On a sunny fall morning, James Hunt III JD '00 stops for coffee at Roxbury's Haley House Bakery Café and absorbs some solar energy at an outside table. He reflects on his seven-year stint as Boston's Chief for Environmental and Energy Services and looks forward to a new challenge in the private sector as vice president of regulatory affairs and community relations for Northeast Utilities, a Fortune 500 energy company.

As Boston mayor Thomas Menino's principal advisor on environmental and energy policy, a post from which he stepped down in August, Hunt drove forward major initiatives in the areas of green building policy, renewable and efficient energy, and groundwater protection. "The city's all-around sustainability profile improved greatly under [Hunt's] watch," said the Boston Globe. Indeed, by the end of Hunt's tenure, Boston ranked sixth in North America on the Siemens Green City Index.

Hunt, 40, who lives in his native Dorchester with his wife and two young children, apprenticed in environmental and energy regulation as a legislative aide to former Massachusetts state senator Paul White while pursuing his JD in Suffolk Law's Evening Division. Governor Paul Cellucci's administration tapped him as assistant secretary for environmental affairs while he was still in law school.

After graduation, Hunt became the lead regulator on major environmental reviews under the Massachusetts Environmental Policy Act (MEPA), working on projects such as Cape Wind and downtown waterfront developments. As a regulator, he says, "you need to balance what's in the best interest of the public from an economic standpoint while preserving the quality of life in our communities and protecting our natural resources."

In 2005, Mayor Menino appointed him Boston's environment and energy chief. Hunt says the mayor was frustrated by the "lack of action at the federal level around climate change and energy policy."

"Cities can't just wait for others to act," says Hunt. "We have to lead by example and demonstrate that environmental protection, clean energy, and economic development goals are not mutually exclusive."

One of Hunt's actions was to make Boston the first city in the nation to implement green building zoning that requires new private construction to follow the U.S. Green Building Council's LEED standard. By raising the bar for developers, Hunt says, government can encourage the marketplace to aim higher.

With fellow Suffolk Law alumna Mindy Lubber, president of the nongovernmental organization Ceres, Hunt co-chaired Mayor Menino's Climate Action Leadership Committee and developed the city's comprehensive climate change action plan, titled A Climate of Progress.

While many cities and states are proactively trying to mitigate climate change, Hunt says they also need to be preparing for its effects. "Our climate is changing today, and we need to respond to that," he says. "We need to take steps to make our cities more resilient."

That model of resilience thinking is embedded in Boston's comprehensive climate action plan, which focuses both on cutting carbon emissions (by 25 percent by 2020) and on adapting to the dangers of a warmer climate, such as more frequent heat waves, intensifying storms, and rising sea levels.

"More than 50 percent of downtown Boston is filled tidelands," Hunt told NPR this summer. As sea levels continue to rise, so does the likelihood that a hurricane storm surge—like the one that flooded lower Manhattan in October—would leave much of Boston under water.

Despite daunting projections and the reluctance of federal policymakers to address climate change in a sluggish economy, Hunt finds grounds for optimism in progress at the city and state level, including two major pieces of state legislation for which he advocated: the Green Communities Act (2008) and the Global Warming Solutions Act (2008). He also believes that public interest in sustainability is growing, but notes that "It still takes individuals to act—we have a long, long way to go to bring sustainable solutions to scale in Boston and beyond."

--by Jane Whitehead

Excerpted from the Winter 2013 Suffolk Law Alumni Magazine