 We'd love the opportunity to have some local folks come in and talk to you about some of these issues as well as broadband issues and how that might be going. All right, we're not gonna wait for one person to leave house. Yeah, that's directed to local officials and we have a new communication director. I'm not in charge of the communication. Don't you think that's, that's probably, that's clever. Storm the State House. Storm the State House. Yeah, boy, yeah. It's brand new. Your's. Your's. No. Yeah, right, exact. Don't worry, it's just your select board people. It doesn't mean it easy. Kara, why don't we get going? I'm hopeful that Robin will join us shortly. Okay. But just as a kind of introduction, I've reached out to Karen a few days ago, maybe it's a week ago. There are some specific parts of this bill that I think we're particularly interested in your feedback on. But those in particular relate to how our municipalities and towns are reacting from a resilience standpoint. And are there things in here that you can speak to from your, obviously from your members' perspective? I think one of the things that we're trying to address here is not only greenhouse gas emission reduction, but also issues related to resilience and how our towns and communities are dealing with these issues. Right, right. But anyway, I appreciate you also being flexible on your time. I know that before earlier that I think we anticipated today. And we thought you would be on the floor for quite a while. Yeah, so I think that's gonna be tomorrow. Oh, okay. All right. Yeah, so thank you for joining us, Karen. Certainly, and thank you for the opportunity to testify about this issue. What I wanted to do was just set the stage for you a little bit. And anecdotally, those are two pictures of Moortown Village during Irene that my son took. So they're not copyrighted. At least for me. No, thank you. No, thank you. So the Vermont League of Cities and Towns Board voted to join the Vermont Climate Pledge Coalition on June 27th of 2017. And I'm sorry, the glasses on, glasses off, right? I had, let's see. And that's part of the America's Pledge that this is a one-pager about America's Pledge from the organization that Mike Bloomberg and others put together. Moreau, Weinberger, and Vermont were early adopters of that pledge. Let's see if I can get back here. Okay. We are also affiliated with the National League of Cities and our executive director, Maura Carroll, was on the board of the National League of Cities. Whoops, wrong one. I don't know if I lost that one. Oh, this one. In 2018, and they've adopted a pretty substantial resolution on climate change, which I won't read to you entirely because of several pages, but the one piece that seems most relevant to us is that NLC urges Congress and the administration to take urgent action to help states and local governments conduct vulnerability assessments, develop and implement long-term mitigation, adaptation, and resiliency action plans, and identify innovative financing opportunities to implement the assessments and plans. So really to conduct the vulnerability assessments, develop the mitigation and fund the implementation of the mitigation. Look at that. At our last count, 130 towns and cities have established energy committees, and that's actually off the BCAN website, which is hosted by the Vermont Natural Resources Council. Additionally, we have three towns that had submitted their energy components of their municipal comprehensive plan to the public service department right after Act 174 was passed a few years ago. Now you submit those components to your regional commission and there are 44 towns that have done that to date. And then according to the 350 Vermont in 2018 and 2019, 55 Vermont towns adopted the 350 Vermont climate solutions resolution at their town meeting. So we understand that the climate crisis is upon us as Paul Costello so eloquently described yesterday. And we understand that it won't be solved without significant action at the state, national, and local levels and international. Volunteers, which is what most local officials and citizens are, have nothing like the capacity by themselves to change the current trajectory of climate warming. We welcome this proposal to address climate change through the global warming solutions legislation, especially in light of the federal government's failure to act. I think if you go back and look at the climate pledge piece, which is just a one pager, but there's a whole report that you can read or an executive summary and the executive summary is pretty, it's quite a few pages also. So you might just wanna stick with the executive summary. But they talk about actions that need to be taken at the national level as well as state levels. We do have several suggestions to assure that the finite resources that we have in Vermont are spent most effectively. We do endorse the prediction that the sustainable economy, the future will provide new green jobs in Vermont, it's starting to do that. But we are very concerned about the pain that will be felt by some Vermonters, particularly in rural and less affluent areas, as we make the transition from where we are today to where we need to be. H688 would establish a climate council of 22 members and attach it to the agency of natural resources and department of public service. If climate change is our highest priority and our most urgent priority, then we really believe that any such program needs to be attached to the governor's office. Where it can require action from all agencies across the state. We've had experience with Tropical Storm Irene where that was the case. You essentially had an Irene Tsar and Neil Lunderville and then Sue Minter were very effective at getting projects completed because they had the authority in the backing of the governor. And so we believe that's really important. We've also been in situations where agencies go back and forth and negotiate for who's gonna do what. And I think the municipal roads general permit actually is a good example of that in recent years. We suggest that the council representation include one member to represent rural communities and one to represent larger communities. Generally larger communities in Vermont are more than 5,000 population. The average size of a municipality in Vermont is 1,200 population. I mean, we're really, really small. So I just point that out because the language at section four in the bill is introduced is a little bit squirrely in the way it describes the municipal representation. Just so for my understanding, does VLCT represent one of those groups or the other? For example, is Burlington one of your members? Yeah, so, the mayor is the chair, the president of VLCT this year. We represent all 246 cities and towns. The incorporated villages, regional commissions, sheriff's offices are affiliate associate members, mostly so that they can get our liability insurance. We do not represent them and we're quite specific about that. But to your point about representation of large municipalities and more commonly sized Vermont, those are all under the VLCT umbrella? Yes, they are. Yeah, yeah. Just to repeat, your definition of large is over what? Well, actually it's not necessarily our definition. It's in the statute in a few places that it's more than 5,000 population. The one you cited that worked. Yeah, 5,000. Thank you. In the bill, the council would be directed to adopt a Vermont Climate Action Plan by July, 2021. And we think that that plan needs to include both a timeline for implementation and here somewhere else, but also recommendations for funding and how we're gonna get there. The bill would establish several subcommittees including a Just Transitions subcommittee and a Rural Resiliency and Adaptation subcommittee. It is important to focus on how implementing climate actions will affect rural areas where transportation costs are higher. Communications networks are less robust and I think the professor from UVM mentioned that this morning that if we had or when we have, because we're gonna have now as a result of your legislation last year, better broadband service around the state, people won't necessarily need to travel as far if they can telecommute and things like that. Fewer people are available to volunteer for vital jobs such as emergency medical and fire services. One catastrophe strikes and that's a major issue for us this year has been for several years in rural areas and economies generally are more fragile in those areas. There, you know, even if you're a ski area town, the ski area is the industry and if anything happens to that, which may and climate change, that will affect the entire community. These are also of course the same areas that are home to our farms, the producers of our local food and for us that sequester carbon and the people who care for them. We think it would be helpful to include language that authorizes municipalities through their local legislative bodies to enact ordinances to address climate resiliency generally and facilitate reduce use of fossil fuels. There is a bill that came over from the Senate last year, S106 that talks about self-governance more generally and sets up a whole program but we think that in instances where you're trying to address a particular issue and where municipalities can sometimes be innovators and leaders more easily than the state can that you putting language into allow that to happen would be helpful. Is that, I mean, now it's been time on the government operations, is that necessary or is it simply being explicit that that be allowed? So we're Dylan's rule state. He's from Iowa, we don't know why he's in charge of anything but in Vermont. Right, we gotta give them the authority. But you have to be specific and sometimes we have a spectrum of municipalities across the state from those who are willing to take risks and sort of go out on a limb or have special authority in their governance charters to towns that really feel like they cannot afford to risk being sued unless they have specific, they need the specific authority to enact an ordinance or bylaw. We are concerned about the requirement in H688 for municipalities to annually file a report with the director of Vermont emergency management concerning quote municipal emergency preparedness, infrastructure resiliency and infrastructure investment. I think this is an example of the potential redundancies that might occur if this bill is passed as is. We already need to get a municipal roads general permit. We need to provide annual reports to the agency of natural resources and soon to the agency of transportation because they're moving the program over there. We need to have road erosion inventories and implementation plans by December 31st of this year. Towns need to adopt local hazard mitigation plans every five years that are required in order to receive federal funds from the FEMA hazard mitigation grant program and pre-disaster mitigation programs. We need to have local emergency preparedness plans already. They need to be updated and re-adopted annually and submitted to Vermont emergency management in order to receive federal preparedness funds. And so the hazard mitigation plans look more specifically at what are the potential events and what's the likelihood of their occurring in your community. And the emergency preparedness plans are for how's your fire department, your emergency medical technicians, the people in your town going to respond to an event when it happens. And I'm going to step away out of line here