Panel on Climate Change’s report, we have a finite and ever-shrinking period of time to mitigate the effects of climate change. Half-measures, the standard currency of government, will not suffice. Our youth, and many who are youthful at heart if not in body, understand this, and their courage to stand up to the status quo and entrenched beliefs about the limitations of policy-making are inspiring.
In all of this, it is exceptionally important that we do not tokenize those voices. All too often, we are happy to bring young people up on stage to speak, but we then leave them out when it is time to make decisions. This is a grave mistake, because it is only through broad-based public outrage that any change occurs: that means intergenerational organizing is a necessity. We need wisdom from those who have long been involved in climate activism, but we also need fresh voices to push us to demand more, to do better, and to not settle for what those who have long held political, economic and societal power tell us is feasible.
That often means bursting open the doors of government to figure out how decisions are made and by whom. It means asking very difficult questions of decision-makers about who is included in the process and how they are working to involve all of the necessary voices.
For example, the Department of Energy Resources is reviewing the SMART incentive program, which promotes solar development in Massachusetts. That review includes conducting five presentations across the state to explain how solar regulations will be adjusted over the next few months. At first blush, that may seem like something that is of limited interest to anyone but solar experts, until we consider that the future of our planet is contingent upon our ability to transition to renewable energy as quickly as possible. That means that we are all stakeholders and all of our voices need to be involved in that process.
Sadly, with only five hearings, none of which were scheduled after work hours, and no annotated version to explain what the regulations mean for the layperson, these meetings are less about public involvement and more about checking off an item on a to-do list.
The transition to renewables will require Massachusetts to install much more solar than we currently have, as well as make investments in battery storage and grid modernization. It is essential that we balance that with the preservation of our natural resources by demanding properly sited solar.
The regulations try to do this by adding and subtracting incentives. A project that is built on a greenfield, or undeveloped land, gets a subtractor, while a project that is built on developed property gets an adder, or an additional incentive. The problem is that the disincentives to build on undeveloped land are not enough to discourage that development, and the incentives to build solar in parking lots and on large department stores, for example, are insufficient. That, coupled with the fact that mid-size and very large projects are placed in the same category, making it more profitable to develop a large project, makes it no surprise that large companies from out of state and even overseas have swept into Massachusetts to try to build large solar projects in greenfields.
This has had a devastating effect on our local solar companies, many of whom focus on smaller or mid-range projects, because the SMART program’s capacity for incentives is quickly taken up by the larger projects. In fact, the solar industry in Massachusetts has shed thousands of jobs in the last few years because of this. The updated regulations attempt to address this, but fall shy of making any significant change to the status quo.
This is where boldness matters. The public should be aware of this (and people should submit a public comment to DOER.SMART@mass.gov). The people should have a say in what happens in their communities. To be clear, asking for properly sited solar is not anti-solar. The message is yes to solar AND yes to protecting our natural resources, especially with research out of ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, showing that reforestation is the No. 1 way we can mitigate climate change.
I hope many of you will join our youth today, wherever and however you can. We live in times that require boldness and full civic engagement. I hope you are inspired by the boldness of our youth and take action to join with them, on equal footing, in this monumentally important fight to mitigate the effects of climate change and transition to renewable energy. Inaction is not an option.
Democratic state Rep. Lindsay Sabadosa represents Northampton.