A MESSAGE FROM OUR REGIONAL DIRECTOR
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Greetings,
We are pleased to present our 13th edition (July 2021) of the CXC Maryland Climate Rally e-newsletter. This newsletter is a greener way for us to keep stakeholders engaged by bringing all the timely environmental/climate news, information, and related stories from Maryland and around the country to you electronically.
How we treat our planet today; how we address the climate crisis today, will determine our future tomorrow. Educating and emboldening our students with the knowledge they need to fight this crisis must be a central part of the response to the climate crisis. At Climate XChange, we realize it’s not just important to educate the future generation, we must also give them a voice at the table now as we address changing behavior and taking action to protect our planet for future generations.
In this edition of the Maryland Climate Rally, we will highlight high school and college students who are part of the Rebuild Maryland Coalition Student Movement. We are proud of these students and their dedication to saving our planet.
In addition to the Rebuild Maryland Coalition Student Movement, three CXC Fellows are working with CXC Maryland Campaign.
About the CXC Fellowship Program:
The State Climate Policy Network (SCPN) is a rapidly-growing project within the organization that includes more than 15,000 advocates and policymakers across the country who are pushing for effective and equitable climate policies in their states. We help provide these individuals with the tools they need to advance their campaigns for strong and equitable climate policies.
Each semester, we elect 15 SCPN fellows to conduct research, provide media coverage, and bring new stakeholders into the conversation. Each fellow helps spearhead our research in a particular policy area, while also joining another team within the organization.
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Meet Climate XChange Maryland’s Fellows
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Kortni Washington is an undergraduate Public Health student at the University of California, San Diego. Her previous work has emphasized the importance of environmental and social justice, both in research and practice. Kortni’s work as a CXC Fellow consists of Maryland-based policy and advocacy work, alongside environmental justice policy research.
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Ambria Benesch is a recent graduate of Barnard College, where she majored in both Environmental Policy and Political Science. Her academic research included a year-long thesis focused on urban environmental justice communities. Ambria is excited to work with Climate XChange Maryland on conducting legislative power mapping in order to pass the CCEA!
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William Lemoine (Will) recently graduated from Northeastern University with a Bachelor’s degrees in Environmental Studies and Political Science. He is excited that he had an opportunity to utilize his interest in research and writing and become a contributing Fellow in 2021. This is Will’s second semester with Climate XChange MD as a Fellow.
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The next Rebuild Maryland Coalition meeting will be on July 20th at 2 pm, please reach out to Wandra@Climate-XChange.org or Hope@Climate-XChange.org for meeting information.
I hope you find this edition of the Maryland Climate Rally informative. Thank you for taking the time to read and give us your thoughts! If you haven’t already done so, please sign up to receive the Maryland Climate Rally e-Newsletter (complete form here).
Warm regards,
Wandra Ashley-Williams
Maryland Regional Director
Climate XChange
Wandra@Climate-XChange.org
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REBUILD MARYLAND'S STUDENT MOVEMENT
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Our student movement meets regularly to plan activities such as a Student Rallies, Lobby Nights in Annapolis, and to develop our social media campaign for the 2022 session. #RebuildMarylandCoalition
If you would like to join us, please contact Hope@Climate-XChange.org.
Meet a few members of the Student Movement.
Victoria Benitez is an Oakland Mills High School, and a member of the HoCo Climate Change Institute, a student-led organization supported by the Howard County Conservancy.
Tabitha Clugston-Koblasz is a student at the University of Maryland Global Campus and lives in Crofton, MD.
We asked them, “Why Climate Action?” Here's what they told us:
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FEATURED ARTICLE
CARBON FEE AND DIVIDEND: DOES IT WORK? | by Hope Clark
Climate XChange Maryland has worked on the Climate Crisis and Education Act for the last two years. It’s a bill that puts a price on carbon emissions created from transportation fuels and non-transportation fuels. The generated funds create dividends for low-income families, energy workers in transition, a green infrastructure fund, and education.
A “carbon fee and dividend” policy isn’t the only way to price carbon though, and not all “dividend” policies reduce emissions. The goal is to design and pass a policy that reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and creates more equity by eliminating harm in frontline communities.