and mention that Lauren used to work for emergency management until the end of December, right? I already tested. Okay, so she can fill you in on a lot of details of this stuff if you're interested. And then we have municipal comprehensive plans which towns need to adopt. You don't have to have a plan, but if you don't have a municipal comprehensive plan, you forfeit consideration in active 50 essentially and before the public utility commission. And you also forgo any kind of priority for a whole host of grant funding for different programs from the state. That municipal plan needs to be updated and re-adopted and approved every eight years now. And it needs to include an energy component. And if you want special consideration before the public utility commission, you need to have an enhanced energy plan that's also approved by the regional commission. So back on the second page when I talked about enhanced energy plans pursuant to Act 174, that's what those are. The proposed Vermont Climate Action Plan on page 13, we think needs to incorporate existing smart growth standard strategies, implement mechanisms to fund particularly emergency services and recommend funding sources or reallocations of funds to implement the plan. We also suggest similarly at page 19 section K which talks about nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the existing authority of a state agency or department to establish strategies to mitigate climate risk and build resiliency. We think that they should be required to do that in concert with the Climate Action Plan and what I'm going to call the Office of Climate Resiliency at the governor's level. I mean, it's really not helpful to have agencies going off in different directions trying to enact their priorities. And finally, we oppose this section providing a cause of action to any person based on the failure to adopt or update rules. Our experience, which is considerable, with lawsuits surrounding the Lake Champlain total maximum daily load was that a tremendous amount of money was spent on lawyers and lawsuits that could have been spent better on implementing projects to address the problem. For seven years, while that... Ness. Ness. It was adjudicated. I mean, did she use it up there? Local officials and state officials sat around and waited for what was going to be the final word, what was going to be required of them and where we could have spent... We could have been implementing cleanup projects. People were not doing that. They were not interested in spending a considerable amount of money without knowing that that was going to be the appropriate direction to take and we're very concerned that the same kind of thing would happen here if you had a cause of action. We think there are other triggers that the legislature could consider. I was interested this morning to hear UVM professor, whose name I forget. I'm sorry. John Erickson. Erickson, Erickson. John Erickson, okay. Talk about binding provisions and we have support, just as a, for instance, we've supported a gas tax in the past if revenues were dedicated to local transportation that works in priorities. That's a tax that could be implemented if deadlines were not met. You could have that kind of a trigger. The administration could be required to return with draft rules to legislative committees of jurisdiction by a date certain before they're implemented or if they, which would force them to come back and say why they're not doing what they're required to do. This is something that was done as part of the Vermont Clean Waters Act. So those are just two ideas but we do think there are other triggers that could hold Vermont's feet to the fire that would be more effective and more careful of our scarce resources than a cause of action, citizen suits. Question? So going back up to the annual reporting. Yes. And I hear, see, and understand. So here it is, what we're trying to get after in that. And that is, in addition to having this vulnerability index that the government is making an assessment about our communities and which ones are in the biggest trouble, need the most help. It seems like there needs to be some mechanism for communities to also maybe be reflecting something back on that. So do you think that they have their mitigation plans themselves? I mean, I understand there's going to be hard and that all could happen. They're, well, most communities are doing them but what we would say about this whole section is that if you're going to require that kind of vulnerability assessment, then look at what's already required. Have the council or the officer, whoever look at what's already required and ways to incorporate that into the new requirements so that you're not just layering on another report that volunteers need to complete. We just completed our hazard mitigation plan in my town and I'm on our planning commission. And it took about a year. I mean, it's not supposed to take about a year but it took about a year because we're all volunteers and it's pretty involved in crossing all the T's and dotting all the I's for FEMA is a labor intensive job. So we would just ask you to be cognizant of other things that are required and how to mesh all those requirements so that it's not totally unfeasible for local officials. I think even in some of my towns, they probably have to reach out for help from the local NDDA. Oh, yeah. We had help. Yeah. We had help. From the regional commission, so. Yeah. Please do. Can you, you skipped over it briefly but the issues around the municipal roads permits and why that was difficult? Well, the, so the municipal roads permit is something that was required for the first time in the Vermont Clean Water Act and every town has to obtain our municipal roads not really obtained but they have to have a municipal roads permit from the, right now the agency of natural resources and it's roads. So the agency of transportation is really sort of the expert on roads but the agency of natural resources is the expert on water quality, those kinds of things. So they've kind of gone back and forth for a while about what exactly is required of municipalities. You need to assess your vulnerabilities in your road network. You need to come up with mechanisms to repair your, not repair your roads but address those vulnerabilities. So if you have steep roads, stone lining ditches is recommended. We have a lot of road commissioners who think stone lining ditches is not a good solution. I don't want to get off on stone lining ditches. I'd like to just note for the record that I did a full day of ditch school in Wardsboro for my friend, one of our. Congratulations. A full day of ditch school. I know more about ditches. Yeah, ditches and culverts and bottomless culverts and when they turn into bridges and all those kinds of things, it's very expensive to make those investments and it sort of remains to be seen how successful they will be at addressing runoff basically in that instance storm on a runoff in storm events. Again, if I can elaborate too, your point there is that these agencies really need to be in collaboration right up front. Whether it's agency, yeah. And it's the same with the AG agency and ANR. I mean, I just heard a horror story up my way with somebody who did some cutting and got the proper permits and everything next thing you know, and I thought that it was supposedly in a wetlands. Right. So it's a cease and desist order and I mean, it's just unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. So it's so important that all the agency, whether it's one agency or whatever that has the collective information to issue the permits or whatever, it's critical, I think. Our experience at the local level is that and we don't need to get too much into this either, but particularly at the agency of natural resources, people who are administered their program, they're very good at their program and there's not really anybody at the agency of natural resources that's taking the whole view of everything that you need to do and which takes priority. We end up with permits that have conflicting requirements. Stormwater and wetlands was a good example. So that's a real problem and we really don't want to end up in that kind of a situation with this legislation. I had a question going back to what you said earlier on about you're thinking that this should be coming directed out of the governor's office rather than that particular agency. When that happened in the past, that was for a pretty time limited single event. I mean it was a statewide event, but so what is your thinking in terms, I see that as a difference what we're looking at being something that would be a more ongoing piece of work. I don't know for how long, but it's not to deal with that one catastrophe. So I just wondered what to do. Well, I don't know that that's, I mean I understand the difference. I don't know that it makes a lot of difference in this context because it seems to us that if this is the highest priority and everything needs to feed into how are we going to address this particular problem that the people who are directing that effort need to be at the highest level of government. Another example that is not a good example I will say is we used to have a state planning office out of that governor's office and there was a governor who came along and decided that wasn't worth his while, but I think there was that office for a period of time. I'm not disagreeing, I just thought it was a new visit. You threw out something a different alternative on the table and I'm just asking because there is that sort of time limited assignment that occurred at that time versus, if you write the planning office was considered an ongoing function of the governor's office. And if you write it into statute, I think they can't say we don't want to do this anymore. Well, but if it is a governor's office function then it would seem to depend a lot on who the governor is. It's not sort of built into the ongoing bureaucracy is such a negative loaded word, operations of state government as it would be if it were sort of career agency people working on it. Right. I mean, it would depend kind of how you structured it as to how, I mean, you'd have to talk about how to structure it. I know that it's been recommended that there's like an climate change czar or something which is along the same lines. And governors do change. I think that that It just seems like it would be more exposed to political, you know, the politics of the person in the office rather than a sort of institutionalized operation of state government. I don't know that there, I mean, we could talk about that but it seems that in some ways that it doesn't make a lot of difference because commissioners and secretaries are appointed by whoever the governor is and they carry out that person's agenda. So at the agency's level, but what we really do want to avoid is a situation where agriculture, transportation, public service, natural resources are all sort of jockeying for what they want to have happen. And in the meantime, not a lot happens. So I have the same question and I'll take advantage of you being here now. I'm happy to talk about it more later too, which is really a good governance question. And you have addressed this head on as to what your recommendation is that there be something much closer to the governor that deal with this. You know, as I've thought about this bill purely from a good governance perspective, what is an entity that can best get something done? Right. This exact question is something