Call to action University experts contribute to Maine Climate Council plan
W
hen Maine Gov. Janet Mills convened the Maine Climate Council in September 2019, she announced an executive order to make Maine’s economy carbon neutral by 2045. The council’s four-year plan for climate action, released Dec. 1, is titled “Maine Won’t Wait” for a very good reason, says Ivan Fernandez, University of Maine Distinguished Maine Professor in the School of Forest Resources, the Climate Change Institute, and the School of Food and Agriculture. The state, and the world, can’t wait. “The indicators of climate change are accelerating and so, too, must our response,” he says. Fernandez referenced 2020’s increasingly common intense winds, the Gulf of Maine’s record-warm temperatures, megafires that have scorched 8 million U.S. acres, punishing drought, 30-plus tropical storms and hurricanes, and mounting devastation due to sea level rise. The Maine Climate Action Plan lays a pathway for what needs to be done, he says. Fernandez and other experts from UMaine, the University of Maine at Machias, the University of Maine School of Law, the University of Southern Maine and the University of Maine at Farmington helped inform and craft the plan with government officials, scientists, business and industry leaders, and citizens. The path includes investing in renewable energy, harnessing natural climate solutions to store carbon, and building resilience in farms, forests and fisheries to survive and thrive in the 21st century. “We have seen time and again that science-informed policy is cost-effective for American society,” says Fernandez, who also co-chairs the council’s Scientific and Technical Subcommittee and serves on the Natural and Working Lands Working Group. It’s important thatthe weUniversity “investofinMaine the future thanEricinMiller, the past. Thisand is guidance to do that,” Fulbright finalists from are, fromrather left to right, Emily Craig Jesse Walters. says Photo Fernandez, by Adam Küykendall who also serves on the governor’s newly established Maine Forest Carbon Task Force with UMaine School of Forest Resources professor Adam Daigneault.
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UMAINE TODAY SPRING | SUMMER 2021