The United States ranks #23 in the world when it comes to illnesses and deaths due to air pollution. Criteria Air Pollutants directly affect our health and GHG pollutants directly shift the fragile balance of our Earth’s ecosystems, potentially displacing all forms of life. Since 1958, the concentration of CO2 in our atmosphere has risen 100 parts per million (ppm), reaching nearly 420 ppm in May 2021. Ice-core records show that CO2 levels now far exceed any that were on earth for the last 800,000 years. Our government and the fossil fuel industry have known about the devastating effects of excessive heat trapping gases for 60 years. As the species that has created global warming largely through burning fossil fuels, we have to be the ones to stop it.
Let’s look at the carbon fee and dividend mechanism of pricing pollution as a means to mitigate harm. The dividend concept started in Alaska in the 1970’s with the establishment of the Permanent Fund Dividend Division for oil companies to pay residents a royalty fee from the benefits of selling the oil that comes from their land. This policy does not price carbon emissions though and has no incremental rise in the price of the product to eventually price out the use of it. While pollution isn’t mitigated through this policy, it was an idea many policymakers found intriguing.
The carbon fee and dividend policy here in Maryland puts a price on the externalities of fossil fuel products, and gives back what has been collected to those who have been harmed. It slowly makes what is hurting us and our planet more and more expensive. It creates a market signal for businesses to shift away from using fossil fuels while maintaining a sound economic structure. It transforms how we use energy to create a sustainable society.
In 2008, the Canadian province of British Columbia imposed a carbon fee on carbon pollution with dividends that incrementally rose from $10 to $30 per ton of CO2 by 2014. That revenue was returned to citizens in the form of cuts to personal and corporate income taxes, low-income tax credits, and a property tax reduction for homeowners. Their economy grew about 12 percent, (higher than the national average). Carbon emissions per person went down almost 10 percent, twice as fast as the nation. Economically, it works. But can a carbon fee and dividend policy address environmental racism? It’s all about what happens to the revenue.
You can track the five pricing carbon bills presently in the 117th Congress with revenue going in different directions. The newest federal proposal is the Save Our Future Act, which prices CO2 at $54 per ton but also prices Criteria Area Pollutants such as nitrogen oxides, fine particulate matter, and sulfur dioxide. Revenue includes a fee revenue rebate, grants for states to help low-income households, environmental justice communities, and workers transitioning to new industries.
Will it pass? Who knows, but we are not waiting around. This is why we are researching how frontline communities in Maryland are affected. What do they need? What do our counties, cities, and towns need to support them? We must pass state carbon pricing policies that are just and equitable, and we need your help. We know that making products more expensive is a sure way to persuade most of us to stop using them and putting funds in the hands of the folks that need them most is effective.
If you would like to be part of the conversation, please join the Rebuild Maryland Coalition. Contact Hope@climate-xchange.org for more information.
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- Maryland LCV Hosts statewide Town Hall, with special guest Senator Chris Van Hollen, about the benefits of the American Jobs Plan for all Marylanders. Check out the recording HERE and press release HERE.
