good evening everyone day rogers state representative for the twenty fourth middlesex district arlington belmont in cambridge welcome wow what an event we have planned and there's still a line snaking around the building fortunately we have an overflow room for for our other guests we have just an incredible esteem panel to talk to you this evening and it's  really an honor to be here for this climate crisis action summit and we're also doing a lot of wonderful things here in state government we're pushing to increase there were noble portfolio standard and ill has been involved in in all these issues for many years including working on the global warming solutions act and countless other initiatives so please welcome senator brown  thank you so much for diner duction and for your leadership dave you've been a wonderful partner on this issue and on so many other issues in the legislature it's very appropriate they were having this about here and all my high school which is very shortly to in the midst of all of the domestic turmoil that we're experiencing now it is easy to lose sight of the deepest issue that we have before us which is in fact climate change eyes on the prize and moving that issue forward and that's what we expect of it because ed saw this issue decades ago and he's been a leader on this issue since long before most people are paying attention to these are huge credit for th so grateful for all of his past leadership and looking forward very much to his leadership in the future and before turning to introduce the members of the panel and ultimately the senator himself i want to acknowledge a few folks that are here we've got the chairman of the belmont  frank partnered in two thousand and seven and i was just a pup legislature and kind of his the person he was mentoring back then but he and mark the chico part are together to pass the global warming solutions act in two thousand and seven really telecommunications and energy commission a partnered on a very significant piece of legislation which has come through the senate which will move us forward and back to practically every single knob you can turn to reduce our energy consumption  is the former administrator of the environmental protection agency and now the direction director of sea change the center for climate health and global environment at the harvard th jan school of public health of or eight years he was president obama's science advisor and he is now the john heinz professor of environmental policy at the harvard kennedy school of government introducing them and i'm especially honored to have the privilege of introducing our u s senator and the wonderful leader on this issue at markey  you're going to have to move to get in that screen bad weather made it impossible for american airlines to get me there tonight to belmont high school but through the brilliance of technological breakthroughs made at massachusetts universit team that was used in order to put in place the donor matic reductions in greenhouse gases that was the commitment that we made to the world pursuant to the  paris climate accord and so it's my great honor to be here with them and with all of you my colleagues in massachusetts this is  interior it goes on and on and on it's own most like the poop perfect opposite of what we were doing from massachusetts in the white house for eight years trying to give leadership to the rest of the world and so we're gathered here in order to learn about where we are in what we can do to ensure almost have lifted the green have lifted the stand is the fifty four point five miles per gallon by the year twenty twenty five that's a huge greenhouse gas production it's a huge backing out of imported seen an almost doubling of the fuel efficient of the efficiency of appliances in america that has backed out the need for one hundred coal burning plants ever having to be built and i could go on but i  will tell you this that this is for me a time for massachusetts to be that special state we're not just the bay state we are the brain state we believe sun science is not a dirty word science is something that we revere every one of us and our families would take it over to the museum of science when we're young so that we can begin to understand that we godless of religion science is something that we should respect and  you we have to stand up we have to fight and that is why i have asked this incredible trio of leaders to come to belmont to come here to explain where we are what we have to do to ensure that they know that there are people here in the state of massachusetts who want to partner with them so let me just begin by asking  senator i wish you were here but i'm not so sad because now i can kiss up to you and you can't stop me because he is a force to be reckoned with as a human being spent eight years in washington half of my time was going either t house or the senate to testify being asked ridiculous questions hoping that there was a democrat who could ask me something serious and i could answer he was the man and both sons and i thank him for that oh he is a great should be very thankful and first of all i'm going to say it is great to be home thank you for  look i'm going to try to keep my remarks to a minimum because i know we're going to have some back and forth but i have to tell you that that things i think that all of us are a bit worried about today and it seems to be getting more worrisome every time  turn on the news so my strategy is i don't watch the news anymore just isolate yourself that's not exactly true my strategy is actually to maintain my hope to minimize my anger because you have to understand that people don't like to hang around with grumpy people if you want people to get action oriented if you want them to move forward with you if you want them to take action which is what we want then you have to be hopeful you have to show people that we do not give up and america is still in and it's all about what happens at the city and state level watching did has never had its own serious idea that it caught up on it everything good starts at the grassroots level so