Don’t forget: small towns can play an outsized role in tackling the climate crisis
Public attention focuses on nations and treaties for action on climate change, or private-sector innovation. Action in these sectors is critical, but small towns are frequently overlooked as a places where meaningful change can happen. The author spent a year serving as chair of a Connecticut town’s sustainability task force and reflects on the options for action available to people who want to make a difference.
The Climate Crisis is often described as a “wicked” problem; the result of a thorny tangle of self-reinforcing policy, technological, social, and economic forces. The system is complex, but one thing is clear: to avoid runaway ecosystem collapse, we need to curtail and reverse greenhouse gas emissions to keep the world below 1.5 degrees of warming from pre-industrial levels. As I write this, we learn that 2023 was the warmest year on record. The time to change our processes is now.
In this effort, much of the global attention goes to big movers and shakers: states, and multinational companies. We examine the agreements from the latest COP, champion the passage of critical climate legislation, and pour over the claims of companies who claim to have solved the challenge of renewable energy storage or carbon capture.
I say “global attention”, but global crises impact individuals as well as groups. Like others, I have grown more and more concerned about the warming of the planet. A glance at headlines shows stories of mass migration, of water scarcity, of topsoils eroding. Even in relatively sheltered New England, my town saw the damage of more intense rainfall which wiped out riverside crops. I often feel like an animal trapped in a pot slowly coming to a boil. I've looked at headlines and asked myself, should I become a lobbyist advocating Congress? Should I work at a climate tech company?
Actions at these levels are valuable, necessary, and ultimately, not sufficient.
The movement to resolve the climate crisis can't be confined to state and national legislatures, or to design rooms with people inventing new technologies. And, to be clear, action can't just happen at the individual level. While “going solar”, installing heat pumps, and reducing one's meat consumption are critical, no set of individual actions can resolve a systemic crisis. Individual actions need to be combined at scale to shift the needle. To make a meaningful difference people need to work at a group level, large enough to collect impacts into a sizeable force.
I found one such group in what was, for me, an unexpected quarter – my own town.
Town governments are the largest “small” thing. In the scale of impact, they sit between individual and mass action; they are small enough that individuals and coordinated groups can have an impact, and large enough to make decisions that impact tens of thousands of people. Towns can pass policies, they can educate residents, and they can implement national or state climate programs.
My town of Rocky Hill is a town in Connecticut halfway between Hartford and New Haven. Historically a small farming community, today RH has a population of around 21,000 dedicated to various service sectors.
As chair for Rocky Hill's sustainability task force in 2023, I had a front-row seat to seeing residents, elected officials, and staff tackle issues relevant to the climate crisis. During that time, I saw our task force, town staff, and elected officials take action that directly benefited residents while also measurably impacting emissions.
I want to share my experience as a volunteer seeking climate impact, with a few examples of where I think our town government and residents made a difference. My term lasted a year. That time convinced me municipal action can be a viable channel for climate impact, as long as certain rules are met.
Emissions as a co-benefit to good policy
Perhaps the most important condition to bringing towns to bear on the climate crisis might be counterintuitive given all I've said so far. The rule of thumb is this: no action taken at the municipal level can be taken solely for climate reasons.
The government and staff of a town serve for a single reason – to benefit the residents of the town. This means that no action can be justified if it doesn't translate to a direct public benefit, even if it has a benefit to the global environment. Towns can't simply build solar arrays because they will reduce emissions; energy plans usually justify the expense in terms of long-term cost savings for running municipal buildings, which benefits the town budget. Individuals in town government, of course, can value action on climate change, but if they are doing their jobs, people in government must consider policies and programs based on how they benefit members of the community.
Fortunately, climate actions frequently do provide a direct benefit to the public. Clean technologies and insulated houses reduce energy bills; electric vehicles (both personal and public) improve air quality; local regenerative agricultural practices provide residents with fresher, more nutritious produce.
Even if we confine the list of benefits to emissions reductions, the list of potential benefits to residents is extensive. Take, for example, Greenhouse gas emissions stem from the transportation sector, residential building, energy consumption, and, to a smaller extent, the commercial, industrial, agricultural, and waste sectors. Actions in each of these categories can be taken that improve the lives of residents and reduce emissions. This is why the leaders of many towns, including Rocky Hill, adopt a climate or sustainability framework; first and foremost, because their residents benefit from policies and programs that reduce the negative impact of humans on the planet.
In a Clean Energy Forum the task force organized in November 2023, one of our Council members, Jeff Levine, said:
“It used to be maybe five to seven years ago, solar and similar projects were solely done for the goal of sustainability. The paradigm has shifted such that solar energy solutions can actually be cheaper and better than historical mainstream alternatives. There are now more reasons than just environmental for doing such projects. Cost savings is now a pertinent metric as well as a lesser reliance on foreign energy sources.”
Over the past year, Rocky Hill considered or took action on a variety of issues, from resolutions on pollinators to Complete Streets policies. Sustainability is a long-term challenge and nobody would claim that the town is “finished” in its sustainability effort, but the town has taken actions that will improve the lives of residents and, possibly, reduce emissions.
Transportation
Rocky Hill's public infrastructure has had to serve a changing community. For much of its history, the town's population hovered around 5,000 residents. In the past several decades that number has quadrupled, and the needs of residents to travel and get around has also evolved.
