![]() ![]() “I think the new legislation will require us to track more and to do more.” “It’s about counting and accounting,” she said. This is about human health.”Īnd while it may be a bit of a stretch to say so, some stakeholders believe the state’s execution of the tree planting law could be a template for how the government implements the Climate Solutions Now Act of 2022, the ambitious legislation that passed this year to reduce carbon emissions in Maryland by 60% by 2031 and hit net-zero carbon emissions by 2045.Īt a minimum, said Suzanne Dorsey, the assistant secretary of the Maryland Department of the Environment, who is helping to oversee the implementation of the tree planting measure, it can serve as a way of tracking the state’s ability to meet the provisions in the new climate laws. “If we can green our cities, we can improve our lifespan,” said Burks’ boss, Jana Davis, the president of the Chesapeake Bay Trust. But on the other hand, it’s fused with optimism and imagination, and a sense that almost anything’s possible. On the one hand, it’s a bureaucratic process as all state government attempts to comply with new laws inevitably are. That ambitious goal was set in legislation that the General Assembly passed in 2021, and it’s now up to a pastiche of state agencies, nonprofits, industry and environmental groups to make it happen. It’s for people who don’t have the resources to leave the city.”Ĭlick here to read more from our Climate Calling series.īurks and his colleagues at the CBT are a small but important part of Maryland’s attempts to plant 5 million trees by 2030. “Marylanders’ lives depend on it,” Burks said in an interview. The trust’s mission is to plant 500,000 trees in urban areas over the next eight years. He manages the new Urban Tree Program for the Chesapeake Bay Trust, a nonprofit launched by state government in the 1980s dedicated to improving the watersheds of the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland Coastal Bays, and Youghiogheny River in Western Maryland. ![]() Now, Burks is poised to help families in Baltimore and other Maryland urban areas who struggle with their breathing because of air pollution. Only now does Burks realize that one of the reasons his brother needed an inhaler was that the level of ozone and other pollutants in their neighborhood was so high because there were so few trees around. “This is your brother’s inhaler,” Burks recalls his mother saying every time the boys went out to play. But his younger brother suffered from asthma, and that was one of the family’s primary concerns. Growing up in West Baltimore, Greg Burks never thought much about the lack of vegetation around him. Maryland Department of Natural Resources photo. Ayton State Forest Tree Nursey in Preston will play a big role in helping Maryland meet its mandate to plant 5 million new trees by 2030. ![]()
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