(deep upbeat music)
- Hello everyone, thank you for joining us.
I'm Elizabeth Kenney of CRCA,
the Center for Research and Creative Activities.
And I'm delighted to welcome you
to the first lecture of the spring 2022,
contemporary issue series.
Each year, the contemporary issue series
presents three lectures that examine a critical issue
from different perspectives.
This year, the theme is climate change.
The ongoing series is sponsored by CRCA
and the Berry Library.
But this year we are particularly honored
to have the Earth Days planning committee
join us as co-sponsors.
That committee has developed a schedule
of more than 20 events this spring,
most of which will occur between April 11 and 15.
The theme of the Earth Day's programming this year
is Climate Crises: Actions for Just and Livable World.
After this event,
we can send an email to participants that will include
a link to the full spectrum of Earth Day activities.
Tonight, to kick off the contemporary issues series,
Dr. John Hayes of the Salem State University
Geography and Sustainability Department
examines the issue of climate change at local levels
in his talk: climate action in climate resiliency planning
by city, county and regional governments
to confront and mitigate climate change.
In the second lecture on Tuesday, April 5th,
Dr. Noel Healy, Geography and Sustainability Department,
expands that lens to address the climate change
at the international and national levels in his talk:
"Tackling Climate Change and Inequality Together,
The Case for a Green New Deal.
And again, we can send you links to the events.
In the final talk on Tuesday, April 19th,
Terry Gallagher, the Sustainability
and Environmental Health and Safety Coordinator
at Salem State will bring the issue home
to the university level in her talk,
Addressing Climate Change on Salem State's Campus
and Why it Matters.
All the lectures are recorded and archived.
You can see any lecture you missed by following the link
that we can send you in the follow up email.
There will be a question and answer period
at the end of this talk tonight,
you can type in your questions at any time
that you are inspired during the presentation,
by clicking on the Q&A button
at the bottom of your screen.
The moderator whom I will introduce in a minute,
will ask questions of the speaker
and may have to combine some of the questions
if they repeat similar things.
We'll be wrapping up at eight and apologize in advance,
if we don't get to your question due to limited time.
If you should happen to get bumped out of the webinar,
you can quit Zoom and then reenter using the same link.
Closed captioning is available
by clicking on the live transcript button
at the bottom of your screen.
Before I introduce our moderator for this evening,
we would all like to express our enthusiastic gratitude
to Gail Rankin
for providing technical support and expertise.
The 2022 series organizer and today's moderator
is Professor Stephen Young
of the Geography and Sustainability Department.
Dr. Young is a former chair of that department.
His current research focuses on climate change
in New England.
Recent publications include papers
on temperature change in New England,
snow cover change in New England and the use of drones
in climate change adaptation here on the north shore.
Thank you professor Young for creating such a timely
and engaging lecture series.
- Thank you, Elizabeth,
I appreciate the kind words that you have provided,
and I'm also very thankful that you have taken this
lecture series on and supported it,
and as you did last year and this year,
most appreciate that.
And also I do wanna thank Gail Rankin as well
to help us with the webinar, most appreciated.
It gives me great pleasure
to introduce my colleague and friend Dr. John Hayes.
Dr. Hayes is an Associate Professor
in the Geography and Sustainability Department
at Salem state University.
He teaches a wide range of physical geography,
natural resources and environmental courses
in both our undergraduate and masters programs.
His current major area of research
is in climate change planning by cities in New England
and selected cities in the US.
Professor Hayes is serving his fifth three year term
as a member of the city of Salem's
Sustainability, Energy and Resiliency Committee,
which he now chairs.
He was also appointed by the mayor
to serve on the city's climate change
vulnerability and adaptation working group.
And he's been a contributing member of an advisory group
to the joint Salem Beverly Climate Action Planning Effort,
resilient together.
Dr. Hayes has served as the vice president
and president of the New England
St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society
as regional counselor
on the American Association of Geographers
governing council,
and is now serving on the association's
Climate Action Task Force.
