conservation

To the editor:

As we’re deep into the presidential transition, it’s time for many to let go of denial and anger and accept the reality of a Donald Trump White House come January 20. For the environmental community, there’s three things we’re going to do.

First, with conservation partners across the country, we’re going to fight to hold on to what we have. For almost half a century and until most recently, we’ve had environmental success coming from Congress. Starting in 1969, GOP President Richard Nixon cooperated with bipartisan lawmakers to pass the National Environmental Protection Act, followed by the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. These laws protect the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the land we live, work and play on. Millions of American lives have improved as a result of their implementation.

Congress later enacted legislation to conserve the nation’s forests and parks, historic sites, wildlife and wetlands, coasts and oceans. These laws benefit people, nature and the economy and are a sacrosanct part of America’s natural heritage.

Encouraged by the White House, the upcoming 115^th Congress, with 239 Republicans and 193 Democrats in the House of Representatives, may try to weaken or do away with some of these provisions. To prevent a rollback of progress, we’ll work in the House but focus on the Senate. Although Republicans outnumber Democrats 52-48 in the upper chamber, we’ll call on Massachusetts Senators Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey to initiate and lead a stop-the-repeal campaign. If needed, we will ask them to use the filibuster, which will require a 60 vote supermajority to erase America’s environmental legacy.

In addition, we’ll watch what goes on behind the scenes in the Oval Office. So often, bureaucratic actions fly under the public’s radar screen. The executive branch is mandated by the constitution, courts and Congress to implement, enforce and execute the nation’s laws. This is done largely through administrative rule-making. However, the President can unilaterally weaken or repeal regulations. He can also cut funds for existing programs, fail to enforce the law, make hostile political appointments, reduce the workforce, and simply drag his feet. As a preventive measure, we’ll go to court to require that the law be enforced.

Second, we’re going to support state and local governments in stepping up protection of our health and environment. A few examples:

• Mr. Trump believes climate change is a hoax. But 95 percent of utility and electricity oversight is done by the states, not the feds. So it will be in states like ours and California where we will continue to reduce heat-trapping air pollution and require industry to produce and use more green energy.
• The Massachusetts Endangered Species Act protects 432 native Massachusetts plants and animals on the edge of extinction. With that in place, we will continue to defend endangered species even if protections are relaxed or removed at the federal level.
• And there are a host of additional state laws providing public health and environmental benefits for Bay Staters that we will work to ensure are adequately funded and fully implemented on Beacon Hill.

On November 8, there was a huge success for Massachusetts at the ballot—the Community Preservation Act passed in 11 municipalities. This brought the state adoption to 172 cities and towns, or 49 percent of the Commonwealth. Since the Massachusetts legislature passed the enabling statute in 2000, almost $2 billion has been raised for community preservation projects providing for the creation of 10,000 affordable housing units; 26,300 acres of open space; 4,400 historic preservation initiatives; and 1,700 outdoor recreation projects—all without any federal involvement.

It’s in the city and town halls across the Commonwealth where mayors and selectmen, city councils and town meetings, school committees, planning boards, boards of health, conservation commissions, and public safety officials make some of the most important day-to-day decisions that directly affect our children and families. We will increase our efforts at the local level to support and enhance their work.

Finally, we remain committed to our aspirations, goals, and vision and for a clean, healthy and vibrant environment. Irrespective of who controls the levers of government, we will continue to advocate for a progressive environmental agenda in our nation’s capital—an agenda that provides for the health, safety, and natural security of all Americans while protecting the nature of this great land for this and future generations.

Sincerely,

Jack Clarke
Director of Public Policy and Government Relations, Mass Audubon

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Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.

To the editor:

Four years ago this month, what meteorologists called “Frankenstorm Sandy” took 159 lives and cost the U.S. economy $68 billion. At its outer edges, Sandy was a thousand miles wide. Today, 85 percent of Massachusetts’ 6.7 million residents live within 50 miles of the Bay State’s 1,500 mile coastline. It should not take a superstorm to wake up Massachusetts to the realities of climate change and its weather on steroids—but it may.

Next year, 2,000 business and political leaders will converge on Boston for the world’s seventh major climate summit. This conference is being held in a city that is two-thirds tidal fill and one of the most vulnerable in the world in terms of climate change induced sea level rise.

State lawmakers can showcase our resiliency by passing America’s first climate change preparedness legislation. Moved by the Senate to the House four times and left on the cutting room floor of this year’s energy conference committee, this legislation would prepare Massachusetts for the big impacts of climate change such as stronger storms, intense heat, and accelerated sea level rise.

A coalition of 46 engineering and architectural firms, business and environmental organizations, state and local governments and Boston Mayor Marty Walsh has let Beacon Hill know we need climate change legislation and we need it now. They know that Massachusetts is vulnerable and we need a plan—a plan that shows us how to lessen storm impacts to our built and natural environments and then demonstrates how to use both to protect us.

Specifically, we need a plan that assesses the vulnerability of the Commonwealth’s electrical grid, buildings, roads, airports, dams, water supplies and sewage plants and then recommends how to strengthen them. We need a plan that recognizes the protective value of our beaches, wetlands, forests and rivers, and then explains how to use their natural features to buffer people from the impacts of stronger storms. Most importantly, we need a plan that identifies our most vulnerable human populations, especially the poor, isolated and elderly, and determines how best to insulate them from the ravages of superstorms.

Although the governor recently took a first step by issuing an executive order to his agencies to prepare for climate change, his directive has no authority beyond his administration and its four-year term. What the Commonwealth needs is a long-term plan required by legislative statute that matches the long-term impacts of climate change.

Industries that understand what needs to be done are insurance and real estate. They know we need to mitigate the impacts of climate change to avoid skyrocketing costs and risks. They’re using NOAA models that forecast a six-foot rise in oceans by 2100.  To this writer, that’s a long way off, but my two-year old grandson will be 86 in 2100—well within a healthy male’s life expectancy.

The Insurance Journal recently reported on a project “to create climate change indices that reflect an actuarial perspective, to create an index that measures changes in climate extremes, use indices to inform the insurance industry and the public, and promote the actuarial profession by contributing statistically to the climate change debate…”

In August, Zillow reported that NOAA’s projected sea level rise would sink 62,069 Massachusetts homes representing 3.1 percent of the state’s housing stock equaling $51.2 billion—almost half of that is in Greater Boston.

Since Sandy, our conversations about climate change have changed. The current challenge is not so much about saving the planet from heat-trapping gases as it is about saving us from a warming planet. Adaptation to climate change is not throwing in the towel but rather facing the realities of living with, coping with, and adapting to its effects.

With so much carbon pollution already in the air and our traditional fossil fuel energy production and use patterns locked in, we have no choice but to live with and plan for its consequences.

Last year was the hottest ever and NOAA forecasts this year will be hotter. Be it higher seas and coastal erosion, more frequent and severe droughts and flooding, or just plain weird weather, it’s time for Massachusetts to plan for what was previously the unexpected and manage what is now the unavoidable.

Sincerely,

Jack Clark
Director of Public Policy and Government Relations for Mass Audubon; co-chair of the Massachusetts Climate Change Adaptation Coalition

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Letters to the editor must be signed with the writer’s name and street address and sent via email to lincolnsquirrelnews@gmail.com. Letters will be edited for punctuation, spelling, style, etc., and will be published at the discretion of the editor. Letters containing personal attacks, errors of fact or other inappropriate material will not be published.