Special Presentation: An Inconvenient Truth in a Very Few Words

Tim Truett, now a member of the Unity of Gaithersburg Social Justice Team, has created an original and unique presentation, “An Inconvenient Truth in Very Few Words,” that combines more than a hundred vivid photographs, charts, and other graphics and more than a hundred original haiku to portray the science and politics of climate change in a very few words. Interested readers can click on the link to browse the presentation at their own time and pace. Click here to view the presentation. 

CLIMATE CHANGE

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In March 2023, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC) published its 6th Assessment Report. As with its earlier publications, the authority behind these reports is massive and the overall picture is bleak. Wikipedia states:

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The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the United Nations (UN) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the sixth in a series of reports which assess scientific, technical, and socio-economic information concerning climate change. Three Working Groups (WGI, II, and III) covered the following topics: The Physical Science Basis (WGI); Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability (WGII); Mitigation of Climate Change (WGIII). Of these, the first study was published in 2021, the second report February 2022, and the third in April 2022. The final synthesis report was finished in March 2023.

The first of the three working groups published its report on 9 August 2021, Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis. A total of 234 scientists from 66 countries contributed to this first working group (WGI) report on the Physical Science. The authors built on more than 14,000 scientific papers to produce a 3,949-page report, which was then approved by 195 governments. The Summary for Policymakers (SPM) document was drafted by scientists and agreed to line-by-line by the 195 governments in the IPCC during the five days leading up to 6 August 2021.

 
The panel published a longer report, a summary for policymakers, a presentation and a short "Headline Statements" document, summarizing its findings in 3-4 pages. Among other it contains the next points:

• Climate change is a threat to humans and planet. There is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure Sustainability. Climate action is enabled by international cooperation (including access to required financing, particularly for vulnerable groups), inclusive governance and coordinated policies. Clear goals, diverse knowledge, finance, technology are enablers for climate action. For achieving climate goals, financing need to increase many-fold. There is sufficient global capital, but there are barriers for redirecting it to climate action. Choices made in next years will have impacts for thousands of years.

• Humans, mainly through emissions of greenhouse gases, certainly caused global warming. Those emissions continue to rise, coming from unsustainable energy use, land use, consumption, with unequal contributions between regions, countries, and individuals. Global temperature rose by 1.1°C from 1850–1900 to 2011–2020. Human-caused climate change caused widespread and fast changes all over the world, which has led to severe negative impacts on nature and people. Communities who have contributed the least to climate change are disproportionately affected.

• Adaptation has increased, but adaptation gaps exist, and will continue to grow at current rate of action. Some ecosystems and regions have reached their adaptation limits. Maladaptation can be avoided by good planning and implementation, with co-benefits. Current financing is insufficient for adaptation, especially in low income countries.

• Mitigation has increased, but even if NDCs announced by October 2021 will be met, warming will likely exceed 1.5°C in the 21st century and it is hard to limit warming to 2°C. There are gaps between really implemented policies and NDCs. Financing is insufficient to meet mitigation goals.

• More greenhouse gas emissions will cause more global warming, reaching the 1.5°C limit in the near term. More warming will intensify many concurrent negative impacts. With more warming, long-term negative impacts are many times higher than current, there is more likelihood of abrupt and/or irreversible changes, risks, low-likelihood events with very large negative impacts, losses and damages, climatic and non-climatic impacts, increasingly interacting, compound and cascading, more complex and difficult to manage. Adaptation options will become less effective, more human and natural systems will reach adaptation limits.

• Projected CO2 emissions from currently existing fossil fuel infrastructure would exceed the carbon budget for 1.5°C. For limiting warming to 1.5°C and to 2°C, we need rapid, deep, in most cases, immediate GHG emissions reductions in all sectors by 2030 and reaching net zero CO2 emissions in the early 2050s and around the early 2070s, respectively.

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Reports can be downloaded at:  Climate Reports  United Nations

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Community Choice Energy – Bulk Electricity Purchasing

In 2021, the Maryland General Assembly passed a law, the Montgomery County Community Choice Energy Pilot Program—that gives Montgomery County the authority to implement Community Choice Energy (CCE). The County will be able to purchase energy on behalf of residential and small commercial electricity customers. This bulk purchasing will result in lower prices, including lower prices for clean energy such as solar and wind. As is standard practice, the general language of the law must be translated into the more specific language of its implementing regulations. In its December 2022 quarterly report, the MoCo Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) stated that it developed proposed regulations for the Community Choice Energy program to the Public Service Commission’s Community Choice Aggregation Work Group, which is charged with preparing draft regulations.
Reference: Climate Action Plan Progress report - FY2023 Q2 (montgomerycountymd.gov)

Montgomery County Green Bank
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The Green Bank is a local nonprofit that helps with financing construction projects to increase energy efficiency and the use of renewable energy. Click here for more information about this program. To learn more about the Montgomery County Green Bank, click here.

Recycling in Montgomery County

Montgomery County's Department of Environmental Protection has produced a video series designed to educate residents on how to recycle properly. Click here for details.

Montgomery County Climate Action Plan (CAP)

In December, 2020, Montgomery County released a 300 page Climate Action Plan (CAP) that included more than 80 recommended climate change mitigation actions across a wide range of domains. Stakeholders and the public submitted hundreds of comments on this plan, which is now final. The County is working on dozens of action items in the plan.

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Click https://montgomerycountymd.gov/climate/Resources/Files/climate/climate- action-plan.pdf

for the Climate Action Plan.

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In addition, there is now a consolidated Climate Action Portal with links to many climate action reports and related resources. Click here.

Building Energy Performance Standards (BEPS)  

In December 2017, Montgomery County declared a climate emergency and accelerated community-wide climate goals to be carbon neutral by 2035. The residential and commercial building sectors combine to contribute 50% of greenhouse gas emissions in Montgomery County. The County is implementing a variety of programs and policies to mitigate emissions in new and existing buildings, including a Building Energy Performance Standard for commercial and multifamily buildings. On April 19, 2022, Bill 16-21 to implement BEPS was unanimously passed by the County Council. Executive regulations related to bill 16-21 implementation will be issued no later than December 31, 2023. 

BEPS are policies that establish performance levels for buildings and drive all buildings that BEPS covers to achieve these levels in the long-term with required progress at regular intervals in the interim. BEPS sets a minimum threshold for energy performance for existing buildings, which are based on and measured against a building’s demonstrated energy performance, as shown in their benchmarking data. The Montgomery County Building Performance Improvement Board (BPIB) advises on the implementation of building energy performance standards (BEPS). Information about BPIB meetings are shown under Pending Events, below. The main page for the BPIB can be found here.

Recycle your used electronics

A lot of electronic items are no longer usable. For more information on how to recycle your electronics, Click here.   

Recycle your cellphone

This article from Charity Watch details the how, where, and why of recycling your outdated cellphones:  Click Here  

Ways to reduce your carbon footprint

These four handouts provide dozens of simple, practical suggestions for reducing our personal carbon footprints in terms of food, transportation, recycling, and home energy use. Click on the links below to download the pdfs. 
1. Sustainable food practices
2. Transportation        
3. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle    
4. Home Energy 

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