it's all about your family your kids it's all about belmont it's all about massachusetts it's all about all the states in the cities and now businesses are stepping up and understanding that climate change is the biggest challenge we have not just to our planet as a whole folks but it's a it's a challenge to us our families our kids and their future get real let's stop getting down washing what's going on in i'm hanging around with students because students at harvard they're so smart but what i like best about them is that so tech savvy they can find anything out anywhere and that's good because i'm going to know which businesses are actually doing the right thing i want to make sure that we push those who aren't into doing it we don't have to wait for government to act we've always in massachusetts gone out in front and corrected our own problems with met our own challenges we don't deny the science we embrace it because we understand that we face our challenges together we are the united states of america and we're not deferring that title to any of the country let's picking up ourselves by the bootstraps let's stop watching m s n b c and screaming and yelling at one another which is what my husband does every morning so i'm going to give you the same advice i give have cup of coffee going around with young people didn't realize that the reason is the real world out there were good things to happen and so i'm sure you're reading about rollback this rollback that roll back this well the trick about roll backs is they've got to roll back rules that were done right that followed the science that followed the law that sought the public everywhere we could to make sure we took everybody's interests in nine and we did the right good luck to him and his little team trying to roll those back then not following the science they haven't read the law they're not doing public process so get that out of your head we have something called the courts and we're going to make sure to hold the courts accountable in those courts ask to hold this administration accountable when they do shorty work to take back big progress that we have made on our core values that brought us together which happens to be clean air clean water safe and healthy getting damage near the sea coast you're wrong it is a fundamental challenge to each and every family and it's a challenge to our kids future and i know after working in government for thirty five years what motivates people it's their own kids their health so i'm at harvard to bring that science to life to fight against the attacks that we're seeing on climb to make sure that we're paying attention to real information real science and instead of having the scientists talk to each other we're going to talk about what the scientists know to real human beings in language they can understand so here's my message on climate change three things repeat them after made climate change that's why women need to rule the world rabid sea change because we want to bring that size to life i want people to understand the climate is personal it means they can do something about it we can do what we've always done in the united states we can pull up  president kennedy named jerome wiesner the president of mit as his science invites or we knew that he and yes we knew president kennedy thank you very much ed and thank you gina for producing an act it's impossible to follow it is a great pleasure and privilege for me to be here tonight and i thank all of you for coming and those who i hope by now  in the overflow room because when last i looked i couldn't even see the end of the line outside i really love upbeat message i will try to close on an upbeat note but before then i'm going to have to share a little bit of bad news which is what the latest science has been telling us about the pace and magnitude of climate change and what that in turn implies about what we need to do about it essential all of the new news from climate change science is bad news virtually everything new that we have learned since the last report of the intergovernmental panel on climate change in two thousand and thirteen in two thousand and fourteen has increased our understanding of the pace at which things are swirling down the drain in the climate change domain seventeen of the eighteen warmest years in one hundred forty years a good thermometer records seventeen of the eighteen warmest have occurred in the seventeen years from two thousand and one through twenty seventeen the only one in the top eighteen wasn't in that period was one nine hundred ninety eight that a powerful el nino year but it's not so much the average temperature of the earth that is causing the problems it is the reflection of a modest increase in the average temperature of the earth about one degree celsius one point eight degrees  the reflection of that rather modest increase in extremes of climate and weather when the average temperature goes up a little bit the occurrence of extreme events goes a lot we have seen an enormous increase in the frequency of the intensity in the duration of heat waves around the world heat wave occurred in southern france spain and italy in two thousand and three at the time about a one in five hundred year event killed seventy thousand people one heat way seventy thousand people the two thousand and ten heat wave in russia killed fifty thousand people and more than that in the warmer countries in in the hottest months of the year it is no longer possible to work outside to do construction to do agriculture to do infrastructure without risking heat stress heat stroke and death and that will continue to become a more severe problem year by year decade by decade unless and until we are finally able to stabilize the climate wildfires have increased in frequency in extent in temperature the bigger wildfires are now burning hotter than ever before making them a bigger threat to property a bigger threat to life a bigger threat to the firefighters torrential downpours one of the most elementary consequences of a warmer world the atmosphere being warm can hold more water if it holds more