Gov. Charlie Baker traveled to New York City Monday to take part in a local weather change targeted discussion board hosted by former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
“This is on a small scale — we’re just a state — but I’m pretty sure we’re the only state in the country that’s done vulnerability planning in all of our communities and has actually started to spend money on dealing with many of those vulnerability plans and the issues that were raised by them,” Baker mentioned of the Commonwealth’s response to local weather change.
The Clinton Global Initiative, first established in 2005, “convenes global leaders to create and implement solutions to the world’s most pressing challenges,” in keeping with the initiative’s web site.
Baker’s go to to mingle with the forty second President and his friends comes simply months after he signed a landmark piece of local weather laws which places Massachusetts on monitor for internet zero carbon emissions by 2050 and can prohibit the sale of gasoline powered automobiles by 2035.
That invoice, Baker mentioned Monday, was really the third his administration has issued in response to the results of local weather change, along with previous work on offshore wind and a grant program that makes the over 350 Commonwealth communities resilient in opposition to excessive climate.
“I know resiliency isn’t the sexiest part of this whole drill, but if your community floods out every time it rains, or if the main bridge that people get in and out of your community floods out every time it thinks about raining, you have serious, negative consequences to those communities that we should be addressing along the way,” he mentioned.
Baker mentioned a key to the entire course of is ensuring that communities which have been most impacted by a altering local weather — typically the least served communities general — will not be disregarded of the job growth {that a} clear vitality answer represents.
“We’ve been very aggressive at making sure the jobs that come with this development go to, in many cases, the folks that typically did not get into a lot of the previous energy sectors,” he mentioned. “The game there is you have to do a better job at making sure those jobs go to people who, historically, haven’t had a chance to play.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”