Greens say MD lagging on climate curbs
As if it wasn't hot enough already, some green groups and their business allies turned up the heat today on the O'Malley administration and state lawmakers, issuing a report saying Maryland's efforts to reduce climate-warming pollution are falling short and warning of more flooding like that pictured above.
Only one of the top 10 programs for reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the state's 2008 Climate Action Plan is on track, according to the report by Environment Maryland, a statewide green group. Five have shown mixed results, the report says, while the state has made "minimal progress" in one area and no progress at all in three others.
"We've made some progress, but not enough," said Tommy Landers, campaign director for Environment Maryland. To illustrate the need for climate action to avoid rising sea level, he and the others released the report at a press conference on the waterfront in Fells Point, where they displayed a photo of the area under water in the wake of Tropical Storm Isabel in 2003.
The state's participation with other northeastern states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which caps carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants, is the only program that's essentially on track, Landers said. Even that, though, needs to be tightened to have more impact, he said, and the tens of millions of dollars raised by making utilities buy pollution "allowances" should be spent more on promoting energy efficiency and renewables.
The decision announced last week that New Jersey would withdraw from the regional greenhouse-gas effort complicates matters, but doesn't mean it still can't benefit Maryland, the activists say.
The state has been slow to get started and has underfunded programs to help homeowners and businesses improve their energy efficiency, the report says. Peter Van Buren, head of Terra Logos Energy Group, a Baltimore energy improvement firm, said nearly 500 homeowners have taken advantage of the rebates offered by the Maryland Energy Administration for home efficiency investments, but those funds are about to run out.
Meanwhile, the report said, the administration has done virtually nothing to discourage driving, and activists renewed their criticism of the law passed this year and signed by Gov. Martin O'Malley that puts power-generating trash incinerators on par with wind, solar and other renewable energy facilities.
Ford Schumann, head of Infinity Recycling, a small Eastern Shore firm, said the state also has failed to aggressivly promote recycling, composting and waste reduction as a way of lowering methane and other greenhouse gas emissions. Recycling has actually fallen off from 2007 to 2009, the most recent year for which data are available, the report says.
George "Tad" Aburn Jr, air management director for the Maryland Department of the Environment, acknowledged that some energy-efficiency efforts have had "difficulties," as he put them, but he argued that overall the state is making good progress toward meeting the goal set in the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Act adopted two years ago. That law calls for lowering climate-warming emissions 25 percent below 2006 levels by decade's end.
While Environment Maryland's report focused on 10 major emission-curbing programs, Aburn said there are actually a total of 70 or 80 different efforts under way that collectively should more than meet the law's goal.
MDE is slated to begin airing its draft plan this summer for how the state will reduce greenhouse gases at least 25 percent by 2020.
(Baltimore Sun photos: Top, flooding in Fells Point after 2003 Tropical Storm Isabel, by Kim Hairston; Above, separating recyclables from waste, 2007, by Amy Davis)
Comments
What BS! talk about a group that would like nothing less then to funnel public money to their friends and ilk ie. ecobillionair Albert "the fraud" Gore... 2003 flood... had nothing to do with greenhouse effect... scare tack to funnel money to themselves.... Charlatans!!!! Charlatans!!!! I Say Charlatans!!!
Posted by: marco01 | May 31, 2011 6:54 PM
If we don't stop the pollution, and cutting down the trees, this planet and everyone on it wil be dead in less than 50 years.
Posted by: William Jones | May 31, 2011 11:21 PM