water more can come down at one time and it does we are experiencing almost all around the world increases in torrential downpours and the floods that followed texas houston texas experienced three five hundred year floods in three years obviously those are not five hundred year floods anymore the loss of forest cover the year two thousand and seventeen was the second largest loss of forest cover in the recorded history of our ability to monitor that unless we can turn that around and not only stop deforestation and the loss of forest cover but reverse it with net for us growth we have very little chance as a world of meeting the commitments that we all made in paris if you look at the effects on health gina mccarthy referred to them briefly i mentioned already heat stress and heat stroke in addition the geographic range of tropical diseases pathogens and vectors has been spreading toward the higher latitudes we have longer and more severe allergy seasons we have more tick based disease in many many different respects we are seeing the direct impact on public health of climate change and we're seeing them already jeanne also mentioned climate change is not just a problem for our children and our grandchildren it is a problem right now this is probably one of the least understood aspects of the climate change issue even among political leaders and members of the public who understand that the climate is changing and humans are causing it the least understood aspect is perhaps that we are already at one degree celsius above pre industrial temperatures suffering severe consequences of a wide variety of kinds look at sea level rise five years ago we didn't know whether antarctica was actually losing mass or not now we know that up in the ocean about three hundred million tons a year from greenland ending up in the oath then over the last five years we have drastically increased our understanding of what is happening the mechanisms the magnitude and we now know it's hardly any surprise that the rate again sea level rise is not constant it is accelerating i think celebrating both because of the ice being lost from glaciers from the greenland ice sheet from the antarctic ice sheet but also because the ocean is warming it when it warms it expands and finally it's increasing because we're pumping out groundwater much faster than it's being replenished and that too is adding to sea level we pump out the groundwater we irrigate our field with it runs off down the rivers and into the ocean what does all this mean for what we need to do i often say that faced with the climate change challenge society has three choices mitigation the steps we take to reduce the pace and the ultimate magnitude of the changes in climate that occur adaptation the steps we take to reduce the damages that occur from changes in climate that we can no longer avoid and the third option is suffering and if we want to minimize the human suffering that comes from climate change we have to maximise mitigation we have to maximise adaptation they are not alternate so they are complements we need them both we need them both in abundance and i would point out that although the dynamics of climate change are global the actions we need to take in this again reinforces a point to gina made the actions we need to take are all local adaptation is local reduction in emissions is local we need that grassroots engagement we need folks to become active we need folks by the way to get the vote out twenty eight  that will take this problem as seriously as it deserves to be taken which is very seriously indeed thank you very much john thank you so much and you know it's as john is saying you know the impacts are local we feel it here in massachusetts that's why massachusetts brought the lawsuit massachusetts versus e p a that was decided in two thousand and seven we brought the case saying that there was an big impact on our coastline from greenhouse gases the supreme court told the e p a they had to make a decision if greenhouse gases were endangering our coastline and if they decided that it was they then had to do something about it that's what gina mccarthy began to do when she took over the p k so we thank you john and what president obama then decided was that after eight years of inaction by george w bush that he wanted to lead the upper to have a global agreement led by the united states on the reproduction of greenhouse gases across the entire planet and you need one person who would be the chief negotiator for the united states of america so that he can send the signal that we want to be the leader and not on climate change sites we have the man he look i'm very pleased to be here senator markey is such a great leader has been for so long i met him a long time ago i think back when i first started on this issue in the clinton white house and  he is really been one of our great leaders on this issue as well as on some of the other things it's an honor for me to share the stage with gina and john holdren john's the one who started teaching me about climate change back in one thousand nine hundred seven and gina has a great friend and as you can see in case you didn't know already a fearless leader when she was at the p t a in my short opening comments tonight i'm going to touch on a couple of things first why the paris agreement was so important what is  important the follow on to john if you can believe it these negotiations are still going on right now and maybe just a word or two about the larger challenge of which the paris agreement is apart so let me start with  paris is important and and let me set it in context first of all in dealing with climate change you have to have an international agreement and the reason for that let's not self evident you don't have to have internet an ashely agreement to do a local water pollution or local air pollution many environmental problems probably most can be dealt with locally climate changes are quintessentially international global issue pollution climate pollution c o two that you met in indianapolis is has the same effect  to in india it spreads in the atmosphere and and