In June of 2023, Rocky Hill passed a resolution to adopt the Complete Streets framework. “Complete Streets” recognizes that “roads are for all users”, regardless of whether they drive a car, are a pedestrian, a person with a disability, a cyclist, or using public transit. Complete Streets comes with a commitment to engage with the public on new plans and designs, and, necessarily, to build infrastructure with the recognition that many users of the roads won't be driving cars.
Rocky Hill has released plans to extend sidewalk and biking infrastructure, including requiring new construction facilities to provide bike racks. Rocky Hill residents have also worked to promote a culture of biking, by educating community members on the benefits of biking and routes around the town.
Residents benefit directly from having Complete Streets. Complete Streets are safer; residents who have a sidewalk or a physically separated bike lane run less of a risk of being hit by a vehicle. Residents benefit from accessibility, too. After all, not everyone owns (or can afford) a car, and many cannot drive because of because of age or disability. Complete streets contribute to healthier communities. The fewer combustion vehicles on the road, the more air quality improves, which reduces the risk of asthma and other respiratory illnesses. Streets where people walk and bike are more economically productive..
All these benefits are reason enough to adopt Complete Streets and to encourage multiple forms of transportation within town. And, yes, having Complete Streets helps the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. A typical car produces 4.6 metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, and while only a portion of those miles are the result of local travel, every mile not driven helps.
Other transportation opportunities unrelated to Complete Streets abound, including updating municipal vehicle fleets with electric alternatives and making easier and quicker access to public transportation. To the extent towns are in a position to upgrade and transition, those changes come with emissions benefits.
Food Scraps
While landfills make up a relatively small portion of greenhouse gas emissions, every percentage point is critical to getting to net zero. And while waste management isn't as flashy as an electric vehicle or solar power, the way we deal with our leftover foods can produce the most tangible benefits for town residents!
By some estimates, 30-40% of food in the U.S. ends up in our garbage system, where it is either destined for a landfill or an incinerator. Burning it produces emissions, but putting it into the ground with other garbage is hardly better; hauling wet and heavy food to an out-of-state landfill produces emissions in the transportation and methane at the destination. Considering the missed opportunity to generate compost and revitalize gardens and lawns, Rocky Hill saw several benefits to toward programs to reduce food waste in our waste streams.
Rocky Hill has taken several steps to reduce food in the waste stream. We have a food pantry for accepting food donations and surplus foods. The food pantry also hosts a compost bin and community garden, the products support the growing of fresh food for the community. The garden has been the site of Pumpkin Smash events where residents come with old jack-o-lanterns, smash them with mallets, and learn about a multi-bin composting system. If residents have the space to do it in their homes, composting onsite removes the burdens from towns entirely, and gives residents direct access to the material that will enrich the soil of their gardens and lawns.
Not everyone can compost at home – in Rocky Hill, a significant portion of our residents live in condominium complexes, or composting is a physical challenge. The town crowdfunded a composting pilot with Blue Earth Composting, raising money from residents and a matching grant from SustainableCT. 53 homes will have a composting service for six months, over which time we predict we will divert 12,000 pounds of waste. That's a fraction of the overall waste the town hauls, but Rocky Hill is also pursuing a much larger pilot that could cover the entire municipality.
The goal of all this is to build up a culture of composting. No food product should end up in an incinerator or landfill – towns can promote healthy soils and reduce costs by encouraging residents to compost, either on their own, with a neighborhood bin, or through a service.
Residents benefit from composting by having material to amend their soil, and towns benefit if done correctly, by paying less to haul food to incinerators and landfills. But everyone benefits from the reduction of emissions. We estimate our tiny pilot project will prevent the equivalent of 25,000 pounds of carbon. If we scaled that up to the roughly 5,000 homes in Rocky Hill, those are some serious emissions avoided. Towns can prevent emissions in myriad ways:
Towns can prevent emissions in myriad ways:
Residences
By overhauling buildings and improving their insulation and weatherization, towns can help residents prevent heat loss and the costs associated with regulating temperature. Educating residents about heat pumps and connecting residents to low-interest loans to switch from oil-based heat systems. By improving the insulation of residents, we can reduce emissions while lowering the cost of living.
One note on affordable housing: if the town builds affordable housing, it can adopt the highest standards of energy efficiency and energy generation.
Energy
In Connecticut, methane makes up 55% of our source of energy. By promoting programs for adopting clean energy with residents, and adopting renewable infrastructure on municipal buildings, PACE expects Rocky Hill could save 26% on overall energy costs.
As I write this article, my town agreed to pursue an energy conservation project, replacing town lights with LED equipment and upgrading old mechanicals to include heat pumps and electric boilers. Our old equipment was constantly showing up in our budget anyway – with this investment, the town will be saving money and reducing expenditures on energy. It's estimated that the project will divert the consumption of 137,000 kilowatts – equivalent to burning 257,000 pounds of coal!
The list goes on.
In my time as chair of the sustainability task force, I came away with a few lessons learned. As the above article demonstrates, advocating for programs based on savings to the town and other externalities usually held the most sway for staff and elected officials – the benefits to the climate and our emissions rarely came up as a reason we should adopt a specific policy (perhaps that will change as the climate crisis deepens). It was also tremendously useful to present to staff case studies from other towns who have done the work and have reflections and tips for success. I constantly heard people in town government referencing the successes (or failures) of nearby or similar towns when justifying or planning a project.
My advice to people wanting to impact the climate crisis: don’t stop contacting your representatives in the legislature or starting that climate company, but consider volunteering in sustainability initiatives for your town.