 Karen why don't we get going? I'm hopeful Robin will join us shortly 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 people particularly interested in your feedback on but you know those in particular relate to how our municipalities and towns are reacting from a resilience standpoint and you know are there things in here that you know that you can speak to from your members perspective you know 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 but anyway I appreciate you also being flexible on your time we got off the floor a little earlier than I think we anticipated today and we thought you would be on the floor for quite a while yeah I think that's going to be tomorrow 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 more town village during Irene that my son took so they're not copyrighted at least for me so we the Vermont League of Cities and Towns board voted to join the Vermont the Vermont Climate Pledge Coalition on June 27th of 2017 and I'm starting the glasses on glasses off right I had let's see and and that's part of the America's pledge that this is a one-page or about America's pledge from the organization that Mike Bloomberg and others put together Maro 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 the board of the National League of Cities whoops wrong 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 beacon 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 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 the climate warning 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 and 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 the executive summary is pretty it's quite a few pages also so you might just want to 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's this that the sustainable economy of 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 made the transition from where we are today to where we need to be H 688 would establish a climate council of 22 members and attach it to the agency of natural resources and Department of Public Service if climate changes are 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 going to 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 and we're really really small so I just point that out because the language at section four in the bill is introduced is a is a little bit squirrely in the way it describes the municipal representation just that just so for my understanding does the LCT represent one of those groups or the other for examples is Burlington one of your members or yeah so the mayor is the chair the president of the LCT 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 but to your point about representation of large municipalities and more commonly sized yeah those are all into the VLCT umbrella yes they are yeah yeah just to your definition of large is over what well actually it's not necessarily our definition it's in the statute in a few places but it's more than 5,000 population cited yeah 5,000 in the bill that 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's somewhere else but also recommendations for funding and how we're going to get there the bill would establish several subcommittees including a just transition subcommittee in 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 you people won't necessarily need to travel as far if they can telecommunicate things like that fewer people are available to volunteer for vital jobs such as emergent emergency medical and fire services when kiss 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 you reduce use use the fossil fuels there is a bill that came over from the Senate last year as 106 that talks about self-governance more generally and sets up a whole program but we we think that in instances where you're trying to address a particular issue 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 spent time on the government government operations is 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 you have to you have to be specific in some towns or 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 you know they need the specific authority to enact an ordinance or by law we are concerned about the requirement in h688 for municipalities to annually file a report with the director of the month emergency management concerning quote municipal emergency preparedness infrastructure resiliency and infrastructure investment I think this is an example of the potential resent 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 female 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 there occurring in your community and the emergency preparedness plans are for how's your fire department your emergency medical technicians that the people in your town going to respond to an event when it happens and I'm going to step way out of and line here and mentioned that Lauren used to work for emergency management until the end of December right so she can fill you in and 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 forego 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 in 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 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 should 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 you you it's really not helpful to have agencies going off in different directions trying to enact their priorities and finally we oppose the 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 program the problem for seven years while that mess was adjudicated local officials and state officials sat around and waited to 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 who's name I forget I'm sorry John Erickson talk about binding provisions in 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 yes and I here see and understand so here it is we're trying to get out there and that is in addition to having this vulnerability index that government is making an assessment in 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 reflecting something back on that so do you think that the hazard mitigation plans themselves I mean I understand there 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 tell 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 we just completed our hazard mitigation plan in my town 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 and crossing all the tease and dotting all the eyes 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 you know 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 NBDA or yeah we had help yeah we had help from the regional commission so yeah 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 its 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 you if you have steep roads it 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 all fun stone lining ditches I like to just note for the record that I did a full day of ditch school in Wardsboro from good congratulations yeah 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 you know what sort of remains to be seen how successful they will be at addressing runoff basically in that instance stormwater runoff in storm events again if I can elaborate to your point there is that these agencies really need to be a collaboration right up front yeah the same with the ag agency and I mean you know I just heard of horror story up my way with somebody who did some cutting and got the proper permits and everything next thing you know that it was supposed to be in the wetlands right so it's a cease and desist order and I mean it's just unbelievable