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Hundreds of jobs we've created over the years. I just think that can be replicated we can
reach our goal easily. And then as an industry there's been 143 megawatt pb put out there
over the last several years. And that in itself is probably pretty close to a billion dollars
investment coming into the state. Creating thousands of jobs, not to mention the carbon
offset that that provides to the environment, so I think we're well on our way. I think
we need to continue. I think we've got a lot of work in front of us. I think we've got
a great start and now we need to put our foot on the gas pedal and continue to take the
leadership. Thank you. (applause). Put our foot on the solar pedal! (laughter) Solar
has been one of the, I mean if you look at the curve and what we've done as a state in
the last seven years on solar, it's a pretty remarkable trajectory, exceeding expectations.
Dr. Parker would you want to touch on some of the health, pull that mic close and give
us some opening thoughts. We're going to go, as you would imagine, a little later. We're
going to carve a into your lunch, which might make it a little more sustainable from a caloric
stand point. Dr. Parker? Hi, so I'm a public health and preventive medicine physician and
I want to talk with you about how climate change affects health. It has very serious
impacts to health and I want to start with a couple of truisms that are relevant. One
is that it makes more sense for us to use the majority of our resources to keep people
healthy in the first place. That's not really currently the way our society is set up. We
use up way more of our health dollars to try to control disease and hopefully cure it.
But I think if I asked any of you here would you rather have a terrible disease and hope
that modern medicine will make it better and maybe even make it go away, or would you rather
stay healthy in the first place, I don't think that would be a tough choice for most people.
So climate change actually gives us a good opportunity to put prevention into practice.
We're talking about trying to prevent some of the more serious things that could happen
to our health. Here's another truism. Everything that effects our environment affects our health.
We don't have the luxury like the good witch of the north to travel around in bubbles.
Everything that affects our air, and our water, and our soil and our climate affects our health.
Everyone's health and wellbeing will be affected by climate change eventually. However there
are some members of our society who are especially vulnerable. And I'm going to give you a bunch
of numbers here coming your way in the next minute and that's it for the numbers. But
these vulnerable people end up actually being a pretty large segment of our population.
About 1/4 of our population are children. Children are especially vulnerable to the
health impacts of climate change. 13% of our population are seniors. Seniors are also especially
vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Together that makes up about 1/3 of our population.
One in three is especially vulnerable because of their age. People are also vulnerable who
are poor. Ten percent of our population, in one of the richest states in the country,
10% of our population still lives at or below the poverty level. And of course that poverty
level is not spread out so evenly, more of our children and more of our seniors are also
in that category of being below the poverty level. 14% of Marylanders have asthma at some
point in their life. That's a pretty large number. 10% have asthma at any given time.
Here's another really big number. More than 2.5 million of adults have chronic illnesses,
that's another main risk factor for the health impacts of climate change, another thing that
makes you especially vulnerable. If you have diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder
(COPD), asthma, or heart disease. More than 2.5 million people, million adults. So if
you take a look around you and count out five people, three of those five people are likely
to have a chronic illness that puts them at a higher risk of experiencing bad stuff to
their health from our climate. And some people have multiple risk factors. So for example,
a child living in poverty with asthma. Those are three major hits. Even if you don't put
yourself in one of those high risk categories, we all know and love people who are in those
categories. So if affects all of us, and it will affect us more personally if we don't
actually get the climate stabilized. If we make the environment safe and healthy for
our most vulnerable people we also make it safe and healthy for all of us. So now I'm
going to talk more specifically about some of the climate change impacts. Things like
extreme weather made worse by rising sea levels, that's especially important to people who
live in Maryland for obvious reasons. In addition to those 168 people in Maryland who lost their
lives from extreme weather events, from a public health standpoint it's kind of actually
what happens after the storm that will affect our health? Homes are destroyed, people are
displaced, schedules are disrupted, particularly *** children, critical services are unavailable.
