States are laboratories for policy innovation, and nowhere is that happening more in Maine than on clean energy and climate action. In 2019, Governor Janet Mills and bipartisan majorities of the Legislature passed new laws aimed at improving public health and strengthening the economy by reducing greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050. Read More
Paris Climate Accord
News & Noteworthy — November 2019
November 27, 2019 Gov Mills Steps Up State Climate Action At a ribbon cutting ceremony for new solar panels at the Blaine House, Governor Mills announced that state agencies will step up their efforts to combat climate change and WGME took a look at the bright future for solar in Maine! Actions like this, including Read More
U.S. House Passes “Climate Action Now” Act
NRCM thanks Reps. Pingree and Golden for sponsoring H.R. 9 NRCM news release May 2, 2019 (Augusta, ME) – The U.S. House of Representatives today voted 230-190 to pass, H.R. 9, the Climate Action Now Act, which would ensure that America honors its commitments made under the 2015 international Paris Climate Agreement. Both of Maine’s Read More
Mills Sets Goal to Fight Climate Change: 100% Renewable Electricity by 2050
Outlining an ambitious agenda for Maine, she joins a coalition of governors who embrace the aims of the Paris accord. By Kevin Miller, Portland Press Herald AUGUSTA — Gov. Janet Mills outlined an extensive climate agenda on Thursday, pledging to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, work toward 100 percent renewable electricity generation and to work with Read More
It’s Official: 2018 was the Fourth Warmest Year on Record
by John Schwartz and Nadja Popovich New York Times news story View graphics from news story. NASA scientists announced Wednesday that the Earth’s average surface temperature in 2018 was the fourth highest in nearly 140 years of record-keeping and a continuation of an unmistakable warming trend. The data means that the five warmest years in Read More
We Know How to Fight Climate Change, and All of Us Must Play a Part
The harm that warming is doing now will only get worse unless citizens, businesses and governments make mitigating actions part of their daily lives. by Rev. Richard Killmer, retired Presbyterian minister and Yarmouth resident Portland Press Herald op-ed YARMOUTH — “Earth’s climate is now changing faster than at any point in the history of modern civilization, Read More
Sobering New U.N. Report Validates Climate Science, Economics
A price on carbon and an internationally coordinated and enforceable effort are surely the way forward. by Michael Jones, Brunswick resident and associate professor of economics emeritus at Bowdoin College Portland Press Herald op-ed BRUNSWICK — The news Monday proclaimed two remarkable, and related, events. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations committee comprised Read More
Climate Change to Have Drastic Effects on Gulf of Maine Lobster and Clam Fisheries, Studies Say
New work by academic researchers details how warming waters will drive some of the state’s key commercial species north and expose others to predators. By Kevin Miller, Staff Writer Portland Press Herald news story AUGUSTA — Two new scientific studies are highlighting the current and future impacts that rising ocean temperatures will have on lobster, Read More
The Long Game: Facing Reality in the Environmental Century
“Personally, I Would Rate the Likelihood of Staying Under Two Degrees of Warming As Under 10 Percent.” – Michael Oppenheimer 2017 “Do not depend on the hope of results. You may have to face the fact that your work will be apparently worthless and even achieve no result at all, if not perhaps results opposite Read More
