CommonWealth Magazine, April 2023
In 2021, after extensive negotiation, the Massachusetts Legislature passed the Next Generation Roadmap for Massachusetts Climate Policy, which calls for reducing emissions by 75 percent by 2040 and 85 percent by 2050 relative to 1990 levels. Now, based on the latest IPCC report, those seemingly ambitious goals already seem insufficient. But do we really need another major state climate law?
In fact, there is plenty that the Commonwealth’s new state administration, as well as its cities and towns can do under existing law to meet and even exceed the IPCC’s goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions even faster.