So we may be worried about our home being destroyed but things like our drinking water
treatment plants, sewage treatment plants, our hospitals, clinics, pharmacies. Those
things are not immune from the effects of extreme weather and they get taken off line
as well. We build things really slow. It took 5 years after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans
before even 5 of the 7 hospitals were back up to some sort of functionality. Jobs are
lost, insurance then is lost, hopefully that connection won't always be the case. Coming
up very soon hopefully we won't lose our insurance if we lose our jobs. Chronic illnesses get
worse, health indicators across the board decline after extreme weather events. Particularly
things like anxiety and depression go way up. There are also problems with greater risk
of infectious disease. So diseases carried in our food, in our water, those are particularly
sensitive to the climate. Um, diseases that are carried by insects are particularly sensitive
to the climate. We don't know sort of the next big thing that's going to be a problem
for us in the infectious disease category, and that's one very good reason why we need
to keep our public health infrastructure well-funded and well-functioning. Because our next defense
against infectious disease is to make sure it gets detected right away and then to figure
out what it is and how to control it. And that's what public health does. And if we
do our jobs well, then everybody stays healthy. Alright, compromised food and water supplies
are actually something that keeps me awake at night, but I'm not going to spend a lot
of time talking about that. I'm going to talk about some of the more direct things that
people in Maryland will be facing very near. And that's things like heat stress. We know
that with climate change we can expect more heat waves, more frequent heat waves, they
last longer and they're more severe. We've already seen that, we're already experiencing
this. People who are most vulnerable to heat waves, babies and very young children. If
you can't pick yourself up and move to a cooler environment, you're at risk. People who live
in urban areas. Here in the Mid-Atlantic, a lot of people, particularly who live in
urban areas don't have air conditioning. And so that puts us at increased risk. Our elders
are very vulnerable to heat stress. Part of the effects of aging is that you can't recognize
when your body is overheating. Part of the effects of these chronic illnesses, things
like heart disease for example and some medicines prevent your heart from doing what it needs
to do to compensate for that overheating. So our elders are especially at risk for dying
from heat stress. The biggest risk factor from heat stress as was discovered during
the, in 2003 when Western Europe went through a series of really severe heat waves, 70,000
people died in Western Europe during that summer from heat. 70,000 people. We're not
talking about the developing world here. We're talking about Western Europe. The biggest
risk factor was social isolation. That's really important when we're thinking about how to
adapt to the climate change that we know is coming. Not matter how, no matter what we
do we're looking at some climate change but it's going to get a whole lot worse if we
don't get it stopped. And then the last thing to talk about is air quality. This is actually
a little bit of something that is positive about climate change. And that's that we know
air quality, we know air pollution causes bad health effects. That's certainly not news.
There's a mountain of evidence to show that. We know that Maryland's 7 coal fire power
plants are some of the worst polluters. And that people that experience those emissions
have greater health impacts if they live closer to them. So actually much of Maryland population
lives within a thirty mile radius of a coal fire power plant and is more greatly impacted.
Some people live within a thirty mile radius of two coal fire power plants and Baltimore
residents live within a thirty mile radius of three coal fire power plants. Those are
just stacking up the bad health impacts from bad air. Also transportation puts air pollution
into our air and the same thing, the closer you are to the source the bigger the problem
it is. So children who live next to really trafficy streets have more problems with asthma
and are sicker, miss more school etc. So we know that if we clean up our air, actually
air pollutants are also things that are making climate change worse. Climate change also
makes the air quality worse, makes those air pollutants more problematic. It's this really
nasty snowball effect. And so if we clean up the air we get immediate health benefits
from heart and lung disease predominantly. And if we clean up the air we're also doing
what we need to do for climate change. That's a really happy coincidence. There's not a
lot of happy news about health and climate change, that's one good thing. The things
that we need to do anyway to protect our health in terms of cleaning up our air, reducing
air pollution also is what we need to do to get the climate stabilized. What that means
for us as individuals if we do that is that there are thousands of children who don't
have as severe asthma. There are thousands of children who don't get asthma in the first
place. Those children can enjoy more time with their parents and their grandparents
because right now we have a lot of people who are dying early unnecessarily. Unnecessarily
preventable deaths that can actually be, live longer, spend more time with their families,
be more productive if we clean up our air. So we're already experiencing here in Maryland
the bad health effects of climate change. That's going to get worse and can get a whole
lot worse depending upon what we do. We really need to take some serious bold action in order
to protect our health. We need to stop burning fossil fuels. Those are things that put bad
things into the air that make us sick and make us die early. We need to change the way
we get from point A to point B because fossil fuels in our cars also causes problems. These
things cost money but we can likely save money in other areas by using less energy. And we're
already paying for this so-called cheap energy with our health. So actually this is really
a win-win situation for everybody in Maryland. The things we need to do right now to get
the climate stabilized will have immediate health benefits and long term health benefits
as well. To those who say, why Maryland, you know we're not going to make a drop in the
bucket of climate change compared to everything else in the world. We've got to start somewhere!