so you've got to have a global solution and you need to have other countries all countries have to be confident that their counterparts and their competitors are acting if they're going to be asked to act the original framework agreement on climate goes all the way back to one thousand nine hundred two and pretty much within two or three years after that agreement it was understood that there needed to be something more an operational agreement where countries would take real action and make real commitments to reduce emissions that hadn't happened yet and for a long time efforts went on to try to achieve that and the efforts in one way or another didn't work the  fault line that ran through these negotiations and it still runs through although we've made some progress is the sharp division between developed and developing countries made the negotiations very difficult and let me tell you the climate negotiations are inherently let's stop and think about it for a minute climate change is not mean there are there are other agreements not easy to negotiate most successful environmental agreement ever was probably the model protocol to repair the hole in the ozone layer that was a fairly small number of countries to produce the relevant chemicals and it was just one relevant or a few a handful of relevant chemicals that had to be controlled climate change is about burning fossil fuels and also the release of greenhouse gases in land use but but specially for the burning of fossil fuels which means everything to do with your autonomy is affected by climate change so countries naturally get worried when they're asked to take action that they think is going to cost money and that could damage their own economy in addition you have over one hundred ninety countries who are involved and then the kicker is that the climate change negotiations operate on essential consensus rule so if you have one country or maybe maybe not just one but two or three countries who say no you've got no deal so this is a dive with a very high degree of difficulty so to speak paris was a breakthrough agreement happened we just lost the leader is that what happened he's heard it all before it's ok i'm going to tell you anyway the first of all universal if you look back at kyoto kyoto only applied to the developed countries that's great except right now developing countries well below two degrees and several other important goals establish targets from all countries again not just develop it set up repeating cycles every five years countries have to take a look at their targets and so this is meant to be a direct durable and increase in an ever increasing increasingly ambitious target and also call for countries not just to do the targets right now but to set forth not as a target but as a as a program mid century strategy what do you where you go on not just now but but out of twenty fifty all of those things super important it included several different paradigm shifts as compared to any other climate negotiations that happen before first of all the targets  countries where nationally determined countries had to make their own decision about what to do this with all these countries you couldn't have a negotiation where all countries just want to agree on each other's targets but smoothed out the hard edges that i talked about that fault line there is still differentiation there should be differentiation countries have different circumstances but it's not in that hard edged way where we're doing nothing and and you guys are supposed to do everything and it's a kind of a legal hybrid it's partly legally binding and partly not legally binding so the targets themselves not legally buy it countability system including most importantly of the system of so called transparency how countries report on their actions and are reviewed on them misses the point you first of all you could not possibly get an agreement done by asking all countries to do legally binding targets and if you had somehow you could have the targets would have been lower not higher because countries would have been afraid of the consequences of not meeting their their targets paris in essence made the opposite bet that the rising force of norms and expectations among countries would drive progress on climate change much better than an attempt to to do a purely legal agreement and i think a way to look at it is to say that in essence paris was about finding the sweet spot between what was necessary and what was possible it's easy to to demand what seems necessary but isn't really possible and it's also easy to do the politically expedient thing without worrying about what you actually have to get done and again paris that the sweet spot is very hard to find paris did that now president trump announced his intention to with to withdraw from paris on june first of last year let me just say there was no constituency arguing for this there is no basis for pulling the united states out and if you look across the board of the u s economy if you look at the fortune five hundred c e o s you had virtually no support for pulling out of pairs because business knew that this was an agreement that could actually work they knew they know their business guys you know the people who are c e o's they live in a world the facts because if they don't they're going to be x c and they they knew that this is the direction of history it was not going to help them not going to help them as business people to pull out and yet that's the decision the trump made i think essentially as a matter of playing to what he saw as his base  guidelines that have to follow and on a number of in a number of other areas those are important they're going on now and they're difficult and they're made more difficult by the fact that the united states is not there and it makes it easier for certain countries who are up to mischief to try to pull back on some of the things they didn't like in pairs a quick word on the on the larger picture internationally gauche ations as i said are necessary they're necessary but of course not sufficient the action that the name of the game here