The Center for the Blue Economy (CBE) invites all Middlebury students, staff, alumni, and friends to join a virtual lobbying effort for ocean climate action on Wednesday, April 14, via Zoom.
As it celebrates its first decade, the Middlebury Institute’s Center for the Blue Economy is perfectly poised to contribute to climate forward policies for the rebuilding of post-pandemic economies.
West Cliff Drive, like all of the California coastline, is threatened by continuing erosion. Erosion is expected to significantly increase as sea levels rise and storms intensify. One challenge to adaptation planning is the uncertainty associated with the rate and elevation of sea level rise at future points of time, critical to the question of what to do and when. What to spend on what strategy for the best return on investment? A recent report published by the Center for the Blue Economy and partners has some answers.
In what is expected to be the largest ocean lobby in U.S. history, the Ocean Climate Action Plan (OCAP) coalition, with key supporters including Climate Envoy John Kerry, Jane Fonda, founder of the environmental justice movement Dr. Robert Bullard, indigenous groups, industry and maritime leaders, environmentalists, social justice activists and youth will be heard in their efforts to promote job-generating ocean solutions to the climate crisis.
Last week President Biden made a firm commitment to transition America from polluting fossil energy to clean renewable power. We and other coastal residents are heartened by his “whole government” approach to tackling the climate crisis, especially his focus on the positive employment impacts of making smart climate investments. However, we get concerned when the president identifies a million jobs linked to building electric cars in the industrial heartland, yet fails to note the millions of additional climate jobs that could be created in our coastal regions and on our public seas in a new blue economy.
In this deep dive into the future of ocean sustainability under new U.S. leadership by The Economist, Middlebury Institute International Environmental Policy Professor Jason Scorse, director of the Center for the Blue Economy shares his expertise and optimism that economic benefits of climate action might lead to bipartisan support.