yeah yeah so that it's so important that you know all the agency whether it's it's one agency or whatever that that has the collective information to issue the permits or whatever it's 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 they don't there's not really anybody at the net 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 question going back to your what you said earlier on about you're you're thinking that this should be coming directed out of the governor's office rather than the particular agency when 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 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 you know for how long but but it's not right to deal with that with that one catastrophe right just 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 if you're 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 government and another example that is not a good example I will say is we used to have a state planning office out of the governor's office and there was a governor who came along and decided that wasn't worth his while but but I think it you know there was that office for a period of time I'm not disagreeing I just as a new visit you threw out of something a different right on the table and I'm just asking because yeah there is that sort of time-limited assignment that occurred that time versus but you write them the planning office was considered right right and if you write it into statute I think they can't you know say we don't want to do this well but if it is a governor's office function then it would seem to depend a lot on who governor is it's not it's not it's not sort of it's not sort of built into the to the ongoing bureaucracy is such a negative negative loaded word operations all right of state government as it would be if it were so career career agency people working on it right I mean it would depend kind of how you structured it as to as to how I mean you'd have to talk about how to structure it I know that it's been recommended it that there's like an climate change czar or something which is along the same lines and governors do change I think that that just seems like it would be more exposed to political you know the politics of the person in the office rather than 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 it at the agency's level but what we really do want to avoid is the situation where our culture transportation public service natural resources are all sort of jockeying for what they want to have happened and in the meantime not a lot happens so I have the same question and I'll take advantage of you being here now we can I'm happy to talk about it more later too which is really a good governance question and you have addressed this head-on is what your recommendation is that there be something much closer to the governor you know as I 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 be one way or the other my focus is on accountability and these aren't my words but but I've used them which is there one neck to choke and who's accountable for this work getting done now that they do all of it necessarily and one viewpoint I think it's probably one that you share at least a closer view is that this should be either somewhere much closer to the governor or even the agency of administration it sits at the head of and 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 to the governor kind of an average yard you know some of the policy orientation is a little farther removed right but at the same time it you know it has more a more regular correct function and you know an hour on the other hand is charged with regulating pollution so again this is more like it's not an ideological question to my standpoint it's a good governance question you know if we are going to build this and we're looking for accountability where does that best reside right I don't feel strongly about it I'm just looking for the best answer yeah I think I'm I've certainly hear what you're saying you do have in this bill you have the council and the council has the secretaries of the agency that's correct and in our as the chair of that council yeah so well that's an interesting thing but anyway I mean if you're gonna have it in the governor's office then it should probably be the secretary of administration right yeah but but but the so then that council and the secretary of administration whoever that climate change star 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 maybe I'm missing the point that you're making but when you talk about this position not being an hour I was presuming you're talking about that an hour not being that the essentially the chair of the council right yeah we are yes okay we're happy to talk to any of you about this more or come back or other questions whenever thank you and thank you for the details yeah I do 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 I mean we're hopefully we we are getting through to our members about this we did have a climate conference a couple of 2018 I want to say that looked at a number of these issues I mean towns even the even the smallest towns understand that you know we have to do something we have to address these issues I mean nothing in your in Ludlow they've had a couple of road collapses and from flooding events that nobody's exempt from those kinds of natural events and and we're going to 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 want to do and what they actually need to have you know be too messy thank you yeah thank you thank you kind of for the room at large it was this messy when we were dealing with asbestos or lead regulation or control does anybody know I mean if we're thinking of this as another group like a and r of regulate is there a corollary to use as an example so I think the best example is the one that the deputy secretary made of the product which is again from their standpoint with water and how the state has thought about that that's my well asbestos was more federal yeah so that there was didn't still is I mean there's just a report on VPR this morning about you know some it was in Pennsylvania yeah Philadelphia yeah that they're finding all this asbestos and oh yeah I guess you know I think what's unique about greenhouse gas emissions is there is no federal you know water plenty of pressure we were getting on the water side was EPA and look on federally driven as well as state but greenhouse gas emissions you know are referred to in state statute but there's no federal there's no federal guide by hey can you be the door open for the time being so that's a lot of time so okay if we have two chairs side by side yeah just knowing that space is at a premium but you want to sneak over here or not yeah whatever's easy for you there's nothing easy shoe warning there we're probably going to wait for just a second I It went quickly on the floor this afternoon, things went quickly on the floor this afternoon. No dissension or a well-oiled machine until tomorrow. For the moment, savor it while you can. The appropriations committee has voted to recommend approval of the budget adjustment. You're unanimously. And it usually is like, well, does anyone have any questions? Can you stand for it? We vote the most even if there's a strong majority. A lot of stuff comes out, you know, with two people voting no or something like that. We always want to know a little bit about what some of the issues were. Were there any no votes today? No, listen to Harmony. No, I write a weekly report. This week I noted that I actually passed for the very first few weeks. The very first bill was a bill that I was pushing through. The solution of a bill which government and its mergers mentioned was handled. And they voted in frustration, you know, that was a very, very first bill. It's a moment. We'll get to the mess here. Thanks, Courtney. So why don't we get started here? Laura will catch up with us shortly. Okay. 