Bright Ideas and other climate solutions. Fight climate change in your home, your backyard, and throughout the state and nation. #WEN #ClimateJustice

Beneficial Electrification for Portland
Beneficial Electrification for Portland With One Climate Future, Portland and South Portland have a plan to ad...

Planting Trees and Carbon Fees
We’re All in This TogetherClimate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard Planting Trees and Carbon Fees By Erica Bartl...

Toxic Fumes II: Living in a Sacrifice Zone
CLIMATE JUSTICE FEATURE Toxic Fumes Part 2Living in a Sacrifice Zone By Espahbad Dodd This is the second insta...

More Efficient Transit – Bright Ideas No. 19
“The use and sustainability of transportation cannot be separated from how and where people live, work, and pl...

Carbon Cash Back 4 ME – Coming together for change
By Tom Berry Those who have been following climate change and the efforts to come to grips with it will be fam...

Maine’s Outsized Role in Climate Policy
We’re All in This TogetherClimate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard Maine’s Outsized Role in Climate Policy By Pe...

The Terms We Use To Build One Climate Future
With properly designed cities we can greatly lower our impact on the planet while living healthy, meaningful l...

Do you know of a tree that should be on the Big Trees List?
Urban BIG Trees By Tony Zeli Did you know? Arborists and tree enthusiasts have been working for the last 80 ye...

Toxic Fumes in the West End
CLIMATE JUSTICE FEATURE Toxic Fumes in the West End By Espahbad Dodd The air smells like petroleum or burning...

Six Big Moves in the Next 30 Years – Bright Ideas No. 17
The cities of Portland and South Portland have finally released the long awaited One Climate Future plan, as y...

Carbon Cash-back Policies: Something We Can All Agree On
We’re All in This TogetherClimate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard Submitted by the Volunteers of Portland Citiz...

Responding to the Global Climate Crisis: From Denial to Leadership
By David Vail David Vail is Professor of economics emeritus, Bowdoin College, and a member of the Economics Po...

Vote early to be sure it’s counted – Bright Ideas No. 16
We’re out of presidential terms to waste. -Bill McKibben, 350.org That’s 350 founder Bill McKibben rumin...

Urban Trees: Wanting to know their true economic value
By Tony Zeli If you ask any given city manager, what is the value of our city’s urban trees, the answer...

Climate Change is a Strategic Business Issue! -By Bob McKillop
By Bob McKillop Bob McKillop is a CCL volunteer living in Portland, Maine. Any business planning to operate ov...

Pandemics and Climate Change are Connected – Bright Ideas No. 15
Absolutely, pandemics and climate change are connected! And the evidence is strong. As the planet heats up, an...

Racial Justice is Climate Justice – Bright Ideas No. 14
RACIAL JUSTICE IS CLIMATE JUSTICE Few people see the connection between climate justice and racial justice, bu...

Lobbying (Virtually) for Carbon Reduction by Don Parent
We’re All in This TogetherClimate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard Lobbying (Virtually) for Carbon Reduction By...

Frontlines of the Climate Crisis by Susana Hancock
We’re All in this Together Climate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard Frontlines of the Climate Crisis By Su...

Protect Portland’s Trees – Bright Ideas No. 13
Protect Portland’s Trees NOTE: The West End recently experienced three significant multiple mature tree cuttin...

CRISIS LESSONS
We’re All in This TogetherClimate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard CRISIS LESSONS By Peter Dugas As the world gr...

Stand Up for a New Normal – Bright Ideas No. 12
A NEW NORMAL With attention focused on Covid-19, health threats posed by climate change remain unchanged and e...

Why not try gardening – Bright Ideas No. 11
With COVID19 increasingly threatening industrial food supply chains, we need to consider other options for fee...

Your own climate solution simulator
We’re All in This TogetherClimate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard YOUR OWN CLIMATE SOLUTION SIMULATOR By Tamara...

Citizens’ Climate Lobby – Kristen Caldwell’s Story from The Hill
We’re All in This Together: Climate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard By Kristen Caldwell I was part of a d...

