On October 5 a land trust announced it had saved 350 acres of forestland in two towns that border Northampton. Kestrel Land Trust permanently protected the land in Westhampton and Williamsburg. The USA is losing 6,000 acres of open space to development every day.

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On October 7, the police chief in Bow, New Hampshire e-mailed the Valley Post a list of the names of 69 people arrested for non-violent civil disobedience at a protest in Bow. The protest was at facility used to turn coal into electricity. It was on September 28. The Valley Post requested the list on the day of the protest. No one from the Pioneer Valley is on the list. Two people from Keene are. They are Hanah LaBarre and her husband Nathan Lyczak.

On October 7, LaBarre told the Valley Post, “Nathan and I made the decision to join this action and risk arrest for the sake of our children and the urgent and obvious need to reduce climate-disrupting carbon emissions from our energy grid. We have not participated in this kind of direct action before, but I suspect that the call for us to respond to the growing crises will continue. Knowing what we know now about our role in the climate emergency, it is unconscionable that we keep a coal plant online in New England. Coal-fired power stations globally emit over 10 gigatons of carbon dioxide annually –- about one-fifth of the total emissions -– thus they are the single largest source of greenhouse gases. The consequences of our inaction -– or even action postponed -- are more and more clear and shameful.”

She continued, “We are grateful to the voices that brought this cause to our attention, the Climate Disobedience Center and 350.org, as well as the presence of Extinction Rebellion and the many concerned people who organized, marched, sang and were arrested with us. Personally, this was my first such arrest and the experience with the criminal justice system was profoundly educational.”