Dr. Hayes received his PhD and masters in geography
from UCLA and his BA in geography
with a math minor from Bowling Green State University.
And I wanna add one other thing is that Professor Hayes is
volunteered so much of his time,
his free time and his expertise
to the local governments in the region.
And I'm very excited to hear his talk tonight about how
the regional governments play a role
in combating climate change and adapting to climate change.
So please, I wish we were all in a room together,
and I would ask you to warmly
join me with warmly welcoming professor Hayes,
but I'm gonna do it for all of us.
So, John, thank you very much
for taking the time to talk with us tonight.
- Thank you, Steve.
Thank you so much for your kind introduction
and Elizabeth and Gail for your support
in this effort tonight.
So hello everybody,
I'm gonna do a share screen and we'll get started here
and there we go.
So can everybody see that?
I assume so.
So welcome, I'm really looking forward to tonight,
I do climate action planning in my courses.
So I teach global climate change,
which is climate change science and policy.
I do research on this
and then I'm devoted to the city of Salem
so it just all kind of comes together,
and the city benefits from my training and my
just wanting to just keep learning
about how to mitigate climate change.
So for the students in the audience,
this could have been another title for my talk.
As I'm showing you,
and I'm probably not gonna finish
everything I wanted to say,
but I want you to think about that,
everything I'm showing you requires a trained staff,
a dedicated person, attention to detail,
and you care about protecting the environment
and you could be a part of a city, a regional government,
regional planning agency, state government,
a nonprofit doing climate action planning,
resiliency planning, adaptation planning,
natural hazards, mitigation assessment,
and all of this ties into totally into sustainability.
So think about that as I talk tonight.
Here's the website
for the sustainability energy and resiliency committee
that I chair and our dedicated group of volunteers,
we're all volunteers, this committee meets monthly,
the chair and the vice chair meet bimonthly
to prepare for the month.
So it's a, and of course, wonderful city staff,
and we actually have three and a half positions now.
So it's really an amazing improvement
with the city of Salem to strive for sustainability.
So I'm gonna give a quick review
of evidence of climate change.
I'm speaking to an audience,
you probably see it in your face,
but I'm just gonna do a rapid fire look.
We can't do climate action planning
without talking about greenhouse gases,
and then I'm gonna focus on city planning,
but I'll try to,
if I have time to show you also
that it's done by counties
and RPAs and state government, of course,
and even local environmental groups.
And to the audience,
when I came to Salem state and learned about
counties in Massachusetts, it was a big shock.
I'm from Ohio, I went to grad school in California
and across our country county government exists.
So I was pretty surprised when I came to Massachusetts,
I've been teaching and having a unit on
climate change science and policy,
in almost all my classes over the years.
And 15, 20 years ago,
I would talk about prevention of climate change.
And then I would talk about how to mitigate,
if you can reduce greenhouse gas emissions,
you can then reduce the severity
of the impacts of climate change in terms of ocean warming,
air temperature warming, melting of land-based ice,
et cetera, et cetera.
And then would talk a bit about adaptation.
Well, in the last 10, towards 15 years,
the prevention of climate change
is totally an historical footnote.
Climate change is here,
and it's been here for 20 plus years,
especially in terms of just really in the data
observed evidence 2022 years, especially,
and so our efforts gotta be to mitigate
and to do planning for adaptation.
So here's my rapid fire, I'm gonna keep track of the time,
the astounding floods in west Europe a year ago,
that's hydrologists think it was like a once in a
500 year event,
or once in a 300 year event,
rain event that struck Belgium and Germany.
And climate change scientists have already begun
to do attribution to
the role that climate change played in the deadly floods.
The data about Greenland and Antarctica is just remarkable.
The accelerated melt is faster than scientists thought,
especially with Greenland.
And this was the Boston Globe
that was first carried in the Washington Post
of this weekend,
about the astounding warming,
warmth of the Arctic, Greenland and Antarctica.
Some of you have probably heard about the permafrost thaw,
the positive feedback,
maybe we teach our students about the methane release,
but this was from the CBC, Canadian Broadcast Company.