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 want to 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 Marx, who's a forest ecologist, has been with the Conservancy based in Massachusetts for 14 years, I think. It's the first time today coming to our office. So it's a moment of a 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 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 her earlier work with the Vermont Emergency Management Agency. So now we're sort of, we'll be shifting today and focusing more on the part of this around nature's role in helping to rein in climate change and sort of compliment on the other side from resilience and adaptation. And what we're thinking, and I just, 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 going to 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, some of which I think you're familiar with, but others which may not, and work that'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, I'll sort of close with our perspective on the bill itself. Does that sound like a workable flow? And we'll try to keep things moving. I appreciate this is getting towards the end of a long day in a small room with not a lot of airflow. 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 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. Certainly climate change is 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 nonpartisan. 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 U.S. 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 conserve 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 that's a reflection of the way in which Vermonters care about this work. It's 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, most if not all of your districts. So that's just a quick snapshot. I hope that helps to round out the picture a little bit of who we are and what we do. I'm 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 in Massachusetts. My goal today is to share some of the boring outline that's going to go away soon, I promise. But I want to 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. 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 be remiss 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 and 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 complete 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 for lots of forests, 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 setting 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 wood 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 wood reduces emissions by substituting a more sustainable resource for a more fossil fuel-intensive one. So again, they're sort of a double benefit. A third way of using forests as a natural 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 may be 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 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, so 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 farms' oils. And then finally, wetlands. 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. And 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 over-subscribed 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, you know, 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 they're a 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 some reduction 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, you know, 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 U.S. level 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 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 U.S. Climate Alliance states that are in 2018 that they would accurately measure the carbon balance in their natural working lands. They would set a numeric goal for making that number better and then they would implement the plans to make that happen. And Phil and I went both to the U.S. wide learning lab. They called it the U.S. Climate Alliance held in D.C. 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 U.S. 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 U.S. and the global stage. And when I was saying that, I was like, ah, people are going to 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 U.S. 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 U.S. right now and take their cues from that. So I think it's really exciting that you guys are contemplating passing the Global Warming 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 going to hand things back over to Bill, but then we're happy to answer any questions that you guys have. Thanks, Laura. And I think we can pause before I resume if any of you have questions for Laura at this point. I have plenty. Break the floor. 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. That sounds great. Whatever works best for you all. 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 want to hit on to round out our presentation. First, just a few kind of big picture and 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 and feel 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 going to solve the problem, as Laura said. We've got to turn off the gas that's heating up the planet while we also are doing things that are working to cool it down. There has to be a both end and then 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. And just building on that, it's really not a replacement for the deep cuts in 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 well-being 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 sustaining our native plants and animals. So we see there's an opportunity really for sort of a virtuous circle in all of this. 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, which 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 relates to trying to better quantify and then also increase the absorption of carbon and the storage of carbon in the land sector, natural and 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 Seiders 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 happy to have him come back and share more both on that and on some ongoing work that we're a part of with 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 even low 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 that's sort of the economy of scale to access existing voluntary carbon markets and then we also are part and Laura's involved in this as well 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 actually down 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 to provide some revenues for them for doing different improve 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 we all want to see I think and the landowners themselves are deeply committed to helping them keep their lands as forests 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 and convert it and risking the carbon source that that can result in and where would those revenues come from well Laura do you want to help out well for the pilot will come from a grant so we have a grant as you so often do when you do the first one when you have money lined up and it's western and central