With economies and ecosystems unraveling all around us, it's clear we need bold and decisive action IMMEDIATELY for a healthy, just, green future. Thankfully there is a grassroots movement bubbling up from below, pushing for transformative action.

The 2009 Massachusetts Relocalization Conference was an incredible day at the Reggie Lewis Center, with about 250 people participating despite the October 18th SNOW!

Read how one Massachusetts farm is affected by the Northeast's tomato and potato blight, and the ways in which the Community Supported Agriculture model helps them thrive with or without tomatoes.

Secure Green Future volunteer Maggie Zhou boarded an overnight bus to Washington D.C. to attend a U.S. Senate hearing on carbon pricing policies. Zhou feels that the science shows that we may have a critical window of only a few years to take action before planetary processes take the matter out of humanity's control and bring on catastrophic warming. "Congress needs to get this right now if children like my own are to have a future."

The Waxman-Markey bill, or the American Clean Energy and Security Act (ACES), that passed the US House on Friday, is a false climate-protection solution more appropriately characterized as a polluter-protection bill, according to leaders of Secure Green Future (SGF). Read more to see how it's a big win for the fossil fuel industry, how it will delay the urgently needed transition to a low carbon economy, and how it will hurt our chances for any meaningful international agreement on climate action this December.

Stop Coal! Save our Future!

Massachusetts rallies to stop coal and start building the secure green future. Read the reports and see photos and video!

Support the Secure Green Future project as we gear up for an exciting spring, summer, and fall of action.

The Health Benefits of the Mediterranean Diet

Drawing from the recent report she co-authored for Greater Boston Physicians for Social Responsibility, Jill Stein breaks down how eating unprocessed foods, especially plant-based foods, can lower your risk for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and other chronic diseases, at the same time it lowers your environmental footprint.

Post Carbon Institute proposes a Real New Deal

Our continued national dependence on fossil fuels is creating a dangerous vulnerability to both long-term fuel scarcity and catastrophic climate change. The current economic crisis requires substantial national policy shifts and enormous new government injections of capital into the economy. This provides an opportunity for a project whose scope would otherwise be inconceivable: a large-scale, fast-track transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy.

Voters Call for Urgent Transition to a Secure, Green Economy

Thanks to a wonderful grassroots effort, and some fortuitous timing, the Secure Green Future ballot question won in every single district it appeared, and by a total landslide margin! At least 153,252 voters said YES to a Secure Green Future on November 4th, netting the ballot question an astounding 81.4% of the vote!!!

Protecting the Environment Can Avoid Disease

A new report co-authored by MCHC's Jill Stein suggests that a deteriorating environment and poor nutrition are behind the rise of many chronic diseases of modern life. The good news: we can restore health by protecting - and cleaning up - the environment. Towards that end, moving to more sustainable, localized food systems and clean renewable energy would go a long way to improve health, the environment and the economy.

Join us in 2010 as an MCHC member!

Out of a profound sense of both crisis and opportunity, we are asking you to become a member of the Massachusetts Coalition for Healthy Communities (MCHC). In doing so, you will help advance sustainable, just solutions to the unprecedented economic and environmental crises we face. And you will help establish MCHC as a permanent, vital presence in the debate over our future.

Opinion and Analysis

Paul Hawken to the Graduates of 2009:
This is your century

This commencement speech by environmentalist Paul Hawken was delivered at the University of Portland on May 3, 2009.

"Collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past."

Democratizing Finance

Author and economist Hazel Henderson lays out the local-based initiatives that are emerging in the wake of an unraveling Wall Street economy. Relocalization efforts are gaining steam in Massachusetts and beyond, and just in the nick of time. The financial meltdown generated by Wall Street and the "too big to fail" culture of global money-center banks and financiers is generating local initiatives and demands to decentralize and democratize finance.

Testimony to the Governor's Task Force on Public Integrity

MCHC Board member Shirley Kressel's December 3, 2008 testimony.

Climate Code Red: The case for a sustainability emergency

Friends of the Earth report reviewed by John Andrews.

Relocalize: Balance Your World

Through relocalization, communities can prosper while fighting global warming.

What does California have to teach us about how to fund infrastructure needs through special assessment districts?

Shirley Kressel's Letter to Legislators: Chapter 40T

Gov. Patrick Turns My Hope into Alarm

Governor's tilt toward real estate industry unnerves a former supporter.

Analysis of the North Point Tidelands Decision

Context of the Supreme Judicial Court ruling that said the DEP erred in waiving a permit requirement for a Cambridge development.

Preventing Tobacco Deaths: It's Time to Act

When the choice is preventing tobacco deaths or pleasing tobacco lobbyists, where do our legislators stand?

Economic Stimulus Or Corporate Welfare?

New law seizes both land and tax revenues to benefit real estate developers.

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The state law that is supposed to promote affordable housing isn't getting the job done. What are we doing wrong?

MCHC is a member of the Alliance for a Healthy Tomorrow, a citizen initiative in Massachusetts to establish new government policies to prevent harm to our health from toxic hazards.

"Cowardice asks the question, 'Is it safe?' Expediency asks the question, 'Is it politic?' But conscience asks the question, 'Is it right?' And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but because conscience tells one it is right."

- Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
More Quotes

Please send us your events for posting.

· January 26th, 2010 - Climate Forum with City Councillor Henrietta Davis - Cambridge, MA

· January 28th, 2010 - After Copenhagen: Global Climate Change Mini Conference, Cambridge Forum, includes booksigning w/ Dr. James Hansen, NASA - Cambridge, MA

· January 30th, 2010 - New England Antiwar Conference, Explaining the Drive Towards Empire and Endless War - Cambridge, MA

· January 31st, 2010 - The Current State of American Politics, Ethical Society of Boston, w/ speaker Prof. Charles Derber - Cambridge, MA

· February 3rd, 2010 - Economic Crisis/Green Alternatives, conversation with Carl Davidson - Boston, MA

· February 11th, 2010 - Public Symposium on Globalization and the Grassroots, Northeastern University Law School - Boston, MA

Join host John Grebe for a two-hour weekly radio program offering news and political reviews that often challenge the conventional wisdom and the packaged fare of the mainstream media. Tune in Saturdays 11:00-1:00 on WZBC, FM 90.2 Boston. You can listen live at http://www.wzbc.org.