Maryland has just taken a big step toward addressing the climate crisis that is causing rising sea levels, more severe storms and greater risks for insect-borne diseases like Lyme disease in our state.
Passage of the Climate Solutions Now Act of 2022 is a win for those of us engaged with Maryland Catholics for Our Common Home, a grassroots effort to influence state policy. And it is a win for Pope Francis’ message about the need to hear both the cry of the Earth and the cry of the poor.
The law aims to cut the state’s greenhouse gas emissions by 60% from 2006 levels by 2031, and to achieve carbon neutrality by 2045. It also calls for transitioning state vehicles and public school buses to electric power, which will reduce air pollution that disproportionately harms Black and Brown communities, and for investing in projects to lower emissions in low- and -moderate income communities.
“It's been a good year for the environment,” said Ramón Palencia-Calvo, deputy director of the Maryland League of Conservation voters and founder of Chispa Maryland, which engages Latinos in public policy discussions. “The Climate Solutions Now Act is the most ambitious climate legislation in the nation, and environmental justice is also advancing.”
Ramón, a parishioner at St. Camillus Church in Silver Spring, helped Maryland Catholics for Our Common Home identify bills to prioritize for advocacy in the legislative session that just ended.
The informal grassroots Catholic coalition grew out of conversations in late 2019 among parishioners in the D.C. suburbs, Baltimore and Annapolis. We were frustrated because we felt that the Maryland Catholic Conference, the official public policy arm of the Church in the state, had not been advocating enough for environmental bills.
We turned out about 100 people in Annapolis in February 2019 for a prayer service, forum on Catholic social teaching related to climate change, and meetings with legislators to support a climate bill. A video promoting the advocacy night featured immigrants to Maryland explaining how their communities in Bangladesh, Latin America and Africa are harmed by climate change.
We repeated the educational and advocacy night in Annapolis in 2020 before all efforts to persuade legislators to pass climate and environmental justice bills went virtual. For the past two sessions we collected signatures on petitions, submitted written testimonies and participated in hearings via videoconference.
Some of us also met with staff at the Maryland Catholic Conference to press them to prioritize environmental bills in their advocacy and grassroots outreach. This legislative session they encouraged Catholics to advocate on the climate bill, and hosted two town halls on environmental issues, one with Archbishop William Lori of Baltimore and the other with Cardinal Wilton Gregory of Washington.
On its own, Maryland Catholics for Our Common Home this year collected more than 700 signatures in support of six environmental bills, the most comprehensive being the Climate Solutions Now Act. Signatories came from 30 parishes and represented 33 of the state’s 47 legislative districts.
“Maryland will now have one of the strongest laws in the country to reduce the emissions that lead to climate change as well as other health disparities that fall particularly hard on overburdened communities,” Bob Simon, a St. Camillus parishioner who has been coordinating our grassroots efforts, wrote in a message to all of us who had signed this year’s petition. “This is a big win for all of us!”
But we also recognize there’s more to do in the coming years. We need to push for removing polluting fuel sources such as trash incineration from the list of so-called “renewable” energy eligible for subsidies and tax credits. We need to make sure the state follows through with research into the feasibility of requiring all new buildings to be powered by electricity. We need to return to the proposal for a Maryland Constitutional Amendment for Environmental Human Rights, one of our priorities that failed this year.
Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’s encyclical on the environment, compels us to do no less.
(Marianne Comfort, a member of the Care for Creation Committee of The Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, is a parishioner at St. Camillus in Silver Spring, Maryland. She works as justice coordinator for Earth, anti-racism and women for the Sisters of Mercy of the Americas.)
