Ep 57: The Maryland Climate Futures Symposium

Amy Barnes41min

Dr. Ian Anson00:03

Hello and welcome to Retrieving the Social Sciences, a production of the Center for Social Science Scholarship. I'm your host, Ian Anson, Associate Professor of Political Science here at UMBC. On today's show, as always, we'll be hearing from UMBC faculty, students, visiting speakers, and community partners about the social science research they've been performing in recent times. Qualitative, quantitative, applied, empirical, normative. On Retrieving the Social Sciences, we bring the best of you UMBC's social science community to you.

Dr. Ian Anson00:41

Maryland is a small state that is full of interesting things. For one thing, as my political science colleague recently reminded me, it's the only state that looks like a gerrymander due to its natural geography with the Chesapeake Bay, the Western panhandle, and Delaware's carved out of the Eastern Shore, making it look a bit as if modern politicians had drawn it just to gain a political advantage. But it is within that wacky geography that we find such incredible biodiversity and impressive natural features. Everything from sandy beach front and mountain lakes to quiet estuaries, where our famous blue crabs scuttle about. And it's all in this really small package. You know, the Appalachian Trail passes by my house in Baltimore, only about an hour away over in Frederick. And if I were to head the other direction from my house, I could be on the other side of the bay in about the same amount of time headed to the coast. Maryland is a remarkable place filled with stunning natural beauty, as much as it houses a densely populated urban corridor. Maryland is also a place that is experiencing climate change in specific ways that speak to its unique geography. The land of pleasant living, or so it's been nicknamed, is also experiencing changes to its climate that render it hotter and more challenging for urban residents, more prone to flooding and the permanent recession of low lying islands and swamp lands, and less comfortable for our 1000s of native plants and animal species. Climate change is upon us. But how can we as residents of Maryland respond?

Dr. Ian Anson02:18

In today's feature broadcast, I'm proud and excited to bring you a roundtable conversation featuring five prominent voices in this discussion. Last month, the Sondheim Public Affairs Scholars Program convened a special symposium entitled "Maryland's Climate Futures." The symposium focused on policy approaches to the public problem of climate change in Maryland. If you want to learn more about the Sondheim Program, by the way, which offers scholarships to high achieving students with a passion for public service and public affairs, I would recommend you check out episode 38 that we recorded back in March of last year. In that episode of Retrieving the Social Sciences, I speak with Jessica Cook and Dr. Laura Antkowiak about the program and the fantastic ways in which it helps students advance their advocacy and leadership goals. The Sondheim Climate Futures policy event brought together distinguished speakers from academia, government, and nonprofit organizations. Serena Coleman McIlwain, the Secretary of the Environment for the State of Maryland was there. Dr. Meghan Avolio, Associate Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Johns Hopkins University, also joined the panel. Sarah T. Koser, the Restoration Program Manager at the Chesapeake Bay Trust was in attendance in addition to Julieta Rodrigo, an Urban and Community Resilience Manager at the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. And last but not least, the panel featured Brady Walker, head of US Government Affairs and Market Strategy at Ørsted, a major Danish energy firms specializing in green energy delivery. Brady is also a UMBC Sondheim Scholars Program alumnus, I hope that you enjoy this special symposium. I learned a lot from my attendance at the event. And I hope that you can be inspired by the passion and care that this panel has put into their work on Maryland's climate.

Speaker 104:01

I just have a couple of questions that we've created for you guys. So the first one being I'm going to direct it we're going to kind of snake around. So I'll start with Dr. Meghan Avolio first. What do you see as the biggest climate related challenge faced by Maryland?

Dr. Meghan Avolio04:15

I'm not gonna have a real creative answer to this. I think climate change is a big one. different patterns in precipitation and higher temperatures. And because Maryland is a coastal state, obviously sea level rise. I'm a plant ecologist and my perspective is often thinking about plants. And so when we think about the climate changing, I'm concerned about how plants we will tolerate that and what that how that will impact the services we get from plants. Go ahead.

Serena Coleman McIlwain04:41

Okay, sure. I was thinking, Oh, we're gonna say the same thing because we all know the challenges of Maryland, right. From my perspective, from Maryland's Department of the Environment, what I see are the biggest challenges there's so many it's hard to, you know, just say what are the biggest but one as you stated climate change Climate change is impacting all of us, our health, our lives. And it's not. Climate change isn't fair either. It's, you know, it's just not it's, it's not created equally. And so the impacts of climate change to disadvantaged communities are different than other neighborhoods. There are not a whole lot of trees and some neighborhoods. So you don't have that. That shade right, that cover that's needed. So you have elderly people who are impacted by heat, heat problems, heat waves, so that's a problem. We also, one of the other problems is, as you all know, with climate change, we have more storms than we've ever had before, we have more flooding. And it's just really creating a problem with for all Marylanders for all homes. And so that's one of the biggest challenges that that I see in my role. Another problem, I'll say, with the environmental justice, which is what I'm talking about the low income and disadvantaged communities, when you have heat waves, some of them do not have air conditioners, they can't afford them. And so it's just a real real issue. The other challenge that we have at the Maryland Department of the Environment is we have some of the most aggressive climate goals in the country. And it cost. So money funding to fund the green transition is really a challenge. We have a climate pollutions reduction plan that we just put out in December, I think it was about Yes, in December, you should read it. It's only 120 pages. And we outlined the investment that's needed. And it's about $1 billion of money that we have to find that is a challenge, because our budget in Maryland doesn't support that fund that $1 billion. So we have to be creative. So that's basically what I see are the biggest challenges. Thanks

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