Marblehead student wants to make sure there’s a town left for her generation

MARBLEHEAD – A Marblehead seventh-grader has asked the Board of Selectmen to make sure there will be a Marblehead for her generation and future generations.Marblehead Veterans Middle School student Ilse Schaeffner wrote a letter to selectmen early in September telling them “Global warming is real” and asking them to sign off on a 12-step program of reasonable goals to reduce carbon dioxide emissions below 1990 levels.The “amazing” U.S. Mayors’ Climate Protection Agreement, she said, already has more than 400 cities and towns signed on.”Actually, for my summer reading assignment I chose a book that was a guide to global warming,” she said during a recent interview.”I was always interested in the environment, my dad (Robert Schaeffner, co-chair of the Glover School Building Committee) does a lot with that as an architect, and the book mentioned this agreement. I read it and said, ‘That’s cool, I want our town to be in this.”The 2005 agreement requires communities to inventory global warming emissions, set reduction targets and create an action plan.It also asks members to encourage walking and bicycle use, increase their use of clean, alternative energy, increase municipal fuel efficiency and increase recycling and global warming education.The agreement also promotes purchasing only Energy Star equipment and appliances. Energy Star is a government program that identifies energy-reducing products.When Selectmen Chairman Jackie Belf-Becker read her letter at a meeting, her colleagues wondered if that provision might add any costs to the town budget. They referred the letter to Municipal Light Department General Manager Robert Jolly for a review.Jolly said Wednesday he has received the list and plans to look it over and discuss it with Town Administrator Tony Sasso.”It’s exciting,” Schaeffner said. “I hope they agree to do it.”In the meantime she’ll have quite a story to share with her science class.