is about the transformation of the global economy from high carbon to low and and before too long no carbon so you need action at the national level of the state and city level and among companies holding global average temperature to well below two degrees is a daunting task this is not at all easy but i want to tell you that it is absolutely doable is doable as a matter of innovation innovation side of the equation on clean energy is going faster than any of the of the forecasters predicted it's it's possible on the basis of policy we know exactly what we need to do in terms of policy of two different scenarios full out action on climate change no action on climate change guess what came out to be less expensive the full action was less expensive than the no action without counting damages and that's because you put a lot of investment in upfront then guess what you don't pay for the fuel because you're getting it from the sun you're going to get from the wind and so forth the here is the hard part the hard part the rocket science isn't rocket science or rocket science as human beings the rocket science is political will that's the thing that's hard and i think was three hurdles that we're facing one is the incumbency of the fossil fuel  industry there's enormous amounts of money ploughed into a global infrastructure of fossil fuels and when you read it when they read experts say in order to meet our goals only about the tween third and a fifth of the fossil fuels in the world can come out of the ground well then they've got they've they've got a they've got a big concern so you've got the the power of incumbency that incumbency by the way has helped through all sorts  of mechanisms to entrench a kind of denial minority which is particularly effective in the united states and actually particularly particularly effective unfortunately in congress that is i think a diminishing problem the more you look at polling the more you look at polling among younger people that is a problem that's fading but it hasn't gone yet the third thing is i think there's a real tendency among the on the part of even the most well meaning people the people i worked with in the white house who are worked with when i was teaching at yale a couple of years ago work with whether it's a brookings rather good places to think that you know we're moving in the right direction so are ok a kind of sense of a natural human sense the gradualis ok the thing is it's not ok here we are moving in the right direction again the developments on on innovation have been fantastic but the issue here is scale and speed for the exact reasons that you heard from john holdren so i'm going to shut up and take my seat and we'll get do know the answers i just want to follow up just a little bit on this clean energy revolution donald trump successfully promo political perspective may  working in wind and solar in the united states and who are they well they're electricians they're row first this is the greatest blow color job creating revolution in two generations this revolution is creating jobs and you just have to become more aggressive in making this case that we are trying to used to live in this great state of massachusetts but i drove i drove down from new hampshire to be here and i want to thank his senator markey and all the speakers for what they're doing it's fantastic i'm a graduate of harvard so  pretty smart right but i just heard of some science that lately where there's no correlation between intelligence and education and denial of climate change and i've run into a lot of  who don't get it i'm sorry to report so it direct my question mostly to gina yes you look a public health it seems often starts with the public understanding like it's not safe to swim there it's not safe to drink that water given the fact that you're at harvard which is a world by respected institution and the fact that many harvard alumni don't get this and there's a new president starting at harvard next week larry because now i wonder if you think it might be a good idea to just start with harbored a lot of money to inform them of what you said that climate change is real and serious and leave out the women part but that we should be conservative vote may not get to happen that are concerned too i think that when i go i get your point and i keep my answer very short i think the challenge we have with climb we have a couple of challenges one is that it's you can't see it feel it in touch it taste it until it hits you and most people don't recognize when they're getting hit in less it's hitting them right over the head by a wave or a fire or something like that in the old days pollution you could see it everybody reality around it you know when it got better that's a challenge for a human being secondly we've been communicating it as a polar be a problem and not a kids problem and we've been trying to scare people into action people are afraid to think they either deny if or they say oh they run away from it we have to stop it because in my opinion a low ca future is better for our kids not just because the planet will be healthier but they'll be healthier and we have solutions today that we never had before and we should stop denying them  investing in them so let's not argue about climate change let's just agree that a low carbon future is where our economy is it is where our health is and it's where our kids future is let's run for i think that that was it was wonderful we need more politicians like you know what i will talk about climate change because that is what this is all and i want the panel to think about this while i talk they have mothers all fronts they have a number of different organizations the wonderful water is ations we have signs that we're placing up fix the leaks and we intend to put them all the belmont and every other city in town to bring attention to the gas leaks but what i would like to say is that people always think about fixing the gas leaks and it has to be done it's  drop also is to prevent the gas leaks in a grade three leak that would leak for twenty years you could have a high pressure main