Massachusetts as well southern Vermont is the pilot area where we're trying to report what they did in the central operations 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 pre as well and we call it chapter 61 so it's kind of an add on to that the 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 help it easier help make it easier for people who already want to do a behavior maybe it costs them a lot of money to sort of do cost share kind of like NRCS where so natural resource conservation service is a federal agency that for example will pay farmers you know 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 you know we're trying it out we're trying not to go in with too many assumptions it's really promising in the central apps 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 you know 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 apps 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 and 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 going to go and smoke the next year so again there's economists with much different expertise than I am who have 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 see how much it costs see who signs up and figure out whether that's sales pitch that they're doing in the central apps you know works here so yeah it's amazing to see the companies that would be funding the money for this aren't getting anything they're not getting carbon credits or anything they are they are getting carbon 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 set 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 want to make we want to take climate outcomes we want to improve our supply chain we want to 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 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 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 exactly so these are good questions for sure definitely and I have a handout about this family forest carbon program high level overview that will happen 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 into 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 we're talking 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 talk in our committee about you know requiring vehicle sales places to have some form of a program around that but it's a feel good thing in a sense I have to think that one through I think the pitch to companies would not be so much like you're doing bad stuff and 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 show that you're helping that and you're taking climate change action and you get the marketing and whatever other benefit you know you have to 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 way is to talk to the companies about it I 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 and I think it yeah I appreciate the question and this is you know it's all complicated as you know from the working group which is 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 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 going to 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 upfront 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 as we move on in the pilot as potential funding forces thanks so the forest carbon markets their value is on the increased carbon storage right between current practice and future storage and sequestration is that right? yes so it's about that additional carbon so that's where the payment is for that additional carbon over time and with a commitment to sustain that carbon for the duration of the agreement well but there are also offsets on the forest conversion side so there's actually 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 pay 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 solutions act? yes so our baseline is that at 1990 so any forest that were there in 1990 our 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 but 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 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 that's going back very far from the U.S. Forest Service and 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 or are things like biochar being explored as a storage 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 so foresters and harvesters and state agency staff and academics and profits and try to get at which of these opportunities which of these are opportunities in our region I mean some of them are just main growths right that's not even something we're putting on the list because it's pretty much not relevant and which so which ones we think have potential here in 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 you know a TNC list the idea is hopefully it is this broad swap of stakeholders with the help of TNC Forest Service New England Forestry Foundation State you know everybody so that it comes out basically as solid and complete as we 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 Mike yeah so so I was thinking about along the same lines from minus 75% forest across the lines and so the idea of more reforestation is probably pretty impractical yeah yeah so any additional carbon sequestration might be incremental I'm wondering if if there are other other ways of sequestering carbon with other types of crops that sort of thing that would produce carbon sequestration yeah take advantage of farms and other things like that yeah that actually is a great tie into my next point on the list so maybe I'll build off of that on the forest kind of things I generally agree that we are largely forested 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 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 reduced flood vulnerability habitat it's the sort of whole suite of potential benefits it's again this is not like going to be the big lever that's going to 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 the what will be I think an ongoing effort of the 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 where in 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 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 a 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 and I think points to how the ag sector is a really important one to keep very much in mind again as like another bit of the solar 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 concernancy for your part in preserving the Raven Ridge and Charlott and Heinsberg 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 that are 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 things quickly on a few other points 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 the state funding for conservation and restoration is critical we're trying to optimize the opportunity that we have with natural climate solutions forests, 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 their for a whole host of reasons but carbon is an important layer to consider as we're talking about the scale of those investments and then the other that I touch on is as 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 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 clocks and pieces of this silver buck shot to kind of beat that analogy a little bit but that provide opportunities and synergies with where you're trying to get to 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 want to be clear that we strongly support age 688 as a really important foundational framework for propelling the rapid progress and accountability that's needed for Vermont to be doing our