written by: Richard Reis, the WES Earth Ethics Team

The Earth Ethics Team is hosting a letter-writing table next Sunday, February 25 to promote essential Maryland General Assembly legislation HB 878, 100% Clean Renewable Energy Equity Act of 2018.

We will urge state delegates to support this essential bill for the following reasons:

• The increasing adverse impact of climate change
  • Our area is especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change as it brings on more severe storm and sea level rise
  • Urban populations suffer heat waves that threaten health and lives.
  • Farmers are experiencing increasingly severe cycles of drought and floods.
  • As Congressman Raskin recently noted we have climate refugees first from Louisiana and now from Puerto Rico.
• The health-destroying effects of air pollution coming from combustion-based energy sources, such as coal, but also burning trash, biomass (trees), and paper-production byproducts.
• The decreasing costs and increasing availability of clean renewable alternatives especially wind and solar.
• The increasing availability of energy storage technologies at affordable prices.

The electricity sector is one of the largest producers of carbon pollution that drives climate change.

This bill represents a new, feasible, and affordable approach that responds to the urgency of climate change and brings the economic benefits to the state and its workers.

• It requires utilities to buy progressively more cleanly-generated electrical energy until reaching 100% by 2035.
• It is modeled after similar programs in New York and California.
• It provides immediate incentives to assure that a large portion of the clean energy jobs and businesses are in Maryland. This gets us away from the boom and bust cycles of the current approaches.
• It provides job training to equip workers for these jobs.

Please stop by our letter-writing table next Sunday. We will have sample letters that you can sign or you can write your own.