And their title here,
they interviewed scientists about the permafrost thaw.
And this is just a perfect description
of the importance of permafrost.
It's the glue that holds the Northern landscape together.
And so this is right in our face about thawing permafrost.
Climate change and fire is global from the Arctic
to the Tundra and the permafrost Tundra, excuse me,
in the pit of Greenland burning that's 2019 and 20,
the Siberian heat anomaly over the past several summers
is absolutely astounding to have a heat anomaly
of four to eight Celsius.
That's like 15 degrees of Fahrenheit.
It is for the summer, it's just remarkable.
Fires across Australia,
where I believe there's an assessment
of about a billion animals perished in those fires
a couple of years ago.
And then I'm sure you're all familiar with Amazon
and the New York Times in March of this year,
interviewed scientists regarding the tipping points research
that's going on.
And the scientists are worried about the carbon sink
tipping point threshold of the Amazon
with heat and drought and fire and logging, right?
The fires in California, we all are familiar with,
and this is paradise just the, the 2018 fire
was the most expensive natural disaster of 2018 globally,
and just horrific.
And then last summer was just this extremity,
the extreme heat that led to mortality,
excess mortality with the heat wave.
In a region that has no air conditioning,
British Columbia, Canada, and Seattle,
and the Pacific Northwest has very little AC
because of the Marine west coast climate.
And then this is the worry
for everybody who studies climate change,
water hydroelectricity, fire, firefighting in the west
is just is the mega drought potential of this enduring heat,
15 of the last 20 years.
So anyways, if you wanna see it all in one slide,
there you go from the union of concerned scientists,
10 signs of global warming,
if the students wanna go to that link.
So what is climate action planning?
It's to can we, can cities and towns
contribute to mitigation, reduce their emissions,
be efficient with their energy,
transition from fossil fuels,
which will be a contribution to fighting climate change.
And then cities are, can't wait to think about adaptation
so it's gotta be done simultaneously.
So this is what climate action planning is,
it's also assessing your risk to climate change,
your vulnerability, your assets, your city assets,
your Peabody Essex Museum,
your sewage treatment plant, your police station.
And it's your et cetera, et cetera.
Assessing your resiliency to climate change.
Can you build in resiliency with natural climate solutions?
As you build in resiliency and do
adaptation to climate change and climate action planning,
you need to incorporate and think about justice and equity.
And as you try to decarbonize,
the goal is to get solar on rooftops,
solar photovoltaic on rooftops,
and it should not just be the upper middle class
or middle class that knows how to pull the wet levers
of getting grants and bank loans to utilize mass save.
So a just transition and decarbonation strategies
have to build in equity.
So all this is happening,
cities and towns are at the forefront
and have been for over 20 years.
So before we take a look at that, I wanna just,
we need to talk about greenhouse gases.
This is from the United States Inventory in 2019.
So when you look at the excess greenhouse gases
by human actions in the United States of America,
80% of it is carbon dioxide, 10% is methane.
So carbon oxide is fossil fuel combustion,
cement manufacturing, some steel, methane is fracking,
methane releases, inadvertent from fracking,
rice agriculture, animal agriculture,
our beef and dairy cattle,
nitrous oxide is also from fossil fuels,
but also soil management and agriculture.
And the dilemma of climate change
is as cities get hotter and hotter,
the refrigerants are potent greenhouse gases.
And so even though the Montreal protocol was amazing
for the ozone hole confronting the ozone hole,
the air conditioning now does not deplete the ozone layer,
but it's a powerful greenhouse gas.
So here's the pie chart for the US, United States.
So there's carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide,
and the fluorinated gases.
And it all has to be tackled in climate action planning
by cities and towns.
So in terms of generation of electricity
and transportation is the biggest.
Look at that, transportation,
then generation of electricity, then industry,
then agriculture, then residential,
commercial, excuse me, then residential.
So climate action planning by cities and towns has to,
has to confront it all in all sectors.
And if students and the audience wants to look at at our,
our emissions and sinks,
one remarkable source is the EPA, US EPA.