part in rating 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 going to solve all of our problems either I think that was coming up in the testimony this morning with 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 we I want to 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 solutions side of things and for resilience and education thank you for those who've been involved in drafting the bill 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 red line 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 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 are 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 that we're all in this together with natural systems we depend on and then I guess I just say you know 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 happy to help bring that into 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 when Smith the president of sugarbush will be here on Friday to testify he'll be speaking really I think from the business perspective giving it the TNC perspective but he's he's here in part with his TNC board member and incoming chair had on and so and I have a couple of handouts the 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 what I would ask you to do be helpful and we welcome you know as granular so you want to get input and change the bill that you would recommend great it would be helpful if you could pass that along to Danielle so we have a transcribe version of what your suggestions are happy to do that I'll get it to you by the end of the week would that be the next okay that's great great a question I had that I 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 are embedded in that law right now it doesn't so natural and working forest for example so in the 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 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 solutions act document but then there 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 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 on 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 forest 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 it 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 yes in the work that they had done and there seem 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 by impression yeah Maine's doing I think are 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 you know 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 whatever we want but they're also really trying to like look out 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 yeah I was just going to say we didn't or the bill doesn't name draw down specifically as a goal so we have resilience we have adaptation and of course greenhouse gas emissions reduction but we haven't named draw down as you know sort of by name and so I guess I'm wondering whether you think that we have 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 lay person read of it from this topic it seemed like the bill's language is everything you need I appreciate you raising this I think my sense that reading it so far is similar to Laura's that it's in there the idea of mitigation as well as resilience and adaptation can get at the draw down 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 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 should be part of the way that the council is understanding its charge would be helpful and that's thinking about both the emissions source aspect of the land sector as well as the emissions the draw down I guess I'm just wondering whether by naming draw down that's telling the council that it has to account for lands and it has to account for opportunities to increase the sequestration of storage and forestry a question in my mind I think it's a good one to be thinking about I'm just curious whether talking about land based solutions or this water in Massachusetts they figure into I took out all the ocean slides all of them because you guys don't have ocean yeah that's funny I actually pulled them 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 the eel grass beds near shore in the water and those we call them blue carbon systems just because it's salt marshes, eel grasses and mangroves globally are referred to as blue carbon systems and that's a really fascinating system because 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 100 years worth of sequestered 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-Boried Solutions Act 10 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 placeholders like we're going to 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 but yeah so I took it out because I didn't want to bore you guys with stuff 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 blue carbon we do have the lake and basically fresh water wetlands and as we were talking about before just the importance of those and they too are places where you get that long stored carbon in a largely unoxygenated in setting so there isn't the decomposition and emissions going on it just is accumulating in some of our wetlands not all of them 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 you know 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 that's a good question all plants absorb they are carbon right and they're pulling it out and that's how they are creating their fiber and their their structure so where to plant mill foil 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 they're 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 maybe an 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 no I just maybe would mention one other thing I've talked to Phil about this before fortunately a good chunk of fromage land is privately owned so again when we say we or 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 seed frustration group about maybe we could extend the cutting periods from 10 year cycle to a 20 year cycle if that's the case again we have to consider property owners that have to pay property taxes and something that hasn't been mentioned is property taxes and that's kind of a leading cause of course fragmentation 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 we all have a critical role to play in what happens to Vermont privately owned for us and I think it's very analogous in Central and Western mouseware nearly I mean we have some state land but it's mostly in very small even smaller parcels and you guys have private ownership and so any of these programs that are about supporting landowners as they do good silver culture but maybe helping them with things that carbon benefits or protection 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 they might actually be able to afford if they're selling some of the cover cropper it's increasing their yield the practice itself but not the equipment so there I think there are a lot of examples of that 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 and I'll just add to you I think 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 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 more 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 forest carbon program is trying to get at and these are 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 we're doing our own anaerobic yeah that's great 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 and wherever this leads to anyway I just want to thank you on our behalf for cleaning in and for everything else that you do here on behalf of Vermont thank you