skip to main content
skip to newscasts

Monday, March 18, 2024

Public News Service Logo
facebook instagram linkedin reddit youtube twitter
view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

SD public defense duties shift from counties to state; SCOTUS appears skeptical of restricting government communications with social media companies; Trump lawyers say he can't make bond; new scholarships aim to connect class of 2024 to high-demand jobs.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

The SCOTUS weighs government influence on social media, and who groups like the NRA can do business with. Biden signs an executive order to advance women's health research and the White House tells Israel it's responsible for the Gaza humanitarian crisis.

view newscast page
play newscast audioPlay

Midwest regenerative farmers are rethinking chicken production, Medicare Advantage is squeezing the finances of rural hospitals and California's extreme swing from floods to drought has some thinking it's time to turn rural farm parcels into floodplains.

Pushing Maryland to Become a Leader in Climate Change

play audio
Play

Monday, June 19, 2017   

ANNAPOLIS, Md. – Now that President Trump has pulled the United States out of the Paris Climate Accord, several groups have banded together to ask lawmakers in Maryland to make a firm commitment to address climate change regardless of what happens on the federal level.

They've sent an open letter to Gov. Larry Hogan and members of the General Assembly stressing the need to achieve the greenhouse-gas reductions that are needed to slow and ultimately stop global warming.

Dr. Alfred Bartlett, co-lead of the Climate Health Action Team for Chesapeake Physicians for Social Responsibility praises Hogan for saying Maryland is committed to the Paris Accord, and that the state's goals are even more ambitious than the Paris agreement, but they want him to take it a step further.

"We're urging the governor to make a more formal affirmation and commitment to working with other parties to achieve the goals that we set out for ourselves," he says.

Those goals were included in legislation passed by the Maryland General Assembly in 2015 to reduce carbon emissions by 40 percent by 2030. Bartlett says exactly how that's going to happen hasn't been determined, and he believes lawmakers should spell that out.

Bartlett also says Maryland is especially vulnerable to increasingly violent storms, sea-level rise, flooding, heat emergencies and other environmental effects of climate change. He says to fight it the state needs to end reliance on fossil fuels.

He states that right now, solar makes up only about four percent of Maryland's total energy usage.

"Only about two and a half percent of that is generated in the state, and we don't have a lot of wind being generated in the state," he explains. "Maryland imports a lot of electricity from other states and a lot of that is from fossil fuel-generated plants."

The letter asks lawmakers to set targets to reduce carbon emissions in the electric sector by at least five percent annually, to support expanding wind and solar generation and aggressively work to remove coal and other combustible fuels from the state's electric power generation mix.


get more stories like this via email

more stories
Corporate partners sign contracts to offer a graduate assistantship and pay the students. In turn, MSU pays the graduate assistant's tuition, fees and salary, so the assistantship is directly tied to the academic experience. (pressmaster/Adobe Stock)

play sound

By Victoria Lim for WorkingNation.Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for Missouri News Service reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Col…


Social Issues

play sound

A new report brands Connecticut's tax system as "regressive" for low- to middle-income residents and uses a report from the state to make its point…

Environment

play sound

Backers of a new federal rule said it will increase fairness for livestock and poultry producers, in North Carolina and across the country. The U.S…


A study by the advocacy group Inseparable showed one in five adults said at any given time, they consider their mental health to be either 'fair' or 'poor.' (Adobe Stock)

Health and Wellness

play sound

Mental health care advocates are encouraging federal agencies to adopt a proposed update to regulations which would expand access to psychological car…

Social Issues

play sound

With hotter summers bringing hotter working conditions, the Maryland Department of Labor is implementing a heat stress standard to protect workers …

Social Issues

play sound

By Jimmy Cloutier for OpenSecrets.Broadcast version by Roz Brown for Texas News Service reporting for the OpenSecrets-Public News Service Collaboratio…

Environment

play sound

Recreational fishermen in New England say commercial trawlers are threatening the survival of smaller businesses relying on a healthy stock of Atlanti…

 

Phone: 303.448.9105 Toll Free: 888.891.9416 Fax: 208.247.1830 Your trusted member- and audience-supported news source since 1996 Copyright © 2021