All right, so what is a climate action plan?
ICLEI really contributed to the city effort in our country,
as well as internationally so they still exist.
They've kind of transitioned to sustainability planning
as well as climate action planning
and so Salem, as you see, here's some, a list of cities.
This was about from 15 years ago and Salem, we were early,
Cambridge was early, Brookline was early,
we were leaders in the common wealth to,
to be a city for climate protection
and to start to tackle mitigation.
So here's the five basic steps,
the city of Salem did become a city for climate protection
and geography majors at Salem State,
under my advisement, working with the city and SAFE,
it was a nice tandem began to do
the first emissions inventory for the city of Salem.
It was Ben Walsh,
Steve Young might remember Ben Walsh,
geography major back in about 2002,
began to do this for the city of Salem.
Then a city sets an emissions target,
they set a goal and they have their data from past years
and they usually was trying to reduce below a past year
by a certain year, right?
So then you develop the local action plan
to reduce your emissions.
You implement the plan, you monitor the results.
So city of Salem, we've benefited from,
city of sorry of Cambridge, Boston, other cities, Brookline,
and to learn.
And so my students and the city,
we benefited from Cambridge being kind of an early leader
and with their climate action planning.
And this is a table of contents of what a sorry,
a local action plan climate protection plan tries to do
so you do your inventory,
you set your target,
and then you strategize with city staff, a city advisory,
energy task force, sustainably task force,
city staff dedicated to the effort,
the mayor or town manager dedicated to the effort.
And you look at your fossil fuel consumption,
how to be greener and strategies for that.
You look at your transportation,
your fleet of city vehicles, et cetera.
You look at your land use,
your urban tree canopy, your management,
you look at your waste management
and then you have to devote staff and budget to implement.
And that's what climate action planning is doing.
It was updated by Cambridge in 2011,
they did not meet their goal,
but here's interesting about when they,
their first climate action plan.
One of the reasons was they had in really large scale
new urban development in the biotechnology sector,
investing in Cambridge,
and there's a big energy footprint
for the biotechnology sector.
So they didn't meet their original goal, and so,
but they also, it was good,
there is a climate perspective to this that,
that the job growth happened in a less,
in a more urban area,
instead of potentially having a land cover change
in a more rural area that cut trees down or used farmland.
So there is a benefit to that,
but then as years have gone by,
the city of Cambridge has begun to meet their goals
going into the next decade.
Cities are going from climate action planning
to sustainability, just like Salem
and resiliency planning.
so it's kind of an evolution and some of it simultaneous.
Boston did it in 2014 and 2019,
and I have my students look at these,
these climate action planning.
And so when I, so the students in the audience,
this is city staff that is tackling this right?
And so it's, it's in geography,
we have transportation geography and planning.
We have energy and environment,
we have climate change.
So, and other departments,
there's a politics to climate action planning.
And so there's many majors that could contribute to this.
And the nitty gritty attention to detail assessment
of an audit of greenhouse gas emissions is vital.
Cities are trying to promote solar, including Salem,
including Cambridge and Boston.
GIS is used for rooftop solar mapping
for the potential for solar photovoltaic.
So this is the use of geographic information systems
to do rooftop assessment of solar potential.
I couldn't show this to you here
because it's proprietary software,
that's being used sometimes by the cities for the mapping.
And I could not get access to this for Boston.
And then Boston leading to climate change resiliency.
So I'm gonna describe Salem.
So we had an amazing governor,
governor Deval Patrick and a state legislature
that in 2008 passed the Global Warming Solutions Act
and the Green Communities Act.
So this was legislation that provided grants,
technical assistance to cities and local support
with regional coordinators to stimulate solar in cities,
decarbonizing and being greener.
And if you do the work to be a green community
like Salem did,
you then can benefit from funding from,
and so look at this,
this is 2018, 14.7 million to green communities.
2018, 948,000 to seven,
14.9 million to green communities.
Where does this money come from?
This money came from a very successful
north in the Northeast RGGI,
Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative
that put a, basically a price on carbon pollution
from generating electricity that goes into a fund.