If nobody does anything, nothing happens. We're all in this, sort of on the same planet.
So we need to take a leadership role and one of the best ways to lead is by example. I'm
really proud of Maryland for doing that. (applause).
Mike Tidwell, (inaudible) climate action. Take us into, wrap all of this up, make total
synthesize sense of it all as we launch into some dialogue and Q and A. And by the way
if you have answered we'd like to hear from you first. Want to thank Stewart Clarke again
from Town Creek Foundation for making this happen today. (applause) Also want to thank
David Costello who used to head our delivery unit in the governor's office and also did
smart grow things, he's not deputy secretary of environment, but did a lot of the early
pioneering work on Maryland stuff. So Mike Tidwell take us away. Thank you Governor,
um, I really want to thank Governor O'Malley for being a super hero on climate. And I kind
of mean that literally (applause) because in 2002 when we were making the first real
big push for the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act we sent some fact sheets to the governor
and had a few meetings and trying to get him to come out and endorse the plan during the
general assembly session on 2008 and he quickly did. I think it was February of 2008 he made
an announcement that yes this made sense for Maryland and he was supporting the bill. And
my organization sent out an email to all our members across Maryland asking them to thank
the governor for doing this. What we did was we found an animation of a green super hero
with a green cape and a green belt and shoes and costume and then we put the governors'
head on it. So we had this super hero like this and this email alert saying thank the
governor for being a climate super hero. I think he got like 1,000 thank you notes that
day. But what was really interesting was the very next night the Irish rock band The Pobes
were playing at the 9:30 club and the governor was there and two of my staff members were
at the 9:30 club and they saw him in the lobby and they went up to him to personally express
their gratitude that he had supported this legislation that has now led to this plan
today. So they went up and said Governor O'Malley thank you so much for supporting this plan
and they were going on and on the governor stopped them and put his hand out like this
and they stopped and he went (laughter) and I knew we were in good shape when that happened.
So thank you governor thank you to all of your staff who have worked so *** this.
Coincidentally I have been walking across the state of Maryland this week. Literally
step by step I've walked 80 miles from the Cochauta Mountains at the Pennsylvania border
all the way down to the Potomac River in Montgomery County. I'm going to go back and finish that
walk later today and tomorrow as part of a national climate walk from Camp David to the
White House to thank President Obama for his recent climate plan and also to ask President
Obama to do more. (applause) And literally walking through the heartland of our great
state, through the middle of the state, I have stopped along the way and asked average
Marylanders, you know, you don't even have to ask Marylanders have you noticed it's gotten
warmer? You just ask them what have you noticed about the weather lately. That's all you have
to ask people. A farmer, Sherri Wolfe, outside of Wilson, Maryland in Frederick, I asked
her along the road as I walked across the state. And she went on and on and on, the
snow when she was a kid in the '40s and '50s would block their country road for a week.
And she went on about the humidity. We didn't have humidity this bad when she was a child.
And rangers along the C&O Canal talking about the flooding of Monocacy Creek and Antietam
Creek. And Governor you've mentioned that in your childhood big trees in your neighborhood
in Rockville that aren't there anymore because of the extreme wind that has happened. Paul
Roberts is a wine grower in Alleghany County, lost all his wines in the county due to a
freakly frost that happened this year. It's just everywhere, too hot, too wet, too dry,
too cold wherever you go. Pepco is about to spend a billion dollars in the district putting
power lines underground because of extreme weather. So it's here! Climate change is here
as you've heard from many of our other speakers, and it's getting worse. And scientists agree
of course, 97% agree that human beings are involved in the combustion of oil, coal and
natural gas. And that's why the governor's plan today is so important, so timely. It
will cut, it will cut the states greenhouse gas emissions 25% by 2020 in specific achievable
ways that will also grow our economy. And I am very very confident that this will happen.
