MAINE MONITOR • February 7, 2021
To stabilize the planet’s temperature, “the most important two decades are the one we’ve just finished,” author and activist Bill McKibben recently wrote, “and the one we’ve just begun.” The Biden-Harris administration recognizes – as no previous administration has – that climate action is a limited-time offer. Following an intensive push last year to determine how best to cut 80 percent of Maine’s carbon emissions by 2050, the state is poised to begin implementing its four-year road map, “Maine Won’t Wait.” The timing is fortuitous, given new opportunities for federal climate funding. Numerous bills and bond proposals are being developed to advance the plan, but for its 50-plus recommendations to work, climate considerations must be suffused across all state agencies. As at the federal level, Maine needs a “whole of government” approach to tackling the climate crisis.