Gov. Baker Touts Massachusetts’ Preparedness For Climate Change | WBZ NewsRadio 1030

BOSTON (State Home Information Service) —Sharing the stage with a frontrunner of the European Union’s govt department, Gov. Charlie Baker on Monday once more touted Massachusetts’ function in sparking “the equal of a gold rush” in offshore wind and stated the Bay State stands alone in terms of getting ready cities and cities for the results of a altering local weather.

The governor’s feedback got here in New York Metropolis on the 2022 assembly of the Clinton International Initiative, placed on by former President Invoice Clinton’s basis to coincide with Local weather Week and the United Nations Common Meeting. Baker was a part of a panel that touched upon the dynamic between decarbonization and local weather resilience, and it additionally included European Fee Vice President Frans Timmermans and Carbon Direct Vice Chair Nili Gilbert.

“That is on a small scale — we’re only a state — however I am fairly certain we’re the one state within the nation that is carried out vulnerability planning in all of our communities and has really began to spend cash on coping with lots of these vulnerability plans and the problems that have been raised by them,” Baker stated. He added, “And I do know resiliency is not the sexiest a part of this complete drill, but when your neighborhood floods out each time it rains, or if the primary bridge that folks get out and in of your neighborhood floods out each time it thinks about raining, you might have critical, unfavourable penalties to these communities that we ought to be addressing alongside the way in which right here. And I am actually pleased with the truth that we’re, for all intents and functions, the one state I do know of that actually went exhausting at this resiliency piece.”

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As of final month, 341 of the 351 municipalities in Massachusetts (97 p.c of cities and representing greater than 99 p.c of the state’s inhabitants) have been a part of the state’s Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness grant program to get assist making infrastructure extra resilient in opposition to local weather change. Since its creation by govt order in 2017, packages much like MVP have been adopted by quite a lot of different American states.

The governor on Monday additionally repeated considered one of his favourite boasts, that the 2016 clear power legislation he signed “translated into kind of the equal of a gold rush as a result of the worth level we obtained on it actually did shock the world in some respects and folks out of the blue realized you possibly can do offshore wind at a value level that was per different types of power.”

“Nearly each state up and down the East Coast out of the blue determined to get into the area as quickly as that first procurement got here down,” Baker stated.

Written By Colin A. Younger/SHNS