that I've struggled with and I don't have strong, strong feelings that it'd be one way or the other. My focus is on accountability. And these aren't my words, but I've used them, which is there's one neck to choke. And who's accountable for this work getting done not that they do all of it necessarily. And one viewpoint, I think it's probably one that you share, or at least are closer to, is that this should be either somewhere much closer to the governor or even the agency of administration that sits at the head of the table. But they're not necessarily in a regulatory body that is focused on, you know, they have more of a financial function and are closer to the governor kind of in that regard. You know, some of the policy orientation is a little further removed. Right. But at the same time, it has more a more regular right function. And, you know, ANR, on the other hand, is charged with regulating pollution. So, again, this is more of a, it's not an ideological question from my standpoint. It's a good governance question. You know, if we are gonna build this and we're looking for accountability, where does that best reside? I don't feel strongly about it. I'm just looking for the best answer. Yeah. And I think I'm, I certainly hear what you're saying on that. You do have in this bill, you have the council and the council has the secretaries of the agency. That's correct. And ANR has the chair of that council. Yeah, so, well, that's an interesting thing. You might want to change that, but anyway. I mean, like, if you're gonna have it in the governor's office, then it should probably be the secretary of administration, right? Well, that's what I was saying. Yeah, but, so then that council and the secretary of administration, whoever the climate change czar is the person who says to the agency of natural resources and the agency of transportation, you need to adopt regulations that implement this particular component of our overall program. Yeah. Maybe I'm missing the point that you're making, but when you talk about this position not being ANR, I was presuming you were talking about that ANR not being essentially the chair of the council. Right. Yeah. All right, here we are. Yes. Okay, got it. We're happy to talk to any of you about this more or come back or use your other questions whenever. Great. Thank you and thank you for the details feedback. Is there anything to do with the questions? Yeah, I do, Karen. I know we're in the infancy stages of this bill, but is the word getting out in municipalities about the possibility of all this coming out? Well, I'm running about it on Thursday night for Friday morning. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, hopefully we are getting through to our members about this. We did have a climate conference 2018, I wanna say, that looked at a number of these issues. I mean, towns, even the smallest towns understand that, you know, we have to do something. We have to address these issues. I mean, up in your, in Ludlow they've had a couple of road collapses from flooding events that nobody's exempt from those kinds of natural events and we're gonna have to address them. It's a matter of how can we do it effectively and how can we sort of corral the interest that's already out there and what people wanna do and what they actually need to have not be too messy. Thank you, Karen. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. So, why don't we get started here? Laura, we'll catch up with her shortly. So, thank you for joining us. I think we originally planned to have three folks testify and we're having a number of your board join us Friday afternoon, so we look forward to that. But we record all of our hearings, so if you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves to the record and welcome you to join us. Great, well thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. For the record, my name is Phil Huffman. I'm the Director of Government Relations and Policy for the Nature Conservancy here in Vermont and I know some of you, but not all and just wanna say I'm really delighted to have an opportunity to engage with all of you on this really important topic and I'm really pleased to be joined today by a wonderful colleague from our Massachusetts chapter, Laura Marks, who's a forest ecologist, has been with the Conservancy based in Massachusetts for 14 years, I think. This is her first time today coming to our office so it's a moment of noteworthy moment for us. Anyway, Laura is also the Nature Conservancy's regional lead for New England on natural climate solutions which is basically the role that nature and natural and working lands, the land sector can play in helping to slow the pace of climate change. So she's a wealth of information and I think we're really pleased to be able to have her here and I'm excited that she can offer some of that broader perspective. She also will have an opportunity to speak a little bit about, from her and the Nature Conservancy's perspective in Massachusetts about their experience with their Global Women Solutions Act so we'll dig into all of that in a little bit. And she's based in Western Massachusetts and out of an office in the Northampton area. So maybe trip north for us today. I know you had the opportunity to hear from another voice, a brand new voice for us at the Nature Conservancy last week, our wonderful new colleague Lauren Oates who testified about the resilience side of things and from some of her perspective from earlier work with her from an emergency management agency. So now we'll be shifting today and focusing more on the part of this around nature's role in helping to bring in climate change and sort of compliment on the other side from resilience and adaptation. And what we're thinking and if this works for you all is that I'll spend just a minute since this is our first time really before your committee to just give you a little bit more of an overview about the Nature Conservancy to help round out the picture that you may or may not have of us and then I'm gonna turn it over to Laura to really go into some of the big picture and key points related to natural climate solutions and to share some of that experience from Massachusetts with their parallel efforts down there. And then I'll come back in and share a little bit about our perspective here in Vermont about all of this work and how it ties into a number of other policy initiatives that are underway of which I think you're familiar with but others which you may not have worked it's happening on our part and others that are relevant to all of this and really how it all ties into the Global Climate Solutions Act and I'll share our sort of flows with our perspective on the bill itself. Does that sound like a workable flow and we'll try to keep things moving. Appreciate this is getting towards the end of a long day in a small room with not a lot of air flow. So we'll try to keep it moving. You noticed. Yeah, I can already feel it. So just by way of rounding out a little bit of what Lauren said in her testimony last week about the nature conservancy as you may or may not know we're a global conservation organization dedicated to conserving the lands and waters on which all life depends. So that's human life as well as all the other species of plants and animals and everything else that we share this planet with. One of our hallmarks everywhere we work here in Vermont and elsewhere is that we're science based. So we try to gather the best science that we can either work science that we develop or that we gather from others to inform our own conservation work and to also help to inform the work of other conservation nonprofits, governmental agencies at the local state, federal and global level. That sort of thing. So science is a really critical hallmark of ours. Guided by that science we really work on trying to create innovative on the ground solutions to some of the biggest challenges facing people and nature and the planet. It's certainly climate changes at the top of the list but it's by no means the only one habitat loss things like that are water quality issues. Those are examples of other big problems that we're working hard to help to address. We are devoutly non-partisan. We have a long track record of working with folks from across the political and ideological spectrum on pragmatic solutions. So we really are trying to focus on getting things done and finding ways to bridge different perspectives to get there. We work in all 50 states across the US and more than 70 countries around the world now. And here in Vermont happy to say we're celebrating our 60th anniversary this year actually now that it's 2020. So we've been at it for a while and over the course of that time we're really proud to say that we've been involved in helping to concern more than 300,000 acres of land permanently conserved more than 300,000 acres of both natural and working lands around the state in all different corners I think in most, if not all of your districts and about more than 1200 miles of shorelines of our streams, rivers and ponds and lakes. So some of our really key natural heritage natural assets we've had an important hand in helping to protect. We have more than 9,000 members statewide now we actually are the biggest per capita membership of any TNC chapter in the country we're proud to say and just I think it's a reflection of the way in which Vermonters care about this work that is so relevant to all aspects of our lives. And we also as part of our conservation work we own and manage 55, 56 natural areas scattered all across the state again and most if not all of your districts. So that's just a quick snapshot and I hope that helps to round out the picture a little bit of who we are and what we do and happy to dig in more on that later if you'd like. So with that, why don't I hand it over to Laura and she can dig in more on some of the content specifics on natural climate solutions. Great, thanks Phil. And thank you to committee chair Briglin as well for the opportunity to speak to you today. As Phil mentioned, my name is Laura Marks and I'm the forest ecologist for the Nature Conservancy of Massachusetts. My goal today is to share some of the boring outline that's gonna go away soon, I promise. But I wanna share some of TNC's experiences with Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act and to focus in particular on the role of natural climate solutions in climate action. So we know that climate change is already an economic, environmental and humanitarian crisis and that's the reason for that is not unknown, right? We've got fossil fuels making the earth too hot. But fortunately, we also know what to do about it. That's also not an unknown. First of all, we need to stop burning so many fossil fuels but that alone isn't enough. So we also need to cool the earth and that's where natural climate solutions come in. They're like these ice cubes actually absorbing carbon that has been emitted in the air and absorbing heat from the planet. And then I would repeat this in ignoring the fact that climate change is already here. So we also have to adapt to climate change. So these three things have to happen simultaneously to take action to actually address a problem at the scale of climate change. And I am the rest of my TNC colleagues feel very fortunate to live in a state that is working really hard to reduce carbon emissions and adapt to climate change through our Global Warming Solutions Act. And I appreciate the opportunity to share some of my experiences and