This is not just a paper plan, it's not a paper tiger. It's going to work. But this
plan didn't happen by accident. The scientific data is almost never enough in these sort
of campaigns. The way this happened is Governor O'Malley in 2008 when he began to support
the plan, he adopted, you know, a great blue print but a challenging one. A tried and true
blue print that involves two big steps. Number one, build the biggest coalition you possibly
can for your issue. Number two never ever ever ever give up. And that's what the governor
did, he worked with all of us in 2008. This bill did not pass, there were concerns among
business folks and labor folks that were not adequately addressed. The governor put us
all in a room in the Fall of 2008 locked the door with some MD officials and said you all
work it out. Told us go to your bottom line before the general assembly session starts.
I've never seen that before. Usually in Annapolis everybody goes to their bottom line the last
weekend of the session and instead the governor said everybody work it out. Labor was there,
business, industrial users, environmentalists, Johns Hopkins folk, everybody, students, all
in a room for a week and we worked it out. And we compromised and everybody wasn't 100%
happy but everybody was happy with the bill. And so here we are today, this bill passed
in 2009, the plan is being officially released today. It will cut 55 million metric tons
of CO2. That is a big cut and that is really what we need. It expands our clean electricity,
efficiency, 37,000 new jobs as the governor mentioned 1.6 billion dollars in new economic
growth. You know they say there's no free lunch in the universe, this is a lunch we're
paid to eat. This is good for us economically and good for the climate. So here we are today,
this is the strongest statutory carbon reduction plan in the U.S. among any state including
stronger than California. But there's more to do, we still have to fully implement the
plan and I know we will, and we need to expand the plan in the coming years by for example
eventually expanding our clean electricity standard to go up to 40 or 50%. And we need
to fight against (applause) yes and at the same time we need to fight against new and
dangerous forms of fossil fuels like tar sands and reckless fracking. (applause) So there
are more coalitions to build, there's more never giving up to be done and as Dr. Parker
said a lot of people say in Maryland you're just a little state. It's a global problem.
You know you're not going to stop one centimeter of sea level rising. And my answer is to that
is to remember that we need to lead by example. If we don't save ourselves who will? And I
remember a particular poignant quote from Dr. Martin Luther King in the 1960's after
a bad period of writing and a journalist when up to Dr. King and said "Do you ever want
to give up? You know your vision just clearly is not going to be achieved, all this work
you've done, this movement this country is truly not with you, do you ever despair is
it time to just pack it in?" And Dr. King said "Even if I knew that everything I'm doing
would lead to nothing, even if I knew I was not going to succeed in this crucial campaign,
I would still plant my apple tree today." And that is what we're doing, we're planting
a tree that's going to grow, that's going to nourish us, it's going to shelter us and
we will be an example to the rest of the country. Thank you very much (applause). Thank you
Mike.