- Plan Unveiled for New Rail Tunnel in Baltimore, to be Named after Frederick Douglass: “Replacing the B&P Tunnel is an important endeavor that will result in faster, more reliable rail service for passengers up and down our country’s busiest rail corridor,” said U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Transportation and Infrastructure. “It will also be a key investment for Baltimore City. But it will take resources, a long-term commitment, and partnership among all of us at the federal, state and municipal level.” READ MORE
- Md. Coal-Fired Power Plant Will Retire Five Years Early Before Worker Retraining Kicks In: "This accelerated time frame underscores yet again the urgency of having a transition plan in place for workers and communities that have depended on the plant’s revenues and that have borne the brunt of harmful pollution for decades.” READ MORE
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Report Finds Md. Greatly Underestimated Landfill Methane Emissions: For over a decade, Maryland has substantially underestimated the amount of greenhouse gases produced from its landfills, according to a new report by an environmental watchdog organization. READ MORE
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- Change, Local Pollution and Economic Inequality: "Climate change has never been an isolated problem, but policies often treat it like one. For vulnerable communities in the United States, the impact of a changing climate is part of a suite of problems — economic, social and environmental — that hits disproportionately hard [...] In addition to charging a fee on carbon polluters nationally, the Save Our Future Act would charge fees to polluters that emit substances that cause smog and other health hazards in communities at particular risk to this pollution." READ MORE
- Air Pollution’s Invisible Toll on Your Health: "Given that most of the pollutants we inhale enter the atmosphere from sources like industrial machinery, power plants, combustion engines and cars, efforts to switch from fossil fuels to clean energy sources like wind power and powering vehicles with electric energy instead of gasoline and diesel can have a major impact on air quality." READ MORE
- As Democrats spar over advancing Biden’s climate agenda, they move to cut methane: The vote to re-establish more stringent oversight of methane, whose emissions have surged at a startling rate in recent years, focuses on the oil and gas sector, which ranks as the nation’s largest industrial source of methane emissions. READ MORE
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Is climate change amping up the Pacific Northwest heat wave? Yes — and it’s time to stop asking: “‘Now, if we have an extreme heat wave, the null hypothesis is, ‘Climate change is making that worse,’ said Andrew Dessler, a professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University. Instead of having to prove that climate change did affect a heat wave, Dessler explained, the burden of proof is now on any scientist to prove that global warming didn’t play a role.” READ MORE
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- Once Again, Our Actions are Misaligned With the Reality of this Crisis: With such compelling evidence that it’s more than possible, transitioning to renewable energy systems is simply a no-brainer. The data to support this conclusion is only growing, with report after report detailing that humans are more than capable of achieving a future free of fossil fuels. Yet despite the overwhelming research suggesting the world can, and must, move away from planet-warming fuels, many fossil fuel projects and proposals continue to move forward. READ MORE
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In a Climate Emergency, Pennsylvania City Wants to Stop Burning Your Trash: In the context of the climate crisis, the burning of trash is a practice that is at the very least counterintuitive because it releases heat-trapping gasses, but more importantly is hazardous to the health of people who live nearby burn sites. Most of these facilities are located in frontline communities, ones that are disproportionately burdened with, and least equipped to deal with, the effects of environmental harms. Chester, Pennsylvania is the site of one of the largest trash incinerators in the United States and their public health crisis illustrates the major impact of environmental racism. READ MORE
- Green Investments Chart a Path Forward, Here’s How Communities Stand to Benefit: We have an unprecedented opportunity to build on our successes, learn from our mistakes, and foster economic prosperity, climate action, and community well-being. States will play a crucial role in deciding how federal stimulus dollars are dispersed and spent — meaning their decisions will likely have lasting impacts on economic recovery and the climate crisis. READ MORE
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Jon Grossman, Norah Dooley, Nina Kammerer, and Kathleen Flanagan on Unions Working for Climate Action: When labor unions were first established in the mid-19th century, they were considered some of the most radical organizations in the country as they advocated for workers rights through civil disobedience. Today, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) 509’s Climate and Environmental Justice Committee (CEJC) works tirelessly to promote a fair green energy transition for its members and all unions. READ MORE
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Big Shifts Finally Shaking Up Big Oil: Over the past month, major shifts within the industry seem to have marked a new era of corporate accountability and unprecedented reckoning for their role in this crisis. In the words of activist and author Bill McKibben, “crushing blows to three of the world’s largest oil companies have made it clear that the arguments many have been making for decades have sunk in at the highest levels.” READ MORE
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LET THE RECORD SHOW
A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993, Sarah Schulman
ACT UP united a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis. “These were people who were unable to sit out a historic cataclysm […] In case of emergency, they were not bystanders.”
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Acknowledgements:
Author: Wandra Ashley-Williams
Senior Editor: Wandra Ashley-Williams
Layout & Editors: Hope Clark, Christian Morris, and Maria Virginia Olano
Graphic Design: Amanda Griffiths
Featured Image: Photo courtesy of Veeterzy via Unsplash
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