thoughts with you as you contemplate your own GWSA. As you consider the best way for Vermont to continue to lead on climate change action, I'd urge you to set bold goals for fossil fuel emissions reductions and also to include a role for natural climate solutions and lots of forest farms and wetlands as well. Natural climate solutions are ways to protect, restore and better manage forests, farms and wetlands to avoid and or remove carbon emissions from the air. For example, avoided forest conversion is one natural climate solution. When we convert an acre of forest or another land used to development, we release a portion of the carbon that's stored in the soils and trees over decades or centuries as carbon emissions. And at the same time, we destroy the ability of that piece of land to sequester more carbon over future years. So avoided forest conversion, which is often a fancy way of saying land protection of forests, is a double win for carbon. And that's before we even begin to talk about the benefit of forests for our forest products economy, recreation economy, for wildlife, for water filtration, all those things that we depend on them for. Another natural climate solution that's relevant in Vermont is improved forest management. And this means a number of things. In some places, that means studying aside forests as reserves to store carbon in larger and older trees. In most places, that means doing careful timber harvesting that considers carbon and also that produces own products that we can substitute for more carbon intensive products like steel, concrete, heating oil, or just the same wood products from farther away. Using sustainably harvested new England would reduce as emissions by substituting a more sustainable resource for more fossil fuel intensive ones. So again, there's sort of a double benefit. A third way of using forests as an actual climate solution is to retain and perhaps even plant more trees. In Massachusetts, we're a very urban state. So tree planting is a surprisingly large strategy. We have hundreds of thousands of acres of suburban lawn in our state. In Vermont, it's a little bit different. And I suspect that you'll probably be more focused on tree retention because even though we take our street trees or the ones in our yards or parks for granted, when you have something like the tornado that hit Springfield, Massachusetts, or an insect outbreak that takes out huge amounts of these trees, you'll actually feel that literally in heat in the summer and also in your energy bills and energy use in the buildings that were formerly shaded and sheltered by trees. So by now, you might be noticing a theme where natural climate solutions have a carbon benefit, but they also have a lot of other co-benefits, human health, like trees and cities, economic benefits, like forestry. And so in many cases, the reason to do these natural climate solutions maybe not only or even primarily carbon, but that's one of their benefits. And I've been focusing on forests here because Vermont, like Massachusetts, is a mostly forested state, but it would be wrong to ignore the impact of farms and wetlands as well. So forests get most of the attention, but I know that the Vermont Agency of Agriculture and Partners in the Farming Community are already really thinking hard about how to make some of the farming practices that have carbon and other co-benefits more feasible and cost effective. I was really excited to learn yesterday that your payment for ecosystem services working group has released a report on this. That actually puts, thank you, that puts you ahead of Massachusetts where we're just now working on our Healthy Soils Action Plan. And that considers, among other things, ways to increase soil carbon on farms. In Vermont, adoption of cover cropping, silvo pasture or trees on farmlands, and fertilizer management can help make the soil more carbon rich, while also reducing nutrient runoff and erosion. And in the case of silvo pasture, it can even increase milk production. So again, carbon might not be the primary reason that you want to do these things, but you are getting a carbon benefit as well. And it's worth thinking about that and recording that as well, because we do have significant potential to reduce carbon emissions and increase sequestration by increasing the health of our farm soils. And then finally, wetlands. If farms are overlooked, wetlands are even more overlooked. Wetlands store an outsized amount of carbon for their size. They're a very small fraction of the landscape, but they can store, in some cases, many decades worth of carbon. And wetlands can also be either carbon sinks if they're healthy and intact, or they can be carbon sources if they're degraded and especially if they're drained. So it's really worth thinking about the health of your wetlands, thinking about restoration of wetlands, again, for a range of reasons, including wildlife habitat and flood prevention, but also so that they continue to play that role of sequestering carbon in soils year after year. So we have some very good estimates already of the potential of natural climate solutions in Vermont. And although there are differences in our two states in which natural climate solutions work best, for example, city tree planting is a big strategy in Massachusetts, while improved forest management is a bigger opportunity in Vermont, taking full advantage of climate solutions like those I mentioned, can avoid or reduce more than a million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year at low cost. That's the equivalent of taking more than 200,000 cars off the road every year. And right now the only technology we have that can reduce, that can remove carbon emissions at scale is nature. So hopefully that's a little bit of information about natural climate solutions and the potential in Vermont. I wanted to move on to sharing some lessons learned from our experience in Massachusetts that might be useful. So from the perspective of TNC's Massachusetts chapter, we're pleased with the greenhouse gas emissions reduction and the smart policies and the change in the narrative around climate change that have come from our Global Warming Solutions Act. It's absolutely been worth it. And we're mostly on track to meet our 2020 goal. So these figures are as of 2016 and Massachusetts has reduced emissions by 21% below 1990 levels. There's a study happening right now that will figure out whether we're projected to meet our 25% goal, but they're actually running the numbers this year. And so we'll know by the end of the year whether or not we met that initial 2020 goal. I think some of the biggest successes from the Global Warming Solutions Act have been around public-private partnerships. And this is one where I actually had some personal experience. So many years ago, I was eligible to enter a lottery for weatherization of my 1910s era, very drafty, poorly insulated house. And that was a state-run energy efficiency program. But the only reason I knew about it was because there was a local nonprofit that was advertising, there was a local company that was doing the work. And so programs like that are really effective. I got insulation for my house, which is a real benefit to me. Meanwhile, the state got me using much less energy every year. So they got very inexpensive emissions reductions. And again, if the state had done it on their own, I think it might have been hard for the average person to figure out, where do you go for information? How do you find out? But by working across that public-private partnership, they were able to get a program that was wildly oversubscribed and successful. Another success I think was that we've really aimed big. So right now, where Massachusetts is in the process, our law actually set emissions reductions goals for 2020 and 2050. It didn't set them for 2030 and 2040. It left that up to another process. And we are in that process for 2030. There's a study right now that I think you'll probably hear more about from David Ismay and Han Chu, called the 80 by 50 study. It's essentially how do we get to 80% emissions reductions by 2050? And given that path, what's the right goal to set for 2030? And what policies do we need to get there? With more than 10 years of putting the Global Warming Solutions Act into practice, we're actually thinking potentially beyond that, looking at can we get to more than 80% emissions reductions? I was really pleased to see that net zero is referenced in your Global Warming Solutions Act. And just last night, Governor Charlie Baker actually endorsed the idea of moving to net zero in Massachusetts. So maybe you read your bill and got jealous, but that just came out. And then finally, I think another big success was really including adaptation in the bill. We have an executive order, 569, that ensures that any action taken under the Global Warming Solutions Act can't be sort of maladaptive, especially for underserved communities. So it's a recognition that the impacts of climate change are already being felt and they're being felt most immediately and most acutely by our communities that have perhaps the fewest resources. And there's also an adaptation plan that's part of the Global Warming Solutions Act. So there were a lot of efforts to really make sure that climate change mitigation, emissions reduction and adaptation went hand in hand. So what's interesting is that I think we did adaptation really well and that certainly has a role for nature-based solutions using nature to solve problems like flooding and stormwater management. But despite that integration, I think one of the places we have the most distance to go is in fully incorporating the role of natural climate solutions in our Global Warming Solutions Act. And that's probably my biggest lesson learned to offer you from the experience in Massachusetts. After you pass your Global Warming Solutions Act, which has all the language you need, as your climate council begins to implement it, I would encourage you to think about lands as a sector. Lands are both a carbon source with actions that can be taken to reduce emissions and there are carbon sink with actions that can be taken to sequester even more carbon. I think in Massachusetts, carbon is in our baseline, natural carbon is in our 1990 baseline, but from every point then on, it's treated very differently from all the other sectors. And I think that had we integrated those more from the beginning, we could have saved ourselves some headaches. For example, now in the 80 by 50 study, it's very hard to sort of fully bring in lands when we need them to meet our emissions reduction goals. And I think we could have saved ourselves also some controversies over solar siting and other aspects where, because the intersections between buildings and lands and energy weren't fully considered, there were some policies that people feel maybe were counterproductive to one or the other sector. So to sum up, nature has a role to play. The biggest action we need to take is reducing fossil fuels, but natural climate solutions are a meaningful and necessary part of acting on climate change. And if you don't believe me and Phil saying that, you can read the IPCC report or the drawdown report, like every plausible path globally and at the US level to meeting, to really addressing climate change includes going backwards in emissions. And that's what I have as number three here. There's also some really simple math. 415 parts per million carbon dioxide is about what we're at now. I looked, I think it's 417 now, keeps