Mike thank you very very much for all of your good work and um tireless. Let's uh, we're
going to be hearing from Vicki Arello from the Georgetown Climate Center at lunch and
also introducing here will be Dan Satterfield, Chief Meteorologist at WBOC. Before we break
for lunch let's take a few minutes to open up to questions, answers, thoughts from uh
the tribe. Yes ma'am there's a hand up over here, does somebody have a microphones? And
if you could identify yourself, say who you are and where you're from, who you're with,
just. Sherri Moore, Frederick County Government. I just wanted to say thank you so much for
your leadership, I think you're doing a tremendous job, all of you. And I also wanted to note
that a lot of the improvements that we make in the direction of climate change have a
positive impact on the Chesapeake Bay. Because a lot of the, thank you, fossil fuels release
the nitrogen oxides and also a lot of the types of solutions we come up with such as
tree planting have benefits for both. So I applaud your efforts and just want to say
thank you very much. Thank you (applause). Other questions, raise your hand we get the
microphone to you let me add another, Will Baker was here with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation
I saw in the audience. We had a great coming together of environmental science teachers
throughout our state. And as part of this, the tree planting and also the bay restorations,
the stream restoration, and the environmental literacy that Maryland is a leader on, we
can also be a leader on environmental action as we restore the school shed. That is the
rivers and the streams that catchman areas of our local schools, and do it in a consistent
and measured way that's also experiential learning. So that's a big fun idea that a
lot of our environmental science teachers are leading the way on. We had a question,
I saw hands. Sure. Ok. Hi Dave Hackett with the Unitarian (inaudible) Legislative Ministry
for Maryland a climate change project. One thing I've been thinking about and struggling
with is it seems our financial policies are set up so that people can make more money
by polluting more and I'm wondering if there are any innovative ideas out there about how
we can change our financial incentive system to make it more profitable to run cleaner
businesses. Particularly as regards to the production of energy. Yea that's a great question,
I don't know does anybody on the panel want to chime in here. I can tell you that one
of the areas where we have been falling short is an area where other states have had actually
the inverse problem. We've had a residence in the residential energy consumption and
the efficiency measures in people's homes are actually being implemented at a much greater
pace than those in our small businesses and our commercial and industrial uses. So we're,
Kevin Hughes is here the Chair of our Public Service Commission, Abby Hopper who now not
only the governor's energy advisor but the head of MEA. We're figuring out better ways
that we can get the commercial industrial users to engage in the money saving exercise
of not only expanding renewable production in a distributed way but also reducing their
own energy consumption. Some great examples, we probably need to do a better job of lifting
them up, (inaudible) anybody have any other great ideas on that score? How do we make
energy consumption and renewable pay? Mike? Um, well Maryland Congressman Chris VanHallen
is going to be introducing for a second time a bill, I think it's going to be next month.
It's called a Cap In dividend Bill, so eventually we really need a national plan on this. You
know Maryland and California and other states leading is great but we need a national plan.
And eventually we will have a national plan. Chris VanHallen's idea is to cap carbon emissions
where the carbon is coming out of the ground, auction permits to pollute our atmosphere
and then rebate the money directly back to all Americans. So you would get a monthly
rebate from the auction of these carbon permits. That alone will change so much behavior because
the less energy you use the more of the rebate you'll be able to keep. The more energy you
use, the price of energy will go up for fossil fuels, and it will be a just transition and
I think it's a really good idea and he's going to be talking about that later this summer.
I'd love to learn more about that, Abby. Ok let's go to other questions, also could be
within, within the zero waste drive as we figure out how we achieve that it could be
opportunities there on that score. Other questions. If you're over here, you don't mind running
do you? There's two, there's two mics ok there we go. Nicholas Bianco with World Resources
Institute. We're a global independent non-partisan think tank. Um, and I want to begin by congratulating
you on releasing the plan and commending you for the states commitment to a very ambitious
target of reducing emissions. If we had more Marylands we would certainly not be in the
place we're in today.
And Nicholas thank you for the article you did about three months ago as well, it was
very very I'm not sure if all of you saw it, but it was really really good work, thank
you for that. Thank you, so that's actually where my question was going which is to reflect
on Mike Tidwell's point. It's about how the state can be and has been a leader for the
nation. When I look at the next big steps that are going to be happening nationwide
in the coming months and years in the results of the president's announcements. One of the
real big steps is going to be standards for existing power plants coming out of EPA. And
when I look at all the things the state has done it seems clear to me that the state is
well positioned to meet those standards. That the state has done a lot of good thinking
that's going to translate into compliance there. And I guess I just wonder , for you,
if you would have any messages to the other governors of the country that are going to
be carefully following and thinking about those regulations as they move forward. Sure,
shortly I'm going to be with many other governors at the National Governor's Association and
all of these men and women, at least uh, well how can I say this, many of these men and
women are very entrepreneurial people who want to know that something works. Uh and
that's the leading test for many of us, at least 20 of the 50. And uh, so we do share
best practices and there's nothing better that we can do as a state then, in terms of
persuasion, then to have a real example that actually works. Works not only in terms of
reducing greenhouse gases but also works in terms of creating more jobs. And last year
we lead all of the states in our region on the rate of new job creation and part of that
was this emerging green economy that we have in our state. So that's the most, Nick, that's
the most important litmus test for uh those governors who are not climate change deniers.
