Please lend your voice to support actions that will help Maine’s coast including our beloved Casco Bay, adapt to climate change.
The Maine Climate Council’s Working Groups* have drafted numerous strategies to help the state prepare to implement a climate change action plan. The Council is now prioritizing and selecting which strategies to recommend for implementation first.
We ask you to join us and submit comments NOW (deadline is Thursday), letting the Council know that you support actions designed to improve and protect water quality, including all of the following:
- Increasing monitoring in Maine to fill data gaps
- Making climate change data available to local decision-makers
- Providing technical assistance and funding to coastal communities to address climate change
- Revising laws that regulate land use in coastal areas, to ensure that they incorporate consideration of sea level rise projections, increases in storm surge, more intense storm events, and excess nutrient loading brought on by the changing climate
- Investing in climate-ready infrastructure
- Preserving marshes and eelgrass beds,
and - Participating in a collaborative effort with other states, known as the Transportation and Climate Initiative, to equitably reduce transportation emissions, Maine’s largest source of greenhouse gases.
These strategies are foundational if Maine is to address and adapt to climate change. In order to protect our coast from looming changes, we need sound science, technical support, and an adequate legal framework.
All of the above recommendations are included in the draft strategies that the Maine Climate Council is considering. The Council needs to hear from you to help ensure that these crucial actions are implemented.
The deadline to submit comments is Thursday, September 24.
The Maine Climate Council has a form on its website to accept comments from the public. In the form, choose “Coastal and Marine Working Group” in the “My comments are about:” field. You will also need to fill out all of the fields, though you can use N/A for any fields that do not apply to you. You can cut and paste the bulleted actions above into the form or put them into your own words. Again, here is the portal to submit your comments: https://www.maine.gov/future/initiatives/climate/climate-council/contact.
Thank you so much for helping Casco Bay by writing to the Maine Climate Council. Thank you for joining us in supporting this incredible effort.
*The Maine Climate Council was created to help Maine develop and implement a plan for Maine to address and adapt to climate change. Casco Baykeeper Ivy Frignoca has been honored to sit on the Council’s Coastal and Marine Working Group. You can see the Draft Proposed Climate Strategy Framework for Maine’s Climate Action Plan and the Draft Strategy Reports from the Working Groups here.
