Go here to learn more about our Postcard from the Future events on

Sunday, 9/26, 4-6 PM.
Thursday 9/30, 7-9 PM.
The events will take less than 1.5 h, and there will be time for more connecting afterward.

At this interactive, collaborative event, we’re going to explore our visions of the future, and what we need to do to make it a bright one. We’ll take a time machine to Wayland in the future, from where we’ll write a postcard to our “past” selves , reporting on what we see around us and what we did to address our concerns, to make it happen. And upon our return to today we won’t have to wait: we’ll start to make it happen right away!

Climate change threatens our health, prosperity, and well-being, including in Wayland. To avoid the worst climate impacts, we need an urgent and massive effort to arrest and reverse global warming, and to build resilience for a better future.

In our community, nation, and the world, we are navigating profound repercussions from multiple crises: a viral pandemic and its economic impacts; a reckoning with our nation’s racist history and present; and our Climate Emergency. All are intertwined; all rest on failures to act with resolute and moral urgency. If the pandemic was a pop quiz that cost us hundreds of thousands of lives and trillions of dollars, the climate emergency is the final exam. Our failure to address it will be the worst and most consequential legacy we leave our children and all generations.

The solutions to these problems offer all of us the promise of a vastly safer, more just, and sustainable world.

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The Wayland Climate Emergency Declaration – adopted by Town Meeting in May 2021

This resolution was supported by the Wayland Energy and Climate Committee (4-0), the Wayland Board of Selectmen (4-1), and the Wayland Finance Committee (7-0).

WHEREAS, there is already cascading environmental harm, severe health impacts, and destruction due to the current average global warming of 1°C;

WHEREAS, restoring a safe and stable climate will require deep greenhouse gas emissions reductions through rapid, unprecedented transitions in all aspects of society;

WHEREAS, progress toward this future is already underway in Massachusetts, a national leader on climate initiatives;

WHEREAS, Wayland has already undertaken important steps on climate and is better positioned than most municipalities to lead the way on the critical transition away from fossil fuels and can act as a model for other communities;

NOW, BE IT THEREFORE RESOLVED that the Town of Wayland declares that a climate emergency threatens our town, all human civilization, and the natural world; and that a climate emergency mobilization effort to meet this challenge is both a moral imperative to remedy environmental harms and an opportunity to convert to a just and ecologically sustainable economy and improve human lives;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Town of Wayland supports a town-wide mobilization of municipal departments, boards, commissions, residents, and businesses, to reduce community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030 by 50% and with an ambition of 75% from its 1990 baseline levels;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Town Meeting requests that the Board of Selectmen charge the Energy and Climate Committee (1) to invite all municipal stakeholders to a meeting to be held within 90 days of the passage of this resolution to educate them about the risks posed by the Climate Emergency, the process the Town of Wayland is planning to address it and to encourage municipal participation in the development of a Climate Mobilization Action Plan, and (2) to convene an advisory team consisting of some of its members, municipal representatives, and a diverse group of residents, and (3) to have researched and developed, by the following Annual Town Meeting, a Climate Mobilization Action Plan for Wayland that explains the benefits, costs, strategies, and tactics of reducing community-wide greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2030 by 50% and with an ambition of 75% from its 1990 baseline levels. The plan should address greenhouse gas reduction; resilience and adaptation; engagement; and education; taking into account any negative consequences of recommended actions to residents both within and beyond our town’s borders;

BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED that the Town of Wayland shall submit a certified copy of this resolution to Wayland’s elected officials at the county, state, and federal levels and seek all relevant support and assistance in effectuating this resolution and encourage a state-wide, regional, and national climate emergency mobilization effort.