And then that is accumulating fund to sorry,
to then provide funding in Massachusetts
for green communities.
So then Salem.
So what does Salem,
so Salem became a green community in 2010.
There's Paul Marquis, our City of Salem Energy Manager.
There I am on the renewable energy task force,
we are advisory to the city,
the Salem, the mayor, and the city council,
the city council voted to be a green community
to provides city staff to support it.
You all, a lot of you know the mayor,
mayor Kim Driscoll is a environmental mayor
oriented towards environmental protection
and the local environmental NGO, SAFE.
So this was a combined effort,
renewable energy task force, the mayor,
we advised the mayor and the council
SAFE, incredible activism by SAFE,
and the city council voting
and we became a green community.
So that was 2010, 2012 and 14, there I am,
I served on a advisory working group
with Salem sound coast watches,
executive director of Barbara Warren,
and then Julie Knizol from who lives in Salem
and is Salem sound sorry, coastal zone management,
and then city staff
to try to do an assessment of the vulnerability
to climate change risk
and to how to begin to plan for adapting.
So an assessment of the assets of city of Salem,
I mentioned that in my opening remarks,
Peabody Essex museum, police station, et cetera.
And then doing real concrete,
this is very concrete sea walls, tidal gates,
storm water system, pump stations,
transportation network, power failure backup,
preparedness for emergency.
So this is a document that doesn't go and sit on a shelf.
It really was concrete assessment.
And it was with a company
that the city of Salem contracted to called
Camp Dresser & McKee Smith.
So CDM is a huge environmental consulting company,
an engineering company,
but they have an internal subgroup
that does climate action and vulnerably assessment
that was CDM Smith.
And we were one of the first cities in the Commonwealth
to do a vulnerability assessment,
this came out in December of 2014,
and it was so 2012 to 2014, 2 year effort.
We met in the summer big tables in a room with staff,
and then met individually, the working group with CDM Smith
during those two years.
So that was 2012 to 14.
In 2016, the city council
adopted a 100% renewable energy resolution.
It wasn't a binding resolution, but it was
to put at the forefront for the city council and the city
to decarbonize their energy supply
that runs the municipal operations of the city.
And I wanted for, because this is,
I wanna give a plug here.
We were, so this,
the renewable energy task force and SAFE and MASSPIRG,
which had interns from Salem State
were instrumental to get this before the city council.
In fact, MASSPIRG's interns from Salem Sate
came and presented to the renewable energy task force.
They did, they were wonderful presentation,
a couple of them were geography majors.
I think there were some poli-sci majors maybe,
and they presented to the renewable energy task force.
And I'm pretty sure they were at the city council
when they voted on this renewable energy resolution,
a hundred percent renewable energy resolution.
So that was 2016.
Then in 2020 and '21,
we did climate action planning and we did a joint effort.
Tara Gallagher, Salem State's sustainability coordinator
was on the working group, so was I,
so was one of our geography majors, Joey Welongovitz.
And I think there were a couple of other
Salem state students.
There were some high school students,
as Resilient Together Ambassadors
and this is all can be as transparency and
to try to show it to the public,
showcase it to the public is a dashboard.
And so you can see the inventory, you can see
the buildings and development sector, the energy sector,
the infrastructure sector, the mobility,
the natural resources, natural climate solutions aspect.
Our ecosystems that are eel grass ecosystems
along our shores,
public health and safety and solid waste.
And lastly, this was last fall,
a special resilient, and vulnerability assessment
of The Point neighborhood.
It was really well done, it was last fall, it was bilingual.
And just so the city is trying to look at this neighborhood,
which is environmental justice neighborhood,
very high surface area of impervious surface.
And I'm really looking forward to this going forward
over the next year and a half.
The state we live in a state has a foresight,
and they did a climate change adaptation report in 2011,
and then updated it in 2018.
This is going on globally so if we have students that are,
that have, that are willing to relocate all of the states,
this is happening in cities and towns
and happening in state government.