The most important litmus test is how can we do this in ways that work. Which is why
the clarity of your language is very important. Many of the other governors read your material
and I know that for a fact. And I'll have a opportunity to share it again with them
when we go out there and with your prodding I will do that. Delegate Morheim. Thank you
governor. Dan Morheim, House of Delegates. First of all thank you for this conference
and your leadership. I want to go back to the idea of conservation as the gentleman
from the solar panel company said, conservation is a fraction of the cost. Fifty percent of
the energy in the United States is used in buildings. And once a building gets built
it's good for 20, 50 75 years, I don't know if we're in a green building here or not.
I hope so and if not maybe next time it will be that. Thanks to you, we long ago set the
standard for green structure construction in Maryland. That bill and languished in the
general assembly until you took it on, and all state construction, school construction,
after that period after the bill passed is now green buildings. That's great results.
In my district in Owings Mills with Delegate Card and Delegate Stein the new library and
community college at the transit orient development is a green building. And in this last session
we passed legislation because of the major school renovations that are going to take
place, that all new school renovations will have solar panels or that's the default they
have solar panels or not. (applause). And again your administration and Abigail Hopper
really instrumental. But there are a lot of other buildings and the cost to do green buildings
is approximately zero percent than building a non-green building meaning there's just
no cost increase. And my question given the fact that the state has already, you know
being the role model, what can we do for all of the other construction that's going on
in the state, in the commercial, residential, and private sector to encourage them to adopt
the same standards. And if there's a bill in it I'll be happy to sponsor it with you.
Yea sure, that's a, and Dan has uh, Dan's spouse, very talented filmmaker who did an
excellent documentary on green buildings and this whole revolution, Dan thank you for your
leadership on this. I had occasion to visit out in Frederick, anyone here from Frederick?
The green walled hills of Maryland? I had occasion to visit um Net Zero Nexus Energy
Home, Net Zero Homes in Frederick. And uh in fact I've been talking about it in foreign
travel. Also talked about it in the last state of the state. That's truly the future. How
can we accelerate the future where every new building that is built is built in a net zero
or as close to a net zero way as possible? That's the green design. That's the GO design.
That's the redesign that we need to engage in. Not in a sort of one off solar decathlon
winning way, but in a massive way across industries. And the great news about this, in some conversations
with some of the folks that helped the president with his remarks, uh there pole testing has
found that while, that the language here in terms of climate change is a new and emerging
language very hard to convey sometimes. The language of energy efficiency talking about
the image of comparing energy bills with your neighbor at the end of the month where one
person has a three dollar bill and another person has a five dollar bill for the month,
that's the image that people get and people get up for. And that's uh sort of uh state
purpose national purpose that people can identify with I think get behind. So Dan look, there's
a couple different ways. As I look at this, and maybe there's other ideas, I think between
now and when the next general assembly is in session we should look at the options before
us. Certainly there's some things we can do on building code. Uh statewide we've done
some of those things. Uh locally and with municipal governments those things can be
done as well. There are also things that we did in the city of Baltimore with state enabling
legislation that allowed us to do a property tax rebate for new home construction acknowledging
that we are experiencing a lot of outward migration and flight and there were demolition
costs often involved in the renovation or building of new units. In an old city like
Baltimore we created a new home construction tax credit that went for about a five year
period of time in order to recoup some of those costs. Perhaps even though the states
portion of the property tax is very very minimal perhaps there's some way we can use that to
incentivize these sorts of things. Perhaps, Abby, there's something we can do with sort
of Evergreen Fund. One of the toughest things for Nexus they said it's not selling the homes
and finding buyers for the homes, but finding a bank that will actually finance the loans.
