Energy Fund Raids Have Stopped, But Industry Says The Damage Has Been Done

by Christine Stuart, CT News Junkie, July 30, 2019

The General Assembly adjourned this year without restoring $67.5 million to clean energy funds that had been swept as part of the budget in 2017.

The $67.5 million was part of a larger $145 million in energy fund sweeps the General Assembly approved under former Gov. Dannel P. Malloy to close a budget deficit.

Environmentalists and energy-efficiency businesses pointed out that the legislature and Gov. Ned Lamont could have used the budget surplus to restore some of the funds, but they decided against it and failed to restore them before the session adjourned June 5.

Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin said Monday that he doesn’t know how to measure how much more progress his city could have made in improving its rankings on a clean energy scorecard if those funds had been available.

For more on this story, visit: Energy Fund Raids Have Stopped, But Industry Says The Damage Has Been Done | CT News Junkie

 

PAR News

PAR PARty Was Great! On July 27, PAR held a party for our subscribers and readers and we had a wonderful time! It is all too rare that activists and organizers have the luxury to socialize with each other and hang out without an agenda and list of demands! Many thanks to all who brought delicious food and to our musicians Francis Braunlich, Frank Panzarella and Chris Zurcher. We are grateful to our readers and article-writers, and hope to have more gatherings

Interfaith Volunteer Care Givers Opens Mae’s Closet

from IVCG Summer 2019 Newsletter

The culmination of several years of hard work and planning occurred on June 1 when Mae’s Closet, the durable medical equipment lending bank, officially opened its doors. The closet is located at the U-Haul facility at 1685 Dixwell Avenue in Hamden. Contact them by calling (475) 414-8333 from 9 a.m. to noon during the week or by emailing [email protected]. You can request equipment at our website, www.carenewhaven.org. All lending and donation is by appointment.

Mae’s Closet acknowledges the generous contributions of the Hamden Rotary Club and the Town of Hamden in help-ing get the “seed money” needed for the closet to open. Mae’s Closet accepts donations and lends out “hard” durable medical equipment including mobility devices such as walkers, canes and wheelchairs, bathroom equipment such as shower chairs, and miscellaneous assistive or safety devices like grabbers and bed rails. At this time, we are neither accepting nor lending “soft” equipment such as pads, shoes, braces or diapers. (Please call Charlie’s Closet in Guilford at (203) 453-8359 if you want to acquire or donate these items.) We are asking for a donation of $1 per item or more, if you wish.

While U-Haul has worked with us to help us obtain the maximum space at the minimum price, we are actively seeking a community space that might be willing to permit us to run the closet for no charge. We have insurance and would be a good neighbor! Call us at the above number if you have any ideas or leads, and thanks so much!

Interfaith Volunteer Care Givers of Greater New Haven (IVCG) matches volunteers with elders in their towns, to help them age at home with dignity, support, and friends. www.carenewhaven.org.

Anti-Nuclear Vigils Commemorate Hiroshima and Nagasaki

A few days ago President Trumpy abrogated the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces (INF) agreement with Russia. The amount of time European and Russian nuclear forces have to make a decision about launch on warning drops dramatically to a handful of minutes. The nuclear weapons industry is licking its lips at the expected contracts and profits to be made on rebuilding the US nuclear arsenal at a cost of nearly $2 trillion, all approved by Congress. Grave danger.

A year ago Trumpy shredded the multinational nuclear deal with Iran and has since turned the economic screws on that country in order to get it to surrender its sovereignty to the billionaires and oil giants, or suffer another US-initiated war of aggression in the Middle East. Grave danger.

In 2002, George W. Bush killed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty with Russia. The US has since installed first-strike nuclear missiles in Poland and Rumania and moved US/NATO forces up to the Russian border. Grave danger.

These treaties the US has so readily scrapped were designed to help safeguard us from nuclear war, nuclear annihilation.

If climate scorching is slowly suffocating us, a nuclear exchange will vaporize billions of us in an instant. Any survivors will likely either die of radiation poisoning or starve during a prolonged nuclear winter.

Our commemoration of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki this year is also a call for the US to stop the nuclear madness. The US is leading the world into catastrophe and those of us who understand this have to lead in the other direction.

