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Maine State Consultant Lydia Blume of York is amongst members of the Nationwide Caucus of Environmental Legislators who’ve been in Glasgow, Scotland on the COP 26 local weather convention.
Blume serves on Maine’s local weather council, which helped draft the governor’s four-year climate plan to scale back carbon emissions.
This story is a part of our collection “Climate Driven: A deep dive into Maine’s response, one county at a time.“
Talking from Scotland, Blume informed Morning Version host Irwin Gratz that she attended the convention to point out how states like Maine can take significant motion. And over the previous few days, she says she’s additionally been struck by what she’s seen and heard.
This interview has been calmly edited for readability.
Blume: One of many issues that basically affected me is the youth motion right here in Glasgow. It has been very profound. I used to be fortunate sufficient to carry my 21-year-old daughter right here with me. And he or she has associated to me her emotions about being a youth within the period of local weather change, and the long run, and the way dismal it’s. And I would like to have the ability to come again and say, we’re listening to you, our youth of Maine, our youth of the world, that we’re in Maine truly making a distinction. And we all know and recognize the significance of this. And I discover that that’s one thing that I will carry again and actually attempt to relate to our youth in Maine, as a result of it is scary, being younger, and attempting to determine if you wish to even have kids.
Gratz: The US beneath President Biden has been attempting to reassure other people world wide that the USA is re-committed to combating local weather change. And I am questioning if, as you maybe have labored with another folks on the convention, whether or not that message is getting by means of and is being believed?
Oh, I actually assume that folks assume it is again. They’re so relieved. It is not been a giant subject of dialog: we’re actually speaking about what we will do. The urgency, the urgency of lowering carbon, and that by 2030, is so, so profound, we have to do it.
The states right here within the U.S. can maybe be extra nimble of their work on local weather change. However there are limits, aren’t there?
We had been speaking about that, within the carbon pricing dialogue of [the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative], how the value of carbon is just too low, that we’ve so as to add that social worth price to the value of carbon. And that basically has to come back from the federal authorities.
African nations are involved that they actually need extra developed international locations like us, just like the Europeans, just like the Chinese language to maneuver extra rapidly than they are going to have the ability to, to get off of fossil fuels — the thought being that fossil fuels, which Africa nonetheless has in abundance, are going to be extra obligatory there for these economies to develop. I am simply curious as to what your response to that’s.
Nicely, we hope that possibly they’ll skip over the necessity for fossil fuels and go on to renewables. I imply, that is the hope, I believe, from everybody who seems like we wish to dwell as much as the the usual of dwelling of the USA, that we simply want to have the ability to enhance our know-how growth quick sufficient and provides sufficient cash to those states, resembling in Africa, that may assist them transfer on to electrical autos, for instance,
Are you selecting up any new concepts for both insurance policies or laws that Maine might go to fight local weather change?
We did loads of work on that local weather council report. There are loads of suggestions in it. The one message I’ve to come back again to is how we will do it sooner. As a result of that is what we have to do. We have to, because the state of Maine, as the USA authorities, as our area, we have to do that sooner. We have to cut back carbon. It is the last decade of doing. We should do.
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