WESTFIELD—A grassroots organization has scheduled an educational talk on carbon pricing, in an attempt to address climate change in a nonpartisan way, according to one of its founders.
Voices Rising Together (VRT), a Granville-based greater Westfield grass-roots organization, has scheduled the talk titled, “Carbon Pricing: Developing a Non-Partisan Approach to Address Climate Change via Free Market,” with a presentation from Dr. Gary Rucinski, Massachusetts state coordinator for the Citizens’ Climate Lobby, another grassroots organization. The talk will occur June 3, at 6:30 p.m., at the First Congregational Church on Broad Street in Westfield.
Dr. Gary Rucinski
According to John Meiklejohn, one of the group’s founders, the talk is a way to help address an issue that is in the current political arena, but hopefully in a nonpartisan way.
“It’s exciting to me and to our group, who want to address the key social and economic issues in a nonpartisan way,” he said.
Meiklejohn said carbon pricing would help to factor in climate change’s costs to society.
“Carbon pricing is a way of building it in, where our economics can take into account the cost of fossil fuel use,” he said.
According to Meiklejohn, Rucinski received a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Rochester and “has worked for 30 years in the high-tech industry,” and currently works as a “software project manager at MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington.” He also works with Citizens’ Climate Lobby “to put a firm and predictable price on carbon dioxide,” according to a press release.