that get ripped gets ripped up like they have really so one mistake in all of the time trying to fix these great three so prevention is key to climate change prevention is clear is key because the company that i worked wall i had to fight like hell because in two thousand and eleven they hired no inspectors no pipeline inspectors and it was this town belmont that brought it to my attention prevention work in the field of methane and how can we better have further prevention from corporations and make them do the right thing so we will not have these gas leak i'll take a very brief crack at that we had in the obama administration as part of the climate action plan a methane strategy which you'll be happy to know stressed prevention it's stressed doing things right the first time including in the fracking operations one of the things that has been discovered about methane leaks in the united states from the oil and gas industry is that a very substantial fraction of the total is coming from a relatively small number of bad actors the good news there is that if it's a relatively small number of bad actors you can identify them and fix it i think a lot of the leaders in the oil and gas industry understand that if they screw this up then fracking is going to be over they have every incentive to get it right and in fact there has been a lot of partnership between the private sector and the government at least in the last administration on how to get our arms around that problem and solve it the challenge we now face is we have an administration which has got its head in the sand composition of bubbles trapped in ice cores and we know that the natural influences on climate were cooling the world for about seven thousand years before the industrial revolution began and in the absence of the industrial revolution and the huge fossil fuel emissions that followed and the deforestation that continued the world would have been heading for another ice age in perhaps another ten thousand years we solve that problem dominating the natural influences with the human ones but we overcompensated and that is the problem we now face hello my name is andrea got some but i'm c e o of to play us which is a nonprofit focused on federal climate policy and we work intensively with leaders right of the political center who care passionately about climate change are committed to bipartisan solutions and this field of republican and conservative leaders is represented by about two dozen nonprofits around the country working on federal policy solutions some of them are actually conservative themselves some are just well positioned to speak to conservatives about this issue like military leaders business leaders conservative faith leaders i know some of you know these people and as you probably are well aware there's a lot happening underneath the surface in the republican party truly solving this problem or to true meaningful sustained u s leadership on this issue without bipartisan support and if not because i don't how do we get back to a bipartisan position on this issue thank you yes that's a great question for the senator to ask if you could hear it which is how do we get to a bipartisan leadership in the senate on climate change or is it possible the republicans in their majority would do anything on this issue and i apologize i'm listening on three different devices here so keep your c v running around this just because you go oh oh jerry built system were constructed here  the problem that we have in washington right now is ultimately the overarching issue for climate change and every other issue which is that we need to repeal citizens united vs the campaign this year when the cult brothers talk about five hundred million dollars being spent on the elections this year it's with the intention of ensuring thirty thirty percent of the year but he can protect himself he's wealthy and so unfortunately we that is the democrats we have a hard time finding republicans he is the leader of the republican party and don't trump at the same time is committed to honoring his promise to those coal miners even if it's at the expense of hundreds of thousands of jobs in renewables in clean energy in general in all electric vehicles so this web of denial that was funded by the fossil fuel companies that was modeled on the we nile which the macro industry used for forty to fifty years to try to create this barrier between actual smoking and the reality that it could cause cancer well this is the battle that we're fighting right now this is the war we're in it is well funded on the other side what we have on our side is this younger generation the green generation is rising up this issue is now pulling well almost unanimously amongst those who are millenniums in his polling well among republicans increasingly so we think as each day week goes by we're going to see more and more political activity on our side and many of these fossil fuel companies are running the very real risk that they're going to be in violation of the securities exchange commission full disclosure because there's going to be a lot of oil and coal and gas which they have that is never coming out of the ground and they know they know that the all  revolution they know the drop in the price of wind and solar and all the renewables is in danger a new there no they're fossil fuels that they already have even if they want to bid to drill in the arctic refuge and they're trying to speed that up so that they can gain access to those leases on a bargain basement price so i wish that it was possible for us to craft bipartisan legislation right now i know it's going to happen i know that we're going to be able to move forward it's just a matter of time but it's also critical for us to prove in massachusetts w why so why it's so great that our state legislators continue to be the leaders why the regional greenhouse gas initiative from new england through new york down through maryland and virginia is going to join prove that you can reduce greenhouse gases even as you dramatically increase the g d p of your a continent so the koch brothers right now a