So climate change planning in Vermont, Connecticut,
the federal government has a,
FEMA has a separate required at five year intervals,
hazard mitigation plan.
And the city of Salem did it, I think about two years ago,
because I'm chair of CERC,
I wrote extensive comments on the update.
So city of Salem did it,
it's also done required at the state level.
Connecticut here is GIS based vulnerability assessment
for a variety of natural hazards in Connecticut.
So this is what's involved.
It's done at the county level, so not in Massachusetts,
but in other states,
county government does hazard mitigation
and climate action planning.
This is Cumberland county, Maine.
This is regional planning,
MAPC hires geographers, hires economists,
hires GIS analysts,
hires people that do environmental policy,
environmental politics, like from Poli-Sci.
So there's a lot of majors at Salem state that can be,
can get training and can participate in this.
So they do mitigation planning,
climate action planning.
And I saw they did a wonderful regional overview
of equity, so MAPC.
And here's county, this is Nevada,
a sustainability and climate action plan.
Here's San Diego.
So these are different climates, Clark County is a desert.
San Diego is a Mediterranean climate
with a very seasonal rainfall pattern, which has effects
and suffers has a lot of impacts to El Nino.
So it's good for students in our classes
to also see climate action planning in other environments
in our country.
And then the city of Salem interacts with Ipswich River,
I'm a member of the Watershed Association,
and they are doing watershed planning,
resiliency planning for the watershed.
So I think I'm gonna end with this.
This is I hope you all benefited from just seeing,
this is just, this is the way cities and towns
are tackling climate change, they're in the fight.
We have a, the IPCC says we have
about a 15 to 20 year window where we just have to tackle,
tackle climate change,
and we're tackling urban heat.
And so I think I should end there so that we have Q&A.
- Thanks, John, for a comprehensive view
of all the different levels of analysis
and climate action plans.
- And I hope the audience just grasp who does that,
train staff with these talents and these expertise
and they are working for the common good, and yeah.
- So we've got a couple questions here for you.
First one is,
as we switch to electric powered transportation,
aren't we just increasing greenhouse gas production
to produce the electricity?
Is it really a solution?
- It's a great question.
So what this is all based on that we,
that we have to electrify transportation is the
absolutely needed ramping up of offshore wind
and onshore wind
mass save and other policies
that stimulate solar on rooftops.
And exciting things are happening, Steve, with geothermal.
The Berry Library has geothermal,
so it's a totally great question.
And that's what electrifying transportation is based on.
We've gotta be generating our electricity
from renewable energy.
And so some exciting things are happening
over the next 10 years in wind.
It's so exciting with offshore of Massachusetts,
New York and New Jersey.
So that's what it's based on.
- Now follow up is,
do you think we could just keep
our car based transportation system
and just have electric cars?
Is that gonna be enough to transition our transportation
by keeping everybody having cars and driving electric cars?
- I think it's gonna be definitely in the medium term.
I guess we would be thinking about
what would replace the car and that would be,
non fossil fuel based public transit.
But I think American society just so dependent on a car,
can we have non fossil fuel based trains?
We do, but you know that we fight the trucking lobby,
we fight, and so, so there's
electrified trains and levitated trains
could be a part of it.
It gets controversial everybody with the corridors,
when you put in new trains,
you're going through farmland, cities and forests.
So that is,
but if we have to think about it,
we need transportation experts, proposing
real intelligent solution to get us there.
- Another question is you listed a lot of adaptation items,
but you didn't really comment on their effectiveness.
Do you think the city is moving fast enough
and efforts will be enough to significantly reduce
the direct impact of climate change
on Salem and its residents?
- What I didn't have,
and I know that professor Healy will discuss,
I agonize and I didn't fit it in was,
I have a wonderful graphic that came out for the IPCC
sixth assessment that shows the country's
contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions.
Since that's gonna be done
at kind of the national international scale by Dr. Healy,
but to tackle the global climate crisis needs
this community of nations,
and we positively need the top 10 emitters
to make this effort has to be massive.