going up of course, but 415 ish plus zero doesn't get you to 350. You really need both to reduce emissions and to go backwards. You know, another reason is because it's easier, I think to do it now than later, can work things in from the beginning as you decide how to implement your law and maybe save yourself some of the headaches that we've had. And also, you said you would. So did Massachusetts. So all of the US Climate Alliance states pledged to each other in 2018 that they would accurately measure the carbon balance in their natural working lands. They would set a numerical for making that number better and then they would implement the plans to make that happen. And Phil and I went both to the US wide learning lab, they called it, that the US Climate Alliance held in DC in 2018. And we just came back from the regional New England one in Rhode Island last month. And those pledges are coming due at the end of 2020. So as a collective across the US Climate Alliance, those states have sort of pledged to each other to move forward on this. And then finally, Vermont has an opportunity to be a leader on the US and the global stage. And when I was saying that, I was like, ah, people are gonna be like, really? It sounds like hyperbole, but it's not. And I'll give you a clear example of why it's not. So some of our TNC colleagues yesterday in Bogor, Indonesia held a workshop where they are trying to figure out this very thing. How do they work natural climate solutions into their nationally defined contribution under the Paris Agreement? And in the complete absence of federal leadership, countries are really looking to the US states as the actors, not to the federal government. So whereas in the past, maybe that would have been a little bit of an exaggeration, there is no federal leadership that they're looking at and taking their cues from. They're looking at what Massachusetts is doing, at what Maine just did, at what you guys are contemplating doing at New York, at California, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and trying to look for examples of states which are much more analogous to them than the US right now, and take their cues from that. So I think it's really exciting that you guys are contemplating passing the Global Warfare Solutions Act. And hopefully this has helped just a little bit in thinking about the role nature might play as you implement that. I'm gonna hand things back over to Phil, but then we're happy to answer any questions that you guys have. Thank you. Thanks, Laura. And I think we can pause before I resume if you want, if any of you have questions for Laura at this point. Just to break the flow. So I know however you'd like to handle it is fine with us. Why don't we go ahead and bring your presentation to a conclusion, and then we'll jump in, if that's okay. Sounds great, whatever works best for you all. Terrific, all right, well thanks. And I think just have one more slide that I'll use just as the backdrop with a few key points that I wanna hit on to round out our presentation. First just a few kind of big picture sort of overarching messages about natural climate solutions building on what Laura has said. I think it's really important to emphasize that as much as we see the opportunity that natural climate solutions offer as part of tackling climate change in field, it's absolutely imperative to try to take advantage of that opportunity, and it's woven into H688 right now. We recognize it's not a silver bullet, right? This is not gonna solve the problem as Laura said. We've gotta turn off the gas that's heating up the planet while we also are doing things that are working to cool it down. It has to be a both end, and that as much as nature can help us, it's not the solution. So it's not a silver bullet, but I heard someone use this expression the other day and I can't remember who it was, but we see it as a really essential part of the silver buckshot that we need to be thinking about collectively to tackle climate change. So it needs to be a lot of different things. I know I'm not telling you anything with that that you don't already appreciate, but and just building on that, this, you know, it's really not a replacement for the deep cuts and carbon emissions, and moving to a clean energy future as quickly as we possibly can that is so imperative. That said, natural climate solutions we see are a really key cost effective tool for taking carbon out of the air and that can help us get from our current goals to net zero or beyond actually to net negative over time. And in doing that, we can secure a whole bunch of other benefits for our communities, for our economy and for our environment that complement those needed emissions reductions and turning down the heat essentially. And just to reiterate and sort of fill in a little bit more around those co-benefits, we really see it that by investing in conservation and restoration and sound stewardship of our natural and working lands, so in our land sector generally, we can capitalize on their potential to help slow climate change while we gain all these other benefits. And so things like jobs and economic development, water quality improvements, reduced vulnerability to flooding, places for outdoor recreation and all of the benefits that go along with that, health and wellbeing for being able to access the outdoors and feed our souls, quality of life and the way that all of these things tie into the attractiveness of Vermont for people to live here, whether those of us who are already here or people who may be interested in coming. And for more of the sort of natural benefits around wildlife, biodiversity, this setting sustaining our native plants and animals. So we see there's an opportunity really for sort of a virtuous circle in all of this. And whether you're coming at it from a carbon perspective or from a water quality perspective or some of those other perspectives, there's a way to be getting synergies from all of these that can be mutually reinforcing and addressing a number of big challenges that we have here in Vermont through the same sorts of actions of conservation, restoration and sound stewardship of our lands. I wanted to spend just a minute, again, building on what Laura said, but tying all of this and how it shows up in the Global Warming Solutions Act before you with other ongoing policy work here in Vermont and efforts that are underway beyond the policy realm. I think I'll start with one that Laura was just touching on, which is this reference to what the state committed to doing as part of this, signing into the U.S. Climate Alliance a couple of years ago. And there is one of the main streams of that effort on the part of the 25 states across the country that are part of the U.S. Climate Alliance. It relates to trying to better quantify and then also increase the absorption of carbon and the storage of carbon in the land sector, natural working land sector. It's something where we've been trying to work with and encourage the state to get more deeply involved in. I think there's an openness to doing that. We haven't seen a lot of action yet, but I'm hoping that over the course of this year we'll see more forward progress. And I think the timing of it woven in with this bill and other climate initiatives that are happening here in the legislature are hopefully we'll go hand in hand. And this is another part of that sort of silver bookshot. Other ones, Representative Higley can speak to this in more depth than I can, but is the efforts that have been initiated by you all in the last session related to forest carbon sequestration and looking for opportunities to make it easier for Vermont landowners, private landowners, but also municipal and potentially the state to access existing carbon markets, offset markets. So I know Commissioner Siders spoke with you all about that maybe 10 days or two weeks ago. We won't go deep on it now. One of our colleagues, Jim Shallow, our conservation director here in Vermont was part of that working group. I'm happy to have him come back and share more both on that and on some ongoing work that we're a part of trying to develop some innovative new pilot projects or test proving grounds of efforts to access carbon markets for Vermont landowners here. And we've been doing that on our own lands up in Representative Higley's backyard at our Burnt Mountain parcel up in Montgomery and a little bit in Eden and Lowell. And then also we're in a collaboration with the Vermont Land Trust again in that same neck of the woods with private landowners trying to figure out how to bundle a number of different private land holdings together into a package that's big enough to access. It has sort of the economy of scale to access existing voluntary carbon markets. And then we also are a part and Laura's involved in this as well with a really fledgling effort that we're very hopeful about with the American Forest Foundation that's called Family Forest Carbon. It's a program that's been piloted and actually got in the Central Appalachians but that we're trying to bring into Vermont and Massachusetts which would be helping to access revenue streams for landowners to do essentially carbon friendly forestry. Excuse me. Not in a way to try to access offset markets but just to provide some revenues for them for doing different improved forest management carbon friendly practices. And that's something that we're really hopeful about. It's like we'll see but it could be a great tool for accessing particularly smaller parcels and providing some new revenues that can really reward landowners for good forest stewardship which is what we all wanna see I think and the landowners themselves are deeply committed to helping them keep their lands as forest and so that where we're helping to sustain that carbon sink and not getting into a situation where they're having to sell their lands or convert it and risking the carbon source that that can result in. And where would those revenues come from? Well, so I don't know, Laura, do you wanna help out? Well for the pilot, we'll come from a grant. So we have a grant as you so often do when you do the first ones you kind of have money lined up and it's Western and Central Massachusetts as well Southern Vermont is the pilot area where we're trying to port what they did in the Central Appalachians and move it up. After that gets a little more complicated Massachusetts has a state policy program that seems like it might be a, it's a version of our current use program. I think you guys call it current use of preasal and we call it chapter 61. So it's kind of an add on to that. After that there is a lot of discussion about the desire for more and more companies and private actors to basically pay for climate outcomes. Offsets, there's a certain market for that. There's also people who want to incent good behavior or help make it easier for people who already want to do a behavior or maybe it costs them a lot of money to sort of do cost share. Kind of like NRCS where, so natural resource conservation service it's a federal agency that for example will pay farmers, here's half the cost of putting fencing up around your stream so that your cows don't go through it. So it's not an offset, it's a payment for a practice that they know has benefits. In this case it's payment for practice we know has carbon benefits. But as Phil mentioned, these things are also, I think we're very committed to being open about whether or not it works. We're trying it out. We're trying not to go in with too many