calling the tune in this white house that's why th election in november is so important we have to send a message to washington and other climate change activists across the country have to send a message to washington that they that they're going to vote for people who i'm going to do something about this crisis and i think we're about to reach that point in the next four and a half months we just have to keep our energy level so thank you al specifically for senator markey i want to thank you for all your work on climate change and clean energy legislation so far but i want to ask you to take the next step and prove your commitment to the health and well being of our planet and all people by pledging to not accept money from the  thousand jobs in massachusetts in the clean energy sector and is now one of the top ten employers in the massachusetts economy it's up from almost nothing in the year two thousand so my goal is every day to move us towards one hundred percent renewable electricity in the year twenty eight fifty regardless of what the fossil fuel industry may think that is going to happen in washington introduced that resolution and i have ten senators co sponsoring my bill in washington right now i have had the privilege of what i've had the privilege of working with a number of you and founding the investor network on climate risk my question my question is if i have the privilege of being elected governor and we want to move boldly and aggressively toward the targets that you are recommending for this state could you each suggest one or two stretch views stretch actions bold actions that i could take as governor and the first couple of months of my ok so i guess i was directed at the panel if it's probably a fair question well i would suggest one of the first things i would do is i would look at the bill that i think you should draw in california in embracing fuel economy standards that are aggressive and that basically force the manufacturers to to meet them because if enough states with enough population impose those kinds of standards the retreat of the federal government will make any difference there is a price on carbon through the reggie program for the power sector the new legislation the genius talking about would put a price on carbon in the transportation sector i think that those things are hugely important i think to be stretch and to go as far as you can the issue will be a to get the price on carbon in the first place and b to get that price to be as high as possible so that it will actually drive change ok i want to ask the panel and how we as a group can do a better job of mobilizing around influencing our state and local governments and the reason i ask this is because those are the institutions that impact building codes and buildings consume more energy on this planet than anything else much more than vehicles and building codes are currently really energy efficient for example a building like this any nine residential building that's  replace all of the air inside the building every one to two hours with outside air it consumes like twenty to twenty five percent of the energy in the entire building and you've got you've got you've got a good question on the table the question is how do we mobilize the state warming bill that reduced greenhouse gases by each percent nationwide by the year twenty fifth we passed through the house of representatives it ultimately fell short notwithstanding the great work of john kerry o sixty votes they needed in the senate it came very close in that bill to your point we had a requirement that went in seven years all new buildings being constructed in the united states had to are incredible leaders and i do think it's important for us to be leaders in the climate bill that they're moving through the massachusetts state legislature so that we can be the leaders of is something that ultimately can become a model for the rest of our country and i do believe that ultimately it's going to become an industry led movement that is that hotels and construction industries are going to say we we want a big war in a geo person buildings we want to move in that direction it's consistent with a good business model and the public wants us to do it so i just think we we're going to do it again it's hard in a trump era much like the renewable electricity standards that are in place and thirty states of the fuel economy standards that are still being protected by california in massachusetts in new york nationally we just need at the state levels as you're saying to implement policies that can show  explain how additional questions can get answers but high school is limiting our time here so i got one question at the front of this line and one question at the front of this line will have closing statements hi my sea level rise in federal documents are contributing to a nation that is ill prepared to deal with natural disasters more often than not our natural resources transcend state boundaries in an ideal situation an overarching entity which effectively and efficiently monitor our national environmental resources but i believe the job for now will be left up to states and local governments what legislative or policy options are there for states to unite to protect human health and the environment that he intended to withdraw from paris which by the way can't doesn't become final until november fourth two thousand and twenty which is one day after the next election but but in the wake of that announcement last june first within days an organization called we are still in a movement called we are still in started there are some twenty seven hundred entities that are part of that now states cities companies civil society but one of the one of the actions that has followed from that is the u s climate alliance which is now seventeen states including puerto rico including massachusetts most recently new jersey of states that that have their own targets that are taking strong action that are diverse that are committed to the paris goals and and that are committed to taking to being strong on climate seventeen's not fifty