Because it had two things going for it that scared bankers. One was the word home (laughter)
the second thing was net zero. You know it was new and bankers especially after the financial
collapse, near collapse, were reluctant to do it. Perhaps there's an Evergreen way we
can create some sort of fund that can get this sort of rolling and get this going. I'm
convinced that when the public knows they have a choice at the outside of buying a home,
buying a home that has a you know $180 a month energy bill and one that has a $3 energy bill
every month, I think they'll opt for the three dollar energy bill. But we've got to get enough
of that product out there and accelerated. So let's work on that. And that's not even
counted into this plan, those sorts of things, yet. I feel like I'm looking into the sun
up there. Sorry. I have that effect on lots of people. (laughter) My name is Greg Farley
I teach and run the environmental education center for Chesapeake College over on the
Eastern Shore. With the windmill! With the windmill, that's my wind turbine when you
drive to Ocean City. That's a good turbine I was there for cutting the ribbon on that
turbine. Thank you for that and also for your explicit nod to community colleges this morning
we appreciate the recognition. Um as we try and take our institution toward net zero energy
and climate neutrality, and that's a pledge that we've made by way of the American College
and University President's Climate Commitment, we've identified a couple of needs for rural
communities that might be a bit different from what you all are used to thinking about
in sort of larger communities. One is a pressing need for good public infrastructure in rural
communities that will help us reduce our commuting footprint. Right now commuting for our institution
and similar institutions is more than half of our carbon footprint. And that's been the
hardest thing for us to change. And tied in with that, is we seek to use technology to
cut our carbon footprint as well, our problems with last mile broadband infrastructure. And
I'd like to appeal to the governor's office and to the creative thinkers in the state
hierarchy about possible fixes for both of these kinds of problems where we might be
able to collaborate on solutions for transportation and for technology infrastructure that might
help us contribute to the states reduction in carbon footprint. Tell me about the last
mile broadband? So for example when we try to hybrid or online classes some fraction
of our students are unable to access that because they don't have high speed they can't
participate ... so it's like last mile to the students not last mile to the institution.
Correct. The institution has it now? Yes sir. Thanks to President Obama we've uh we've completed
one of the most extensive broadband networks connecting our institutions but there's still
a long way to go for citizens. I think we're the only state in the United States that's
connected all 24 of our counties and their institutions of learning. Community colleges,
hospitals and infrastructure like to that broadband. Ok thank you. I think we have time
for one other question over there. Ok there's some people over here raising hands and there's
somebody up in the back. Hello this is, I'm Dan Smith I'm with the Prince George's healthy
communities coalition and tying in with your tree planting and forestry and you know green
infrastructure in a larger sense with the green roofs and bio retention and pervious
pavers, that whole, Maryland has been a leader in many ways in this, but we can do a lot
more. And so right now for example in Prince George's county we have a new, the administration
the baker administration and our new department of the environment director Adam Ortiz who
just was confirmed yesterday, has some innovative plans for greatly expanding green infrastructure.
But we need support from the Department of the Environment to sort of unleash, allow
us to go beyond some of the standards we feel are not as progressive and are not allowing
us to make our communities as, to transform them as rapidly and make them as resilient
as they need to be for storm water, for this increasing delude. What are some of those
things, a couple? Well like the uh MS 4 permits the state does for separate storm water systems.
The county government and environmentalists have gotten together and have collaborated
on a really, they want to raise the bar much higher than the existing standards and that
permitting process going on right now. So we would ask you and your administration to
allow this to raise and allow some innovation to go on and I think that we can take the
whole state, I think it's one area we can do better on that will compliment all of these
other exciting great things going on. Ok well Bob Summers was nodding his head, here's your
Secretary of Environment right here. He's the man with the permit and (laughter). Anybody
else? Alright we're, I'm told we're cutting it off for right now. Bob and we're about
to move to lunch, you'll take us from here? Yes um that's correct governor, thank you
very much. Thank you all very much. (applause). Thank you, we're about, we were to start lunch
about ten minutes ago so you all can go out this door and follow the directions to lunch
room we'll get everybody in there and get things set up for our speakers at lunch.