FAQ

Here are some fast and simple actions you can take to help shape Boston’s climate future!

Get connected:  Sign up for Greenovate’s newsletter for up-to-date information, programs, and even financial incentives that help Bostonians address climate change.

Join the conversation: Greenovate’s discussion boards and Facebook page invite you to share your ideas for making Boston greener. Great climate conversations are happening on other Facebook pages too, including Climate Nexus, I Heart Climate Scientists, and Earth-The Operators’ Manual.

Take a step: Many sites such as Greenovate and Earth-The Operators’ Manual suggest personal actions for reducing your contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. On this site, look under “How else can I take action?” for our suggestions.

Get involved: Give your time to state and city programs that rely on volunteers to help make Boston more sustainable.

Reducing our energy use is the best way to reduce our contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and minimize the impacts of climate change. We can all be climate leaders by choosing our purchases, activities, and elected officials carefully! To start, Greenovate Boston has a comprehensive array of resources for climate-friendly (and budget-friendly) living.

The following resources show actions we can take in our homes, our transportation, and our communities.

Homes

• In summer, use air conditioning sparingly.
• In winter, keep heat low and dress warmly to stay comfortable while saving fuel.
• Make sure your home and water heater are well insulated.
• Use energy-efficient appliances. The Mass. Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs makes it easy to assess and improve your home energy efficiency.
• Turn off electrical devices when not in use.
• Conserve water.
• Reduce consumption of meat and dairy (these industries are big greenhouse gas producers).
• Buy food with less packaging to reduce trash.
• Buy food that’s locally grown and/or in season.
• Avoid buying bottled water.
• Compost. If you can’t compost at home, you can drop off your food scraps at some farmers markets or subscribe to Bootstrap Compost to pick up your food scraps and compost them for you!
• Recycle.
• Add solar panels, wind turbines, or other renewable energy devices to your property if possible. Massachusetts Clean Energy Center offers many clean energy programs and incentives.

Transportation

• Walk, bike, or take public transportation instead of driving.
• If driving, carpool.
• Avoid air travel due to its high greenhouse gas emissions per passenger.
• Hubway Bike Share is helping bike commuting flourish in Boston.

Communities

• Renew Boston is a city-wide initiative to help Bostonians save energy and money.
• Contact your elected officials by writing or calling their offices.
• Be informed about the candidates’ views on climate, fossil fuels, and renewable energy when voting.
• Consider participating in grassroots groups in your area, such as the local nodes of 350 Massachusetts. 
• Help your community build green roofs! Find information at Tufts Green Roof Collaborative, Recover Green Roofs, and the Mass. Department of Environmental Protection.
• Looking for funding to start a community project? Start with the Green Communities division of the Mass. Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs.

When scientists discuss climate and human activity, they are usually referring to what happens when people burn fossil fuels for transportation, electricity, and industrial uses. They provide the energy that we use to warm our houses, turn on light bulbs, make cars go, etc. It takes millions of years for the carbon from ancient organisms to become fossil fuels, but burning them gives off carbon dioxide, water, and other by-products and greenhouse gases in seconds.

What is the evidence that humans affect the climate?

Scientists agree about human-caused climate change because it is the best way to make sense of the evidence and observations made over the last century. Thousands of independent scientists have considered other explanations such as solar output or volcanic eruptions for the increase in global temperatures, but these theories do not account for all the evidence collected.

Scientists have additionally observed changes in the past century—such as higher amounts of CO2 in the air, rising sea levels, quickly melting glaciers, and higher average surface temperatures on Earth.

Indeed, the Earth goes through natural cycles. Ocean currents, such as El Niño or La Niña, volcanic eruptions and changes in radiation from the sun can affect the Earth’s weather patterns for a given amount of time, generally within the span of a few years. But the sustained, nearly century-long patterns of higher carbon dioxide count in the atmosphere, surface temperature, sea levels, and glacier melt have pointed to something tied inextricably to our burning of fossil fuels over the last 150 years.

• NASA Information on Climate
• Recent Climate Research and News
• EPA Information on Climate
• Massachusetts Climate Adaptation Report
• The Carbon Cycle (Desktop Friendly)
• The Carbon Cycle (Mobile Friendly)
• Climate Glossary
• Climate Change Statistics: Climate Versus Weather
• Ocean Acidification
• Climate Change: Evidence, Impacts, and Choices
• Urban Heat Island
• Sea Level Rise and Boston
• National Climate Assessment 
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

Climate scientists can have a wide range of specialties in fields such as earth sciences, chemistry, biology, physics, or computer science. Their studies are not limited to the small scale of weather, which describes local conditions over the short time span of a few days. Climate scientists think big, studying complex systems over long time spans of at least 30 years, and in some cases hundreds or thousands of years.

Climate science is challenging to study because it is measured all over the globe, over long periods of time, and is affected by many factors. Scientists investigate aspects of oceanography, geology, paleontology, and chemistry. For example, they might look at the rings of trees or ancient ice cores to find clues about our past climate. They also study human-recorded weather data over long periods of time. Analyzing these clues, scientists can create models to make mathematical predictions about what may happen in the future.

Many different factors cause climate to shift. Changes in ocean circulation, life on Earth, gases in the atmosphere, changes in the sun’s radiation, and geological activity such as volcanic eruptions and plate tectonic movement can all affect the climate. Some of these changes occur naturally and happen over hundreds, thousands, or millions of years, while others are caused by human activity and occur over centuries or decades.

Human beings began using fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases a few centuries ago, and scientists were able to make the first climate change predictions all the way back in the 19th century. However, it has been in the last 50 years that carbon dioxide in our atmosphere has risen most severely. Like the glass in a greenhouse, carbon dioxide (along with water vapor, methane, and nitrous oxide) allows light from the Sun to reach Earth while preventing the Earth’s heat from radiating back out into space. Without these greenhouse gases, our planet would be cold and unlivable. While changes in atmospheric gases occur naturally over long periods of time, scientists are concerned that the recent increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere could have unpredictable effects.

Climate change is a global problem, but different places will experience different outcomes of climate change. While sea level rise, changes in precipitation, and warmer seasons are in Boston’s future, much of the American southwest, for instance, will experience more problems with drought and water scarcity.