Tuesday, 8:00 AM (church bells @ 8:15). New Haven Green.
Friday, 10:45 AM (church bells @ 11:00). Amistad Statue adjacent to New Haven City Hall, 165 Church St.

74th Commemoration Hiroshima Nagasaki 2019 flyer.

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PAR Planning Committee invites all subscribers to PAR Party 5 p.m. Saturday, July 27

The PAR newsletter Planning Committee is inviting all our subscribers to a PAR party on Saturday, July 27. It’s potluck (note: no alcohol) from 5-9 p.m. at the Friends meeting house, 225 East Grand Ave. in the Fair Haven section of New Haven.

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PAR Party 5-9 p.m. Saturday July 27 Friends Meeting House, Fair Haven

To PAR Subscribers:

The PAR newsletter Planning Committee is inviting all our subscribers to a PAR party on Saturday, July 27. It’s potluck (note: no alcohol) from 5-9 p.m. at the Friends meeting house, 225 East Grand Ave. in the Fair Haven section of New Haven.

We look forward especially to have our print subscribers meet our internet subscribers so we can share issues of concern, network, make new friends, have fun and socialize over dinner.

Feel free to invite others. Musicians are welcome to bring instruments to jam.

It would be helpful if you RSVP at [email protected].

Hope to see you there!

PAR does not charge for a digital subscription. Donations are always welcome to help us cover our costs.
PAR
P.O. Box 995
New Haven, CT 06504

[email protected]
par-newhaven.org

Environmental Wins at the CT State Legislature

This past legislative session saw two significant clean energy victories. The synopsis below is from information from the Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs. For more information about the legislation, and for regular notices from the Connecticut Roundtable on Climate and Jobs, please visit https://ctclimateandjobs.org.

Offshore Wind Energy Development – After months of effective advocacy, the Connecticut State Senate passed HB 7156, mandating solicitations of 2000 MW of offshore wind by 2030. The unanimous vote of 36 to 0 echoed the earlier overwhelmingly bipartisan 134 to 10 approval in the House.

Connecticut becomes the first state to mandate project labor agreements and prevailing wages for all offshore wind projects. The bill also includes some of the strongest environmental protections for marine life, ecosystems and commercial fishing.

Solar Energy – a good fix to the faulty net metering language enacted in 2018 was included in HB 5002 and will help put CT’s residential and commercial solar energy on track for continued growth. (HB 5002, which was originally the Green New Deal bill, was otherwise unremarkable.)

Building a coalition around a climate action 1-3 p.m. Sunday June 30

At a recent day of discussion for 350 CT, we decided to make an effort to build a wide-ranging coalition around a climate action on Sept. 20 in support of the global climate strike led by the millions of school strikers around the world.

There will be a meeting on June 30 from 1-3 pm at the Unitarian Society of Hartford (50 Bloomfield Avenue) to make a plan. I hope that some PAR subscribers can attend. Thank you!

Anger Over Coast Guard Academy’s Choice of John Bolton as Featured Speaker

Many CT organizations condemned the choice of John R. Bolton, Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, as the featured Coast Guard Academy, commencement speaker on May 22. Bolton is notorious for demanding military solutions to international disputes.  He ruined the Korea talks by advising the president to take an all-or-noth-ing approach.  He stoked interference in Venezuelan affairs and helped incite the attempted coup. In 2015 he wrote the infamous New York Times op-ed entitled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”  His militarism would plunge this coun-try into useless and unjust wars and would endanger the lives of millions of people in the world including U.S. soldiers and Coast Guard officers.

Among the groups that spoke out against Bolton’s appearance are the Greater New Haven Peace Council, Central CT Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), Promoting Enduring Peace, Middle East Crisis Committee, Tree of Life Education Fund (CT), We Refuse to Be Enemies (CT), ANSWER Coalition (CT), Unidad Latina en Acción (ULA), CT Peace and Solidarity Coalition and the War Resisters League.

Note To the Environmental Community | Ralph Nader, Consumer Advocate

[Reprinted from CounterPunch, May 6, 2019: www.counterpunch.org/2019/05/06/note-to-the-environmental-community]

In 2003, political strategist Frank Luntz wrote a confidential Republican Party memo on what he called “the environmental communications battle.” In that memo, Luntz advised Republicans to change the words they used to meet their ends. “The scientific debate is closing but not yet closed,” he wrote. “There is still a window of opportunity to challenge the science,” Luntz proposed using the phrase “climate change” instead of “global warming.” His reasoning: “[W]hile global warming has catastrophic communications attached to it, climate change sounds a more controllable and less emotional challenge.”

