Wellesley Cares: Service is Deeply Embedded in Our Community Take It to the Next Level

Wellesley Service League, Wellesley Hills Junior Women’s Club, National Service League, the Rotary Club, Wellesley Centennial Lions Club, etc… Wellesley is FULL of nonprofits looking to help others.

Sustainable Wellesley and a sister organization on the West Coast are encouraging folks to help others by lowering your thermostats.

Sounds odd right, but stick with us.

Wellesley has had an oddly warm fall, there was a rare November hurricane in Florida, Russia continues to attack the Ukraine, and oil from a leaking pipeline burns farmlands, polluting the air and waterways. The news is a litany of heartbreaking stories. Wellesley residents care, but are not sure what they can do to help.

One simple answer: reduce our use of fossil fuels.

Sustainable Wellesley is partnering with Cool Petaluma for a thermostat challenge and awareness campaign. 

Seasonal temperatures are kicking in and it is finally cooling down here in Wellesley. One way to act in solidarity with communities turned upside down due to fossil fuel and climate-related disasters is to simply use less oil.  The connection between global conflict and global warming is fossil fuels, something we use daily.

Cool Peteluma challenged their community and ours to show our support to others by trying not to add to the problem. 

Sustainable Wellesley works tirelessly to engage residents, businesses and the Town of Wellesley in clever acts to reduce our communities use of fossil fuels. Plus, the Town of Wellesley has a Climate Action Plan that will enable us to meet Wellesley’s greenhouse gas emissions reduction goal. 

Since small individual actions do add up, dropping our thermostats a few degrees this winter will not only save us some money on our energy bill, but will leave a little extra fuel for those who really need it—so take the pledge HERE.

We know that the Ukrainanians are bracing for a long, cold winter and parts of Europe are turning off street lights to conserve fuel. We have been challenged to simply turn down the heat, install state of the art heat pumps (YES THERE ARE INCENTIVES TO DO SO), insulate, drive less and put on some warmer clothes. These small but meaningful ways of showing solidarity are also reminders of our commitment to having a positive impact on the world around us. 

Tom Kabat, a utility engineer in Menlo Park put it eloquently. “I see every therm we can save as either freeing up a therm for liquid natural gas export to Europe and/or helping glut the market to lower prices to help un-fund Putin.”

As Cool Peteluma stated, moving away from oil towards electrifying our homes and cars (powered with renewables as we do here in Wellesley) “can be a difficult and uncomfortable transition. Just as with cigarettes and junk food, knowing something is bad for us in the long run doesn’t make it easy to give up right now. But give it up we must and dragging our feet only adds fuel to the fire – literally, in some cases.”

Similar to Petaluma, much of Wellesley’s greenhouse gas emissions come from heating our homes and buildings (63.3%), then transportation (30.6%). The rest is waste at 6.1%. This is an opportunity to make small shifts to contribute to a larger collective impact — whether by turning down the thermostat just a bit, taking shorter showers, or choosing to run nearby errands on foot or by bike.

So do your community service in a unique way this season and take this challenge.
Add your name here as a pledge to do your part for others, the climate and your pocketbook.

Thank you to the Cool Petaluma team in California for sparking this idea as we both work to build a planet-friendly community, block-by-block.

​Join the Thermostat Challenge!