assumptions. It's really promising in the central office it's also being piloted in California. But if at the end of the day we can't make things work in this region we'll report that back and look for the next opportunity. It sounds like you have to have either government revenues or a foundation to support something like this. Well the model of the central ops is more about private companies and like supply chains and there's a whole complicated thing that's over my head about how you set that up. Some of the big tech companies have made enormously large pledges those are on paper and they've translated it yet. And our carbon here is actually really attractive because we don't have fire the way they do in some other parts of the country. And so when people pay for practices here they're not quite as concerned that it's gonna go up and smoke the next year. So again there's economists with much different expertise than I am who have like worked all the things out and they show it to me and I'm like that's great. We're really trying to be like let's put it in practice on the ground come up with a practice and see how much it costs see who signs up and figure out whether that sales pitch that they're doing in the central apps works here. So yeah it's amazing to see. Not to belabor the point but I mean they're not getting the companies that would be fronting the money for this aren't getting anything. They're not getting carbon credits or anything. They are. They are getting carbon. That's what I'm trying to get at. Yeah so there are companies that are going for carbon offsets where they're like we want you to figure this out to the nth degree and that's fine and that's one side of markets. But there are other actors including companies including some of the big forestry companies including things with big supply chains that are basically saying we wanna make we wanna take climate outcomes we wanna improve our supply chain we wanna show we're taking this seriously we want the goodwill we want the marketing I mean there are all sorts of things that they're getting but what they aren't getting is this is your carbon that you're allowed to emit. That's sort of the difference. It is also worth noting that we think that one or two of the practices we're developing here probably will work in that offset market. So for that one the funding might come from offsets but there will be others where it just doesn't fit the market doesn't work very well often for those small private forest landowners and that's just a different sort of thing. Again, these are also questions we're asking about how many of these companies and how long is their attention span and how much money and exactly. So these are good questions for sure. Definitely. And I have a handout about this family forest carbon program high level overview that I'm happy to pass out when we're done. It's also Danielle has it for the record that may help to answer this a little bit more and also this could be part of a follow on conversation if you have the interest in a time later where we could get Jim Shallow in to dig deeper on this and on some of the carbon offset work that we are doing on our own and with Vermont Land Trust and others with the state and things. So. One other question on this or is it similar to flight shaming? So there's an effort out there from a lot of people whether it's they feel bad that they've taken an air flight or there was even talking to our committee about requiring vehicle sales places to have some form of a program around that. But right. I don't feel good thing in a sense. Yeah, that's a really I have to think that one through. I mean, I think the pitch to companies would not be so much like you're doing bad stuff. So you should do this but more here are these small landowners who know what to do and want to do it and the numbers just don't work for them. And you have the opportunity to show that you're helping that and you're taking climate change action and you get the marketing and whatever other about it. You know, you get to take a look at it like it would probably be individual for each funder. But I know that in the central apps it's much more as a it's being much more pitched as a you said you took this seriously here's one way you can act. It's a way that's carbon additional. So those offsets it's not just being admitted somewhere else. It's a brand new thing that wouldn't happen without you. So that's I think more the argument but I'll think more on that's kind of an interesting parallel that I haven't thought about. I mean, I guess there's more than one ways to talk to the companies about it. For now it's, I think is a much more positive like, you know, you know, this is a good thing. You want to get credit for doing it. We can work together on this sort of thing. Yeah, and I think, yeah, I appreciate the question and this is, you know, it's all complicated as you know from the working group which was focused on the offset side. This is a little different, but in either case I think it's not just feel good. It's about real additional carbon whether it's happening through practices or through a commitment to be doing changing practices for a certain period or whatever. And so there is, you know, again some real carbon change that's a result of the payment that's happening whether through an established offset market or through this fledgling idea that we're trying to see if it works basically. And I suppose this is one real life example. So yesterday Microsoft pledged not only to go to carbon neutrality but to remove the carbon that they had emitted over their business practices. That's a little different than an offset. So something like, I mean, I don't know whether they have plans yet for how they're gonna get there. They just put the pledge out and they'll figure it out later. But something like this would actually be about removals of carbon from the atmosphere in a way that an offset wouldn't allow them to say that because it's about the carbon they're emitting over here being absorbed over here. So again, it's such a rapidly shifting. It's one reason why I think the pilot did require a grant because we need to have the money up front to sort of show, okay, we got this, we'll test it out. But those are the kinds of things that we'll be trying to think about as we move on in the pilot as potential funding forces. Thanks. So the forest carbon markets are, their value is on the increased carbon storage, right? Between current practice and future storage. See, frustration, is that right? Yes, so it's about that additional carbon. So that's where the payment is for that additional carbon over time with a commitment to sustain that carbon over the duration of the agreement. Well, but there are also offsets on the forest conversion side. So there's avoided, there's actually avoided, there's both, there's avoided loss, like this would have been converted from a forest and this carbon would have been emitted and then you're exactly right, Phil, that sort of, this is additional carbon that's sequestered because you paid for some action to be taken. And so in your Massachusetts version, in calculating your greenhouse gas reductions, do all of those count? So in our Global Warring Solutions Act? Yes. So our baseline is that at 1990. So any forest that were there in 1990 are baseline. The carbon that's there is baseline. The sequestration that happened in 1990 is baseline. And then things get a little more complicated because forests grow no matter what you do. So the baseline in that case is shifting but the things that would, again, this is where we didn't integrate that this is where you guys should do a better job than we did of integrating this from the beginning, no disrespect to Han and David and others who are doing amazing stuff with it. But as we do this 80 by 50 study, we need to separate out what can be attributed to action that we took. That's additional, like the state paid someone to do this thing and this carbon resulted. That's not baseline, that's additional. That is something that could count. What can't count is good news, the forest grew, like we didn't do anything to create that. So that's still baseline. And as you can imagine, it gets a little bit challenging when you're actually measuring it. But the good thing is because we've measured forests for wood forever, we have really good data going back very far from the U.S. forest or some lots of other sources. So it's possible to go back to a 1990 baseline or 2005 baseline or whatever you need and then look at what's happening now. And one more other question that I'll wait for the next round. Yeah. Are things like biochar being explored as a story? That's so funny because so earlier today, I met with Jim Shallow in the Vermont office and we have, as part of our family forest carbon program pilot, on February 11th, we have our first stakeholder workshop about forest carbon practices. And so I've been working with some staff from the U.S. Forest Service and Jim and others to scour all the lists anybody we know of has ever put together about this is what carbon positive forestry means. And pulling that together into a hopefully much more understandable and shorter list that we'll put in front of stakeholders from Vermont and Massachusetts and foresters and harvesters and state agency staff and academics and profits. And try to get at which of these opportunities in our region. I mean, some of them are just like the mangroves, right? That's not even something we're putting on the list because it's pretty much not relevant. And so which ones we think have potential here and which we don't. And some of the evidence that we have for the carbon benefits, like where do the carbon benefits come from? So that is one of many policy practices that is on that list for sort of let's really get our heads around the evidence about this and see whether or not this is something that we think is a potential here. And we're really leaning on the stakeholders to do that. We didn't want it to be a TNC list. The idea is, hopefully it is this broad swath of stakeholders with the help of TNC, Forest Service, New England Forestry Foundation State, everybody so that it comes out basically as solid and complete as we can. So I don't have a lot of expertise in that area but it's definitely one of many things. The list is quite long that we'll be looking at and kind of looking to those stakeholders to help us ground truth and think through. Yeah, so I was thinking about along the same lines for minus 75% forest that plus or minus 100%. And so the idea of more reforestation is probably pretty impractical. Yeah, yeah. So any additional carbon sequestration might do the incremental. I'm wondering if there are other ways of sequestering carbon with other types of crops, that sort of thing that would produce carbon sequestration yet take advantage of farms and other things like that. Yeah, that actually is a great tie-in to my next point on the list. So maybe I'll build off of that. On the forest side of things, that I generally agree that we are largely forested that our forests are generally well managed. And that, but there are some opportunities for reforestation, particularly in riparian river, riverine areas, flood plains. Historically there were, our flood plains were covered with flood plain forests. And much of that has been converted and for important reasons for agriculture in particular among other things. But there are now especially with the changing precipitation patterns that we're seeing and the increased frequency