but it's a very good start it's about fifty percent of the the we are still in group is about fifty percent of u s population about forty percent of u s g d p thirty five percent of u s emissions though it's important that they act and it's important also that they send a message of acting both within to people in this country and to the international community so that they can see that things may have gone dark in washington but there are a lot of across the country can question for miss line and we will have a mechanism for the questions to get answered i'll talk about that in a moment if we're not going to have any bipartisan action and we have to wait for a twenty twenty one democratic trifecta to have any national climate action because that's that's definitely question for him let's pause for a minute this is a tough thing for to make work  answer to the question of what happened in two thousand and nine we were able the passage of the house of representatives and went over to the senate he body whole company alpha coal company arch coal company all went to the republican leadership the koch brothers went to the republican leadership they said to kill the waxman marky bill eighty percent reduction in greenhouse gases by the year twenty fifty now here's what's happened since two thousand and nine peabody co has gone bankrupt i call has gone up out of coal has gone bankrupt because of of revolution that industries utilities realize that they have to move to a lower carbon footprint and so we will last because of money and politics we lost because of the disproportionate influence of the fossil fuel industry not even to twentieth century industry a nineteenth century industry and so with every new windmill that is the ploy with every new solar panel with every new i could be here we are getting closer and closer to creating the political capital people who work in these industries people who vote on these issues that will get us be bokes to past climate control can cast a carbon feet pas of the kinds of changes that you are looking for so i'm greatly obviously disappointed in what happened in two thousand and nine i was the author of the bill but ultimately  the hiding it from their shareholders but if we stay in this game we will put together the political clout which we need hopefully it will not have to happen after catastrophic fires hurricanes and disasters that claim human life are so overwhelming that finally they're driven to the table hopefully it will be common sense but we know that if we don't act we are going to see and suffered the worst most catastrophic consequences of climate change and that we will out the test of us as a society is if we can act before that  ok first of all i want you to remember to vote and if you have children tell them if when they get to be eighteen they better register i'm never talking to them again not that i have before i want you to remember that you have great leadership in massachusetts i think we take that for granted the time that i spent in washington told me that pretty clearly you have senator markey who is a tremendous leader you have senate a beret you have a wealth of people that represent the public and understand what public service means so we are very lucky but my final word is is that you have to remember to look at the real world we have signs of democracy today that we haven't seen since the seventy's when is the last time you went to a my church pull out those bell bottoms pull i think we need to propagate gina mccarthy not just all over the state but all over the nation and that would terrify me i think i i think you need to educate your neighbors your friends your legislators your colleagues that we need to move faster we need to move faster on emissions reductions we need to move faster on investing in climate change prepared in this resilience an adaptation we can do it in ways as have already been pointed out that are a win win that bring many side benefits and that cost far less than the rewards they bring in avoided damages let's get on with it i'll just go back to what i said at the end of my remarks which is that we know what we need to do the innovation is there the policy is there the financing is there it's the political will that matters the only way we're going to ultimately get political will is when members of congress and politicians know that they will be punished punished if they don't act on this right now right right now that's not the case right now you can give this the back your hand and and there's there's there's not enough downside there's downside with angry base trump base if you do take action there's got be real downsides if you ignore this issue and that's got to be driven through the public protect this planet that is what we do in massachusetts that's the leadership that we provide when pope francis addressed the congress in his sermon on the hill with john boehner over his shoulder he said three things one and it's dangerous to name a jesuit who pot high school chemistry as he said three things number one the planet is dangerously warm number two that it was largely because of human activity and three that congress and the american people had a mole responsibility to protect those most vulnerable on our planet that is still our charge and we thank all of you for everything you do on this issue and if i could before we can just give one more round applause for this historically great panel will  signing off with senators signing up in washington now there were a number of questions that we didn't get to answer and to to get those questions answered one i'm going to ask it's a little tough now that everybody standing up but senator mar staff stand a wave your hands where you have got one here in front actually and we i want on the side i've got another in front so there's three in front one on the side and by the way you also have the two leading senators in massachusetts and this leading state rep in massachusetts on these issues senator chico senator barrett and representative down here so that they're very very happy to take your questions and and i'll stick around to