Tag Archives: Connecticut

Slow Global Warming and Save Money – Make a Power Move in 2025

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Wild fire on Lamentation Mountain, Berlin Connecticut, summer 2024
Home solar panels installation. Photo by David Illig, Creative Commons License.

What does the clean energy transition have to do with you?

A lot more than you may think. We see “natural” disasters on the news more and more frequently. We know why it’s happening and many of us know the heartbreak of friends and relatives that have been impacted by extreme, sudden events. We all pay a heavy price for this accumulated damage.

The big picture:

  • Costs – “Burning fossil fuels cause[s] around $500 billion in losses every year– from property damage to government spending on recovery, construction-surge inflation, and power outages.”*
  • Solutions – Saving the planet is now more cost effective – “Every $1 invested in resilient infrastructure can yield $4 in benefits. Getting to net zero is a more than $12 trillion business.” *

The local picture:

These costs and solutions trickle down to each of us in our homes.

  • The costs impact our taxes, insurance premiums, and many goods and services.
  • The solutions can help us save money and time while doing what’s right for the planet. According to Energize CT, over 1,000 households in Middletown have participated in the Home Energy Solutions (HES) program (2001-Oct.2024), With over 20,000 households in Middletown and Portland, there is an enormous opportunity to use this program more fully.

While we can’t control what happens at a national level, each of us can make an impact by taking action in our lives for a healthier community.

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Middletown Common Council Adopts Declaration of Climate Emergency

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As you may have noticed, our national government has utterly failed to provide leadership in the face of the global climate crisis. Once we get through the Covid-19 pandemic — another area of failed leadership — we will still face this even more threatening, though slower moving, crisis. Regardless of what you hear on the evening news lately, climate change has not been put on pause. What are concerned, climate-conscious citizens to do? In addition to reducing our individual carbon footprints, we need to take political action at the local level. Continue reading →

Air Line Trail Update

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Portland’s Air Line Trail Steering Committee has worked with private property owners to define a route that would extend the trail going west from YMCA Camp Ingersoll to Route 17. The committee is in the process of requesting formal easements from these property owners.  This phase 2 segment will then require state or federal funding for final design work and construction. The proposed route (shown here) makes various turns that deviate from the original Air Line Trail right-of-way, due to sand and gravel excavations underway by Butler Construction. Completion of this segment will greatly advance the ultimate goal of connecting the Air Line Trail with Portland’s town center and the Arrigoni Bridge.

The Jonah Center will help inform the public if and when emails or other expressions of support will be helpful.

In the meantime, the Air Line Trail Committee in East Hampton is attempting to bring the State of Connecticut and Eversource to an agreement regarding the 1200 foot gap that currently prevents riders from using the trail continuously from Portland to East Hampton and beyond. Utility poles need to be relocated in this section so that a boardwalk can be constructed over running water.