of larger floods, there are more low-laying ag lands that are becoming unproductive. And there's an opportunity for working with farmers to take the land that's now marginal or really no longer viable for sustained ag production and restore a forest there for carbon benefits as well as water quality benefits or reduced flood vulnerability habitat. It's the sort of whole suite of potential benefits. It's again, this is not like gonna be the big lever that's gonna solve all our problems but it's another important modest piece of the picture. On the ag side, what you're getting at I think is exactly in the wheelhouse of what Laura alluded to before which is what will be I think an ongoing effort of what's called the Payment for Ecosystem Services working group that was authorized in Act 83 last spring. It was sort of alongside the forest carbon sequestration working group. So this is one that the Agency of Agriculture has been leading. Deputy Secretary Eastman has been chairing and looking at ways to potentially create a framework wherein agricultural producers, farmers could be receive payments for enhanced environmental services that they're providing with carbon potentially being one of those along with water quality was really the bigger driver of it I think. But so water quality absorbing rain and snow melt, carbon enhancing productivity and that group is really, they came out with an initial report just last week and encourage you to read it and again this might be a topic for further exploration as you go forward but their focus is around soil health and that essentially healthy agricultural soils can absorb more carbon and provide those other benefits including increased productivity and it does mean they're sort of tie into some changes in practices and crops and things like that. There are others who are much deeper, more deeply steep than I am in the specifics of all of that but that's sort of the concept. So I think it points to how the ag sector is a really important one to keep very much in mind again as like another bit of the silver buckshot here. I'm not going to solve everything but we can make some meaningful improvements for carbon as well as for all these other important values. I just want to make one more point then and that's that I think the nature concerns see for your part in preserving the Raven Ridge natural area in Charlotte and Huntersburg. Thank you. Beautiful area. Thank you. It's one that we're really delighted to have been able to help in collaboration with the state and others to conserve permanently and there's some terrific weapons as part of that and other natural areas for us that are absorbing carbon as well as providing really important habitat for native species and whatnot. So thank you. Should I keep going, move through things quickly on a few other points? Yeah, I'm sorry, I thought you were done. No, no, I'm not. So a couple other things just in terms of current state policy dialogue and work going on as some of you may or may not know there's been a lot of dialogue led in the two ag committees around wetland policy and whether there ought to be any adjustments made to that. I think the take home from our perspective on this from a carbon perspective that's Laura said wetlands have a really outsized importance for carbon sequestration and storage relative to their size and abundance on the landscape. So it's really important for that reason among a whole host of other ones that we be doing everything that we can to maintain strong protections for our wetlands and for existing wetlands and to try to accelerate efforts to restore degraded wetlands for the carbon benefits that they offer as well as others. Couple other things that state funding for conservation and restoration is critical for trying to optimize the opportunity that we have with natural climate solutions for us wetlands, ag lands and those are the two big ones I would say are funding for VHCB and also water quality funding and there's some important significant levels of investment there but there's never enough to do all the work that might be needed to really tackle those problems for a whole host of reasons but carbon is an important layer to consider as we're thinking about the scale of those investments. And then the other that I touch on is you all know I'm sure that lots of effort underway to try to figure out how to modernize Act 250 and that relates obviously to our lands, forest land, ag land, wetlands, river corridors, the whole nine yards. Important to think about those from carbon side as well as other aspects of climate resilience, adaptation and other things. I know that your colleagues in the Natural Resources Fish and Wildlife Committee are actively thinking about that dimension but I guess I wanted just to lay all of those different things out to convey I think we think about them all as building blocks and for pieces of this silver buckshot to kind of beat that analogy a little bit but that provide opportunities and synergies with where the bill is trying to get to as that moves forward and that they tie right in not only to the mitigating climate change but also helping with resilience and adaptation so you get to weave all of these together through natural systems. Let me just wrap up quickly with a few quick points on our take on the bill itself, our position. For starters, we wanna be clear that we strongly support H688. We see it as a really important foundational framework for propelling the rapid progress and accountability that's needed for Vermont to be doing our part in raining and climate change and it's an opportunity for Vermont to reclaim and reestablish leadership in this realm that we've been falling behind on in a broader than Vermont context. So it's not gonna solve all of our problems either I think that was coming up in the testimony this morning with Deputy Secretary Wach and the questions or points that were raised about the Transportation and Climate Initiative and trying to figure out a way to really rein in emissions from that sector and we need to be coming at this from a whole bunch of different directions but from our perspective we see Global Warming Solutions Act as one critical piece of that puzzle. I wanna highlight and just appreciate the language that's in the bill right now that recognizes the role of natural systems for mitigation so the natural climate solution side of things and for resilience and adaptation. Thank you to those who've been involved in drafting the bill and sponsoring it for that. We support the provisions related to the alternative reduction mechanisms as they're called and offsets to achieve net zero emissions after 2050 so again that ties right into what we've been talking about today so glad to see that there's some good language in there and it's beyond what was built into the Massachusetts example. We do have a few what I would characterize as just minor suggested revisions that I'd be happy to offer by Redline or to talk with Ledge Council or whatever might be easiest. It's around things like consistent reference where there's reference to lands to have it consistently referred to natural and working lands as opposed to just natural lands or just working lands or some other combination of those and to incorporate adaptation and resilience provisions at each step in the process. So in the development of the plan by the council and then by the agency as they're promulgating regulations. So it looked from our read again like that the adaptation and resilience provisions might not track through quite in all of those so happy to talk about that. And then one last one is just also in the resilience and adaptation provisions acknowledging the importance of really helping our natural systems to adapt and be more resilient to the change that's happening along with helping our human communities adapt and be resilient to the climate change that's coming. So we're all in this together with the natural systems we depend on. And then I guess I just say, we would welcome an opportunity when the time comes to help out with the council's work. We have the potential with the Nature Conservancy to draw on our broader circle of colleagues outside of Vermont. Laura is one example of that, but there's a whole host of people that are working on these issues, mitigation, adaptation, resilience for nature and for people all across the country and the world that are happy to help bring that in to the extent it would be helpful for the committee and for the council and the state going forward. I'll wind it down there. I want to thank you all for giving us the opportunity to testify. We really appreciate it. We're really pleased that our incoming board chair, Wynne Smith, the president of Sugarbush, will be here on Friday to testify. He'll be speaking really, I think, from the business perspective. We've given him a bit of a TNC perspective, but he's here in part with his TNC board member and incoming chair hat on. And so, and I have a couple of handouts to one that I mentioned about the family forest carbon program and then also just a little infographic about forests as natural climate solutions that helps to just kind of quickly capture what's a pretty complicated topic so I can hand these around. And thank you again. Thank you. What I would ask you to do would be helpful and we welcome, you know, as granular so you want to get input change to the bill that you would recommend. Great. It would be helpful if you could pass that along to Danielle just so we have kind of a transcribed version of what your suggestions are. Happy to do that. I'll get it to you about the end of the week. Would that be the next? Okay. That's great. Great. A question I had that wasn't quite clear on Laura that you had mentioned earlier in terms of how the Massachusetts global warming solutions policy works with regard to sequestered carbon. Yeah. How that does or would potentially contribute to the targets that are embedded in that law. Right now it doesn't. So natural and working landslides use forests for an example because we're mostly forested. So in the 1990 baseline document we have a line that says this is the amount of forest carbon sequestration in the year 1990. This is the amount of forest carbon stock in the year 1990. This is the amount of emissions from harvesting and development and any other thing that we can measure in the year 1990. And then those numbers show up in the Global Resolutions Act document. But then they're... I'm trying to be careful in how I say this because there's been a lot of action even though they haven't been in there, but they're gone then. So like in the what are our emissions and where are we, you don't see that. So it's a little bit that's kind of what I was trying to get at is like we put them in the baseline which is really important. But then we sort of didn't put them throughout the rest of the bill in as integrated a way as I think we could. They're always odd to the side as an asterisk. So right now, and again, we couldn't count the baseline but if we took action to cluster development and convert fewer forests, that also is not included in... Well, that one is because it's reduced emissions from conversion but there are things that we probably could count. They'll be very small like we've said that aren't I think fully incorporated. And it's one of the things that I don't envy the job of my colleagues in the state agencies who are working on the 80 by 50 study because they decided in that to really try to wrap everything together and it's proving difficult to