The transition to non fossil fuels has gotta be massive.
And we have Joe Biden
trying to do it with the Congress he has,
and, but it's gotta be a massive global effort.
And so whoever wrote the, who said the question,
cities and towns are in the fight,
but man, we need China, India, Brazil,
the European Union, have all the United States,
have gotta be ramping up this effort.
It's gotta be such a big effort.
And it's gotta be so big Steve
to just convert to decarbonize.
So, no, it's a global picture
and we need tackling it at all levels.
- So John, there's a follow up
on the person who asked the question is,
they're more asking,
not necessarily about the reduction of emissions,
but more about the adaptation,
the specific adaptation with climate change effects
such as flooding, heat waves, that kind of stuff
is what's Salem doing gonna be effective in protecting us
from those impacts?
- In my PowerPoint tonight,
I showed you that Boston Globe title
and the Greenland worry.
I'm a little bit of a pessimist,
I'm very worried about the accelerated melt of Greenland
and Antarctica that we're talking about this century,
sea level rise in feet.
And I think we are,
the adaptation planning is gonna be,
so needing to do retreat inland,
we are gonna be elevating and retreating.
We know we're going to lose a coastline
and we have to face that.
So adaptation planning is gonna be elevating structures,
but we need to be thinking about retreating inland.
That's how worried I am about sea level rise.
Another question is,
for students interested in a career in this field,
should they consider graduate school?
And if so, what type of specific programs
should they consider?
- Okay.
I think it's a bit wide ranging.
There are programs like at Tufts University in
that are in urban resource management.
And some of the first climate action planners
got their master's degree from Tufts University.
And they were doing this 15 years ago,
doing urban climate action planning.
And they were some of the early trainers,
offshore wind and onshore wind
requires great analysis of the site.
So geographic information systems
is used in the site analysis, offshore wind,
and onshore wind, that offshore wind has to look at
at risk to migrating fish
and coastal fish economy.
So that's ocean ecology,
ocean spatial planning.
So there's just so many avenues.
We need GIS, we need modeling, we need,
and for the parents out there,
we also need electricians,
the offshore wind and onshore wind needs electricians.
So there's a vocational component
and there's a master's component.
And then, so we need training at a lot of levels.
- Great, thank you.
So you said for one, at one point,
Salem was kind of at the forefront
what cities in the United States do you see as
actually being in the forefront of,
like you talked about Boston and Cambridge
creating policy that other cities can follow?
- So I would say Boston Mass, Cambridge Mass,
Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington, New York City,
Los Angeles,
Burlington, Vermont was a early leader,
and I think they've made good strides, also,
I used to follow them with my earlier research
because they were a leader in the new England states.
So those are some that I've looked at and follow,
look for guidance.
I also, I can remember
being impressed with Madison, Wisconsin,
they have the university of Wisconsin Madison there
and they had been kind of an early leader also.
- So let's say for the future,
what do you think are the,
whether Salem's doing it or not,
and maybe even expand to North shore communities,
what do you see as the most important work
that the cities need to do on the north shore?
- I think it's decarbonizing.
So just getting solar on rooftops,
voting to support renewable energy,
activism for renewable energy things.
There are homes on the north shore
that right now are geothermal,
so geothermal is happening.
Cities and towns with new real estate development
can do geothermal microgrids.
And I think that's gonna be happening across the country
with new real estate development
to do geothermal microgrids,
but we've gotta not burn natural gas or oil for our heating,
for our air conditioning, we've just gotta decarbonize.
- And do you see that kind of wording
put into regulations coming up?
- Well, that's exciting.
Massachusetts passed the recent past,
what's called the Climate Act for Shorthand.
It's called a climate roadmap
for climate policy in the Commonwealth.
And that was also the legislation that actually
finally formally included
environmental justice considerations in terms of law.
And what's now before the legislature
is working out the funding.
So the policy goals were set in the climate roadmap,
which is really leading legislation for a state.
But now the hard work is how do you fund it?
And that's what's going on now.
