Climate Local Now

Detail from Albrecht Dürer’s “The Great Piece of Turf.”
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Climate Local Now: About Looking

Leonard Green
by Leonard Green Looking out the window while preparing breakfast, these days, I’m likely to see ruby throated hummingbirds visiting our deeply scarlet bee balm, blue vervain, and white spired Culver’s root. In spring, migrating hummingbirds arrived just about the time the bell shaped red and yellow columbine flowers opened.  Pictured Above: Detail from Albrecht Dürer’s “The Great Piece of Turf.” The synchronized flowering and arrival are not coincidental. Columbine
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river and roots community garden after sandy
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Climate Local Now: Riverhead—A Workable Plan For Resilience

East End Beacon
by Mark Haubner Remember Sandy? One thing I remember vividly about “Hurricane” Sandy was being on the phone with my then-24-year-old daughter. She was living in a basement apartment in her grandmother’s house, less than a block from the docks in Sheepshead Bay. It was the end of October, it was late evening by this time, and the ‘perfect storm’ of high tide, full moon and storm surge was driving
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Climate Change Climate Local Now Column

Climate Local Now: Making a Place for Cast-Off Cuisine

East End Beacon
by Gabriel Kaczmarek My senior project at Ross School, Cast Off Cuisine, began as an environmentally focused cookbook, but it has evolved into something much larger: a platform to explore how a sustainability-driven mindset can reshape the way we eat and live.  By rethinking our daily food choices, we can reduce pressure on natural resources while also creating more affordable, accessible ways to eat well. At its core, Cast Off
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Edwina von Gal’s Marshouse in East Hampton, NY, provides habitat (food, shelter, and water) for wildlife and aims to minimize harm and maximize biodiversity. “I like to look at a property this way: What is for me and what is for everything else? If wildlife can’t eat the everything else, what will they eat?” she says. | Photo Courtesy of Perfect Earth Project
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Climate Local Now: How to be a PRFCT Gardener

East End Beacon
by Melissa Ozawa There’s a movement growing and we, at Perfect Earth Project, are thrilled to be a part of it. More and more people want to do something to help end the biodiversity crisis, stop poisoning wildlife (us and our pets!), and use fewer natural resources. But wanting to do good is just the start. Part of Perfect Earth Project’s mission is to share hands-on knowledge about what you
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Mark Haubner, at left, at a NFEC forum on sustainable farming in August of 2025.
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Mark Haubner on Stepping Down From NFEC

East End Beacon
Beacon Climate Local Now Columnist Mark Haubner reflects this week on his "retirement" as volunteer President of the North Fork Environmental Council, his work ahead as chair of Riverhead Town's Environmental Advisory Committee and the classes and workshops he's developing with the organization Bio4Climate. When he's not writing for Climate Local Now, you can find his musings on Substack, where this post originally appeared. Pictured Above: Mark Haubner, at left,
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Griffin Beckmann, Maya Taveras, and Shirley Jiang at Share the Harvest Farm. |. Leonard Green photo
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Climate Local Now: From Environmental Education to Action — Three East Hampton Students Reflect

Leonard Green
By Leonard Green East Hampton High School’s Environmental and Garden Clubs have been important gateways to student environmental activity, both on and off campus. When the South Fork ReWild LI chapter ran its inaugural Summer Volunteer Program “to further biodiversity, climate resilience, and food security in our communities,” its first eager student volunteers came from these school clubs. Three years later, three graduating seniors look back on what they have
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New Suffolk Sunrise
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Valentine for Climate Hope: We Can Do This, Despite This Week’s Setbacks

Mary Morgan
by Mary Morgan A friend of mine told me about her two 20-something sons, very, very angry at the planet being left for them. I feel their pain. And I shared my story with her: for several years now, really over a decade, I’ve been a climate-worrier. I’ve been concerned (angry too!) that we are not moving away from fossil fuels into clean energy – hey, the big new exciting economy. 
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14.11.2025 - Belém - Participants visit the Green Zone during the 30th Conference of the Parties (COP30). Photo by Alex Ferro/COP30
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Climate Local Now: Cop 30 and the East End

Jack Gibbons
by Jack Gibbons In November 2025, the nations that have agreed to meet climate goals under the 2016 Paris Accord met at the United Nations Climate Change Conference, COP 30, in Brazil, to discuss continued efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming.  Pictured Above: Participants visit the Green Zone during COP30 Climate Change Conference in November. | Alex Ferro/COP30 photo Meanwhile, Bill Gates, philanthropist and founder of
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Kate Rossie-Snook with her friends, the oysters.
Climate Change Climate Local Now Column Featured Photos

Climate Local Now: Let’s All Be More Like Oysters

East End Beacon
by Kate Rossi-Snook It can be hard to get excited about something that just looks like rocks.  I often say this when presenting educational curricula or leading a Stewardship Session.  But once you learn more about our native oyster, I promise you will have a new appreciation for this incredibly well-adapted animal. Pictured Above: Kate Rossie-Snook with her friends, the oysters. Celebrating Oysters and their Reefs I’m not the only
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Leaves help to nourish garden beds, and provide habitat for beneficial insects. |. Leonard Green photo
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Climate Local Now: Turn Off the Lights. Leave the Leaves.

Leonard Green
by Leonard Green In spring, the nearby bayside meadow is covered with beach plum blossoms. It looks like snow. The white fields fade, and a golden carpet of beach heather follows. By late summer, the beach plums are ripe and sweet to eat. They have withered now, food for winter’s wild foragers. Asters and goldenrods flower in time for the monarch migration. They are an important source of nectar for
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Pictured Above: A Miawaki Mini Forest planted at the Worcester Public Library in Massachusetts in 2024.  | Biodiversity for a Livable Climate photo
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Climate Local Now: A Mini Forest? What on Earth?

East End Beacon
by Mark Haubner This column is presenting a new-to-us concept, something that has taken off in thousands of places around the world already; come join us in catching up! A book by Evan Pritchard (Henry Hudson and the Algonquins of New York: Native American Prophecy & European Discovery, 1609) describes the view of Long Island from a near-shore sailing trip at one point: the woodlands covered the land up to
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