Most Mainers (79%, maineconservation.org), like most Americans (82%, 9/15/2019 CBS News poll) believe that we need to do something about climate change. There is some disagreement about urgency: roughly 55% of Mainers/Americans think we must do something immediately while about 25% of us think we have some time. Still, 75% is a pretty large mandate to our elected officials to do Something. Personally, I think that global warming engulfs all other crises, and that every day we delay, we increase the consequences and costs of doing nothing. So, it is with great relief and a new sense of hope that I watched the video of the September 26th kick-off meeting of the Maine Climate Council.
Governor Mills, with broad bipartisan support of the Maine State Legislature, established the Council to help Maine build resilience to climate change and to meet its fairly aggressive new renewable energy generation and greenhouse gas reduction goals (45% below 1990 levels by 2030, at least 80% below by 2050). The Council includes state, business, non-profit and municipal leaders, scientists and technical experts, as well as tribal and youth representatives.
At the kick-off meeting, Council co-chair Hannah Pingree said that Council members will chair a total of seven sub-groups, addressing issues in the areas of energy, science/technology, transportation, land, buildings, infrastructure/housing, coastal/marine, and community resilience/public health/emergency management. (See https://www.maine.gov/dep/sustainability/climate/ . )
We are fortunate to be represented on the Climate Council by Judith Cooper East from the Washington County Council of Governments. Ms. East will also co-chair the Community Resilience, Public Health and Emergency Management Working Group. We also have representation from Representative William Tuell on the Coastal and Marine Working Group. More than 20 University of Maine and University of Maine at Machias staff are on the Council or its sub-groups, including Brian Beal, UMM professor of marine ecology on the Science and Technology Subcommittee and Tora Johnson, UMM associate professor and director of the GIS Service Center.
Watching the kick-off meeting video and the technical presentations of some members, including Judy East and University of Maine professor Ivan Fernandez, co-chair of the Science and Technical Subcommittee, I was impressed by the deep, native-to-Maine, technical and scientific expertise represented on the Council, and by the resilience and resourcefulness that businesses and communities have already demonstrated in responding to global warming. The creativity and commitment I saw, coupled with the public mandate for action, makes me believe that we really are, finally, going to do something to mitigate the worst effects of global warming. Maine may be small, but as we prepare for the future, our example can lead our country in the right direction.
More generally, I am inspired by the fact that the actions and opinions that led us to this point are those of ordinary people. Right now, Maine, and, indeed, Washington County, are leaders in this democratic movement. It puzzles me that the broader public mandate for action on global warming, which was finally heard here, is not being heard in Washington D.C.
This leads back to the question, what can we do personally to respond to the climate crisis? The most important thing we can do right now is to educate ourselves about global warming and then talk about it. Keep it on the front pages and foremost in people’s minds. Given the large amount of space recently devoted to climate contrarian articles in these pages, I had originally intended to use this column to do just that. I wanted to briefly summarize the evidence that points to a man-made global warming crisis and the reasons why none of us can afford to refute said evidence. Maybe that is a topic for another day. However, considering the polls mentioned above, I would have been preaching to the choir. That is the best news of all!
Links to information referenced above can be found at https://roundthetable.downeast.solutions/a-hopeful-story. Comments and questions are welcome.
This content was previously published in the Machias Valley News Observer, 10/22/2019. Myra Eachus was a research scientist for 37 years before finally moving to Washington County full-time to enjoy Maine and be near family.