Like it or not, Frank Luntz had a point. When I was growing up in New England, “climate change” meant the changing of the seasons: spring, summer, autumn, and winter. Today, in the midst of increasingly alarming scientific studies and giant storms, the necessary response has been diminished by this widely-accepted softening of the words we use to describe the dangerous reality that stands before us. Language matters!

I recently reached out to two leading and widely respected ecologists, Paul Hawken and Bill McKibben, to get their input on the mainstream usage of the benign phrase “climate change.” McKibben now uses the far more potent phrase “climate chaos.” Hawken believes the proper term is “climate volatility.”

One thing is abundantly clear―it’s time to change the words to meet the peril! As Confucius said: “If language is not correct, then what is said is not what is meant; if what is said is not what is meant, then what must be done remains undone; if this remains undone, morals and art will deteriorate; if justice goes astray, the people will stand about in helpless confusion. Hence there must be no arbitrariness in what is said. This matters above everything.”

Would you join us in replacing the use of the all-together benign phrase “climate change” with variations of more grave language? Consider the following alternatives: climate crisis, climate catastrophe, climate disruption, climate upheaval, or even global warming. Whatever choice of words, we should stop using “climate change.”

Sincerely, Ralph Nader

Remembering Anne Frank: Film Showing of Redemption Blues June 12 @ NH Free Public Library

In commemoration of Anne Frank’s 90th birthday, please join us for a screening of “Redemption Blues,” directed by Peter Stastny  (2017; 84 min., English & German/English subtitles) Wednesday, June 12, 5:30 to 8 p.m., New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm Street.

A lifetime after the Shoah: Forgetting is not an option and memory only goes so far. When prayers are not enough, music can keep us going. It is not too late to mourn and not too soon to replenish.

“Redemption Blues” is a film about the thorny legacy of the Holocaust generation and the insights of some of its last survivors. The film begins where conventional Shoah narratives leave off and traces a path forward, through personal and emotional engagement towards hope.

Director and producer Peter Stastny was born in Vienna as the son of Orthodox Jewish refugees. After a career in psychiatry, he began working with film in the mid-1990s, looking for ways to move forward after the immense trauma endured by the Jewish population of Europe during the Second World War.

Discussion with Peter Stastny will follow the screening. Co-sponsors are: The International Association of New Haven and The City of New Haven Peace Commission. For more information, contact Seth, [email protected], or (203) 946-7450. New Haven Free Public Library, 133 Elm St.

New Book Documents How Ordinary American Communities Challenge the ‘One Percent’ and Win

Good Trouble: A Shoeleather History of Nonviolent Direct Action is a riveting chronicle of stories that prove time and again the actions of thoughtful, committed people can change their country and the world. It is a brisk, inspiring primer for veteran activists and newcomers alike.

Civil Rights struggles. Labor strikes. Immigrant organizing. Tenant occupations. LGBT campaigns. Each of the 40-plus examples in Good Trouble focuses on the power of organizing and mobilizing, relevant in any context, and serves as an “emergency tool kit” for nonviolent direct action.

“Good Trouble comes to us at a time when faith in our democracy is fading,” writes Rev. Damaris Whittaker, senior minister of Fort Washington Collegiate Church, New York.

“Change is the result of action, but those without hope do not act. Good Trouble is a tale of overcoming despair to beat the system,” says Jackie Allen-Doucot, lifelong member of the Catholic Worker Movement.

The book takes its title from a quote by John Lewis, member of Congress and legendary civil rights hero, who led a 2016 sit-in on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives: “Dr. King and Rosa Parks inspired me to get into trouble, good trouble,” Lewis said at the time.

Good Trouble author Steve Thornton is a retired union organizer who has spent forty-five years in Hartford CT on the front lines of student, labor, community, environmental, and anti-racist struggles. This is his third book, the first with Hard Ball Press, publisher of a wide range of working-class writings (hardballpress.org).

The Shoeleather History Project: Stories from Hartford’s grassroots: www.ShoeleatherHistoryProject.com.

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