The Lexington Climate Action Network, (formerly known as the Lexington Global Warming Action Coalition, or LexGWAC), advances effective community responses to the catastrophic effects of climate change. Since 2005, LexCAN has worked to build an ever-expanding community of climate citizens who have the knowledge, skills, resources, and commitment to create a healthier and more sustainable home, community, and planet.
LexCAN works to build citizens’ knowledge of climate problems and solutions and to use that knowledge to promote effective individual and systemic change that builds our ability to recognize, limit, adapt to, and recover from the unprecedented disruptive damage, such as storms, sea level rise, extreme heat and fires, resulting from human caused climate change.
Originally focused on global warming, LexCAN updated its vision and mission in 2021 to reflect the increasing urgency of the climate crisis, a growing understanding of the multiple causes and effects of climate change beyond global warming, and a heightened emphasis on collaboration as critical to the development and implementation of measures that will ensure a livable future.
LexCAN’s Story
LexCAN was founded in 2005 by Lexington residents inspired by a “Lexington Reads” town-wide conversation around renowned biologist E.O. Wilson’s book, The Future of Life, which presented a vivid picture of the threat humans pose to the Earth’s critical biological diversity and offered a plea – and a plan – for humans to take immediate, decisive action to preserve a livable environment for all Earth’s species- including people. LexCAN’s founders were moved both by the enormity of the threat and by the possibility of solutions to create an organization that would provide a forum for addressing climate change issues and establish a network of concerned individuals and groups committed to addressing these issues. This coupling of an awareness of the environmental crisis and the possibility of effective solutions has served as the guiding force for LexCAN’s work ever since and takes on increasing urgency today.
Our Secret Sauce
LexCAN established its reputation in its early years through its focus on climate education, drawing on the wealth of academic and scientific expertise in Lexington and surrounding towns to host presentations and discussions on the causes and effects of climate change. Speakers included such renowned climate and environmental experts as James Hanson, E. O. Wilson, Bill McKibben, Lester Brown, Elizabeth Kolbert, and Kerry Emmanuel.
Recognizing the importance of coupling an understanding of climate change with information and guidance regarding climate solutions, LexCAN quickly moved to include in every program specific recommendations of actions citizens could take to mitigate, reverse, or adapt to the climate change damage through such means as energy conservation, replacing fossil fuel based heating systems with electric heat pumps, installing solar panels, composting, recycling, and adopting new approaches to lawn care. Such solutions have been showcased at LexCAN Sustainability Fairs and electric car demonstrations that have brought dozens of organizations and vendors together with thousands of Lexington residents to demonstrate Earth-friendly products and processes.
As the threats posed by climate change reached a crisis point, it became clear that individual and household actions must be bolstered by systemic solutions embedded in community planning. For this reason, LexCAN increasingly engages in climate activism, pressing local and state policy makers to enact significant climate-related legislation, and building power and influence by acting in partnership and collaboration with like-minded organizations. LexCAN has supported and participated in climate marches, rallies, and petition campaigns; in the 2019 Lexington student climate strike; and in other initiatives to raise awareness of the urgency of addressing the catastrophe climate change poses to current and future generations. LexCAN members regularly contribute articles, columns, opinion pieces, and letters on the issues to the Lexington Minuteman and Colonial Times.
As LexCAN has come increasingly to be viewed in the region as a hub for information and ideas by other organizations and communities, it has expanded opportunities for communities to share information with one another, providing resources and models that facilitate awareness building and solution-focused actions across the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and beyond. In 2012, LexCAN launched Sustainable Middlesex, a network of 30+ grassroots climate action groups which initiate collaborative efforts, share tested ideas and actions, coordinate calendars of events and actions, pool materials and resources, and bring activists together for networking and inspiration, most notably at Sustainable Middlesex’s signature annual event, the Carbon Countdown, which features Massachusetts’ legislative leaders’ status reports and recommendations on climate change. In 2020, LexCAN launched the Lexington Green Network to connect the many groups that share environmental missions in the town of Lexington through a web platform that enables them to share ideas, calendars, educational workshops, works in progress, and action alerts and create joint ventures.
LexCAN is Helping Lexington Create a Sustainable Future
Lexington has been a leader in Massachusetts in working to create a sustainable future in the face of the multiple causes and effects of human-caused climate change. LexCAN has been a champion of forward-thinking local climate policies and practices and a catalyst for bringing multiple constituencies together to understand, support and advance effective actions by the Town.
2013
The Town of Lexington adopted Warrant Article 33, which committed the Town to consider climate change in all appropriate decisions and planning processes, prepare for the impacts of a changing climate, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and develop and implement a comprehensive climate action plan, with the goal of making Lexington a truly sustainable community.
2018
· The Lexington Select Board voted to set a goal of net zero emissions by 2043.
· The Town approved a Sustainable Action Plan that identifies goals and initiatives to achieve mitigation and resilience in every sector with the goal of achieving a net-zero town. As a knowledgeable, widely respected community partner, LexCAN is working to build the awareness and practical knowledge needed to engage every citizen of the town in working toward the ambitious but critical goals of this plan.
2020
· Capping a campaign led by LexCAN and its community partners, Lexington Town Meeting approved the creation of the position of Lexington Sustainability Director to oversee and guide implementation of the Sustainable Action Plan. Stella Carr, the Town’s first Sustainability Director, came on board in June 2020.
· Town Meeting overwhelmingly approved a resolution proposed by Sunrise Lexington, a local youth climate change movement, to declare a Climate Emergency and set a town-wide goal of ending greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2035.
· The Town passed Warrant Article 16, which would limit the use of fossil fuel emissions in commercial buildings by requiring new buildings over six stories in the Hartwell Innovation District to have no onsite combustion for HVAC.
2021
· Town Meeting approved the “Clean Heat for Lexington” Warrant Article 29, a home rule petition to the state that addresses the decarbonization goals established in Lexington’s Getting to Net Zero action plan, and reinforced by the Climate Emergency Declaration, by allowing the Town of Lexington to create and enforce a bylaw amendment that would prohibit fossil fuel infrastructure in new construction and major renovations. Passage of this article was the result of months of work by the Clean Heat for Lexington alliance of LexCAN and its community partners – the Sustainable Lexington Committee, Mothers Out Front Lexington, and the LPS Green Teams. The article is awaiting approval by the state legislature.
· LexCAN and its Clean Heat for Lexington partners are pressing for passage of an amendment to incentive zoning Warrant Article 45, which would have an even greater impact on reducing emissions by limiting the use of fossil fuels for HVAC in new commercial buildings. This article would require hybrid HVAC in lab buildings over 65 feet in the Hartwell Innovation district to reduce onsite combustion.
· LexCAN and its partners are also advocating for the adoption by late 2022 of a Net Zero Stretch Energy Code.