And we need to have the state legislature and we need to,
and that's what's happening kind of now,
the funding mechanism for the climate roadmap,
which was really for,
was legislation with foresight,
for mitigating climate change in the Commonwealth.
- A question about, a follow up question here.
So you've talked about some cities
that are in the forefront in the United States.
Are you aware of any global cities outside the United States
that you would see as a leader?
- I have looked at London.
London is,
I've considered them at the forefront.
I don't really have a list
that I would recommend right now.
I am very impressed in the past with Germany,
their federal adoption and federal stimulation
of solar and wind in Germany.
There was a, they had,
I can remember the news about a couple years ago,
where there was a Saturday in Germany where the entire,
the electricity was generated by renewable.
All of the electricity was generated by renewable
in terms of in the homes and et cetera.
So there are countries that are confronting it.
And boy in Europe now,
our hearts go out to the Ukraine and that is just,
and the European Union is, I think,
is gonna be trying their best
to not have any fossil fuel from Russia,
and that's gonna be hardship for them.
But yet the geopolitics of Russian fossil fuels
is gonna really, it's gonna be confronted by,
I think, the European union.
And it's gonna be a rough couple of year,
a few years, I think.
- I know that Costa Rica
gets almost all their electricity now
from renewable sources as well.
And they claim that
they're kind of like a Southern country model-
- I totally agree with you, it just skipped my mind.
Absolutely, Steve, good job, yes, good job.
- Let's see.
What about like internship for undergraduate students
and stuff like that?
How can they get involved?
- Okay, so see at Salem, I'm chair of CERC,
we often have a continuing need for one,
and now that the sustainability office has expanded
and with the neat new project with The Point neighborhood,
so students can contact
they can contact the sustainability department
at the city of Salem,
but they also can contact me, feel free.
JayHayes@Salemstate.edu.
And what the city does look for
is some of your course background if you are an undergrad.
They would like to see a,
they look at your course background,
and when they get a letter of reference for you,
they like to see that someone is saying,
this person pays attention to detail
because the work does require that kind of,
that kind of personality to pay attention to detail.
- And can they also just,
let's say they live in the city of Lynn,
I mean, colds, are cities?
- So yes, they should contact their,
check out whether the city of Lynn
or Swamp Scott, et cetera,
has some kind of renewable energy task force
or green energy council.
I would, and that would be a starting point
as then well as does the city have a sustainability manager?
Or an energy manager.
So those are the two,
in my opinion, those are the two focus points.
A group equivalent to the sustainability committee
that I chair and an energy manager
or sustainability manager for the city or town.
- And I know that actually Salem State has
with the sustainability coordinator
has an internship program
for students of Salem State as well.
- Yes, we do. - This is kind of nice.
- Oh yeah, oh it is, oh yeah.
- Any last words?
'cause we're just about gonna wrap up.
- Okay.
I just think students can,
with a selection of courses can put together
a major and a minor that trains them
and look across geography,
look across Poli-Sci, look across biology and geology.
You can fashion and you can make a major and a minor,
a double major, or a major and a minor.
And you can develop a set of courses that trains you
and prepares you and an internship
really is a nice way to cap it off.
An internship with the city
is a really good way to cap it off.
- All right, thank you.
And I just want to,
I'm gonna share my screen for a second.
And I just wanna remind people that
we have two more talks coming up,
Tuesday, April 5th, Dr. Noel Healy
from the Geography and Sustainability Department,
and he's also a member
of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
And he's gonna talk about tackling climate change
and inequity together, the case for a green new deal.
And then on Tuesday, April 19th, Ms. Tara Gallagher,
who is this Sustainability and Safety Coordinator
in the Facilities Department at Salem State
is gonna talk about addressing climate change
on Salem state's campus and why it matters.
And so we've got some great talks coming up and again,
these talks will be recorded as well
in case you can't join us for the live presentation.
And so I want to thank everybody tonight for joining us
and thank you, professor Hayes
for giving us a great lecture.
- Thank you, I enjoyed it.
- Fantastic.
And to everybody else who who made it happen tonight,
thank you so much.
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