The Green New Deal – Bright Ideas No. 10
As the climate emergency intensifies, inaction costs us tens of billions of dollars annually. And current emis...

DEALING WITH CLIMATE ANGST AND ANGER – Bright Ideas No. 9
DEALING WITH CLIMATE ANGST AND ANGER The Doomsday clock just advanced to 100 seconds before midnight – the clo...

Young Climate Activists Urge Citizens to be ‘Climate Voters’
By Tony Zeli Youth from all across Maine gathered at polling stations on Super Tuesday, March 3rd, to remind v...

Sharing Stories and Finding Common Ground
My name is Riley Stevenson and I am a junior at Lincoln Academy. Throughout the past year, I have become incre...

Green New Deal – Bright Ideas No. 8
The road we have long been traveling is deceptively easy, a smooth super-highway on which we progress with gre...

Climate Change Issues Transcend Borders
By Adolphe Wakana A native of Burundi in Central Africa, I moved to Portland three years ago. Like many others...

Making Maine Clean
Letter to the Editor MAKING MAINE CLEAN There are thousands of facts and statistics proving the urgency and gr...

The Weymouth Compressor Should Be Of Regional Concern
As someone who has been very involved in the campaign to close the coal-fired generating plant in Bow, New Ham...

Climate Emergency – Bright Ideas No. 7
CLIMATE EMERGENCY! Perhaps the brightest idea of late is the city’s decision to declare a Climate Emergency an...

Climate, First Nations, and the CMP Corridor
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hold public hearing on CMP corridor During a December 5th packed public hearing,...

Ruth Goes to Washington
We’re All In This Together Climate Solutions Beyond your Backyard By Ruth Metcalfe ...

Zero-Waste Gift Wrapping – Bright Ideas No. 6
It’s December! Time to discuss sensible, climate-friendly gifts and gift wrappings. With gifts, some fac...

Support Climate Youth
We’re All In This Together Climate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard By Ed Pontius Do you wince when y...

Transportation & Land Use -Bright Ideas No. 5
November’s topic is Transportation and Land Use. This is the final component of the One Climate Future plannin...

The Bow 69
69 Arrests in Bow, N.H. By Kelly Merrill Sixty-nine people were arrested and hundreds gathered to protest Merr...

Buildings and Energy Use – Bright Ideas No.4
BUILDINGS AND ENERGY USE Over the past months, we’ve considered two components of the two-city climate action...

Carbon Fee & Dividend
We’re All in This TogetherClimate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard As the worldwi...

Volunteer to build Window Dressers insulating window inserts
West End Neighborhood Association (WENA) and Portland Climate Action Team (PCAT) are sponsoring a workshop at...

Live more softly on the planet – Bright Ideas No. 3
Waste Reduction The second component of the Portland/South Portland One Climate Future project is Waste Reduct...

Climate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard
We’re All in this Togehter Climate Solutions Beyond Your Backyard Welcome to the inaugural installment o...

Build Neighborhood Resilience – Bright Ideas No. 2
A vital question: “What do we do about climate change?” Equally important: “How should we be in this climate c...

Join One Climate Future – Bright Ideas No. 1
If there was ever a time for bright ideas, it’s now. And, fortunately, we have one. It’s the timely...

Local Students Lobby for Climate Fee & Dividend
In November, nine Maine high school students traveled with twelve other Maine volunteers to join 601 volunteer...

Two West Enders Go to DC to Lobby for Carbon Fee and Dividend
Two West Enders Lobby in DC on Climate Allen Armstrong of Spruce Street and Peter Monro of May Street traveled...

Wild Seed Project Kelly Corbin Talks Genetic Diversity
Why care about genetic diversity of Plants? PelotonPosts is a monthly interview with a member of PelotonLabs,...



















































Why care about genetic diversity of Plants? PelotonPosts is a monthly interview with a member of PelotonLabs, a co-working community in Portland’s West End. This month, Peloton’s founder Liz... Read more
Thousands in Portland Take Part in Global Climate Strike
by Adam Marletta Nearly 2,000 protesters converged on City Hall on Sept. 20 to demand action to combat climate...