do when you didn't do it from the beginning. Wrap everything together in terms of how... Lands. Okay, lands and the sequestration piece may... Right, so in the scope of the study lands are now a sector. So there's a chapter on buildings, there's also a chapter on lands and that's a shift from the way we did our original plan and documents. And just, I mean, as this isn't a question but just as a sideline, I was very interested to understand how New York approached this and the work that it had done. And there seemed to be some flips and twists that they were doing to try and incorporate this. Yes, Maine might be a better example. That was exactly my impression. Yeah, Maine's doing, I think, a really great... Maine's probably more analogous to Vermont anyway and they're being very careful and I think very forward thinking about how they're looking at... We have a lot of forests, we have not a lot of people. Like, how do we do this so that we're being honest? We're not cheating, we're not just saying, oh yeah, the forest, it's fine. We can do whatever we want. But they're also really trying to look at the opportunity in their forest and land sector and say, but we have room to grow here. We can do these things and then we'll count them in the following ways, yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Let's go, then, Robin. Well, I was just gonna say that we didn't, or the bill doesn't name drawdown specifically as a goal. So we have resilience, we have adaptation, and of course, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, but we haven't named drawdown as sort of by name and so I guess I'm wondering whether you think that would be a valuable thing to do. I mean, I am not an expert on this bill. I read it to try to, and I'm not actually a policy person, so I read it as well as I could to prep for this. It looks really good. I mean, I think the elements you need are there. I think my message is more, it's all about the implementation. You know, when you get past that and you have the bill and it's the climate council, that's where I think some of the lessons from Maine, from Massachusetts could really help you. So again, I didn't, as a quick sort of late person read of it, from this topic, it seemed like the bill's language is everything you need. Yeah, I appreciate you raising this. I think my sense that reading it so far is similar to Laura's, that it's in there and the idea of mitigation as well as resilience and adaptation can get at the drawdown concept, I think, depending upon how it's interpreted and applied. But let me take a look back at it again. I guess I'm always just wondering whether clarity or specificity would be a good thing. Yeah, I think just building on what Laura said from the Massachusetts experience, this notion of treating the land sector as a sector from the get-go, and I'm not sure that that needs to be spelled out in the bill, but that that should be part of the way that the council is understanding its charge would be helpful, and that that's thinking about both the emissions source aspect of the land sector as well as the emissions, the drawdown side of things. I guess I'm just wondering whether by naming drawdown, that's telling the council that it has to account for lands, and it has to account for opportunities to increase the sequestration of the storage in ag and forestry. A question in my mind, that's all. Yeah, I think that's a good one to be thinking about. I'm just curious whether, talk about land-based solutions sort of this water in Massachusetts Bay figure into this area. Oh, I took out all the ocean slides, all of them, because you guys don't have ocean. It's irrelevant to us, but curious. That's funny, I actually pulled them as land. Oh, you know, maybe I won't show this coastal. So blue carbon is actually a huge thing for Massachusetts, because we have this little strip of coastal wetlands, both on the land and then eelgrass beds in the, you know, the earshore in the water. And those, we call them blue carbon systems just because it's, you know, salt marshes, eelgrasses, and mangroves globally are referred to as blue carbon systems. And that's a really fascinating system because they, the plants sequester carbon each year, and then it goes into sediment that's underwater so there's no oxygen. So it is there indefinitely. It's anaerobic. It doesn't really decay and emit, and it accretes over time. So under a blue carbon system, you could have a hundred years worth of sequester carbon. And you can imagine then, when we don't get our sewage systems quite right, and we dump a bunch of nutrients into those systems in a way that kills them, or we, you know, worse we sort of dewater them. There's a word for that. We expose them to air. All of that carbon can come roaring back. So in Massachusetts, that's actually a big, it's kind of like city trees, maybe not relevant here. Definitely something that's relevant there. And something that our Division of Ecological Restoration has developed, like a blue carbon calculator, and there's all sorts of references to it in our Blue-Borne Solutions Act. Ten years ago when we passed the bill, I think we didn't quite have the science that we needed to on this. So there are a lot of like placeholders, like we're gonna figure this piece out better. And now I think we're getting better at being able to do that. What are the carbon, specifically what are the carbon benefits of restoring these systems? What are the carbon benefits of avoided degradation and what levels of nutrients do you need to get below to reach that? So there's, I have two colleagues who are up to speed on this, and I kind of just feed off of what they do. But yeah, so I took it out because I didn't want to bore you guys with stuff that you'd be like, we don't have oceans. But yes, it's definitely relevant there. And I might just add that although we don't have the marine carbon, we do have the lake and basically freshwater wetlands. And as we were talking about before, just of the importance of those. And they too are places where you get that long stored carbon in a largely unoxygenated setting. So there isn't the decomposition and emissions going on. It just is accumulating in some of our wetlands, not all of them on. But so where there's that great storage and there's the risk of significant emissions if the wetlands are converted essentially. So it's the other part, it's our part of the bigger picture of wetland related systems in their role in all of this. Absolutely. Does our locally mill foil absorb any or is that completely useless? That's a good question. You know, all plants absorb, they are carbon, right? And they're pulling it out and that's how they are creating their fiber and their structure. Sort of plant mill foil. So that said, please don't interpret this as an endorsement of mill foil. I don't want that on the record. No, so I think that there are obviously major problems with that and other invasive plants, both aquatic and terrestrial. And although they are forms of carbon as we are too, they're big ecological and human related problems that those native species create. I would say as a very general rule, there's less biomass in a monoculture or a system dominated by one species. Salt marshes may be the exception than a diverse system. So my hunch, not knowing much about mill foil would be that it's similar to a lot of invasive plants where you're actually going to have a less favorable carbon balance in a system that's invaded by that than the native species that have divided all the niches and are adapted to being there. But I don't know much about that particular example. Thank you guys. Oh, I'm sorry. No, I just maybe would like to mention one other thing I've talked to Phil about this before. But fortunately, a good chunk of a match land is privately owned. So again, when we say we are our land, we have to understand that there is a private sector ownership to this. So a lot of these programs, whether there was some discussion in the sea frustration group about, maybe we could extend the cutting periods from a 10 year cycle to a 20 year cycle. If that's the case, again, we have to consider property owners that have to make property taxes and something that hasn't been mentioned is property taxes and that's kind of a leading cause of forced privatization or sell-off for cutting. I mean, you know, so I think that's an important aspect as well to mention, as far as property taxes alone have a critical role to play in what happens to Vermont's privately owned forest. And I think it's very analogous in Central and Western mass where nearly, I mean, we have some state land, but it's mostly in very small, even smaller parcels than you guys have private ownership and so any of these programs that are about supporting landowners as they do good civil culture, but maybe helping them with things that will have carbon benefits or protects oil or whatever are really designed around how do you incentivize those landowners to do it or at least reduce the cost. There's an analog to farming in Massachusetts where the state is looking at buying cover cropping equipment because small farmers can't afford the equipment to do the practice. They might actually be able to afford if they're selling some of the cover croppers, increasing their yield, the practice itself, but not the equipment. So I think there are a lot of examples of that, of sort of recognizing it has to make sense for the landowner who similarly is struggling with really high rates of, really high values of land for development and really low values of the land as forest. So getting that balance right is relevant for us as well. Yeah. And I'll just add, yeah, I think that private lands are the predominance of the land ownership pattern in Vermont, forest land and otherwise. And I think it's critical to try to figure out how to make this work and essentially in a way that's helping to support private landowners and what I think the vast majority of them want to do, which is to continue to own and steward their lands and help to figure out with incentives or with revenues that can be coming in from different sources, whether that's offset markets or whether it's some of the payment for practices kind of ideas that the family forest carbon program is trying to get at. And these are, our landowners are scattered all around the state, but many of them are in our rural parts of the state that are struggling economically, the vulnerability issues of individual landowners and of communities that are so critical. So if we get this right, there will be an opportunity to use this as one part of a broader package of solutions that can be helping to deal with some of those really persistent pressing critical challenges, along with efforts to deal with the resilience and reducing vulnerability, those sorts of things, again, in the role that our natural systems can play in helping to achieve that. Great. Thank you guys. Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate this. Thank you so much for your time and hot stuffy room, yeah. We're doing our own anaerobic. Are you sure? Yeah. That's right. And I guess I'll also just say thank you for the work that you're doing on this. Realized like this is a lot of long days of hearing from a lot of people in a small stuffy room, but the work that you're doing is really important that wherever this leads to. Anyway, just want to thank you on our behalf for leading in and for everything else that you do here on behalf of Vermont. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you.