Climate Driven

Last September, Wolfe’s Neck Center for Agriculture and the Environment in Freeport received a $35 million grant from the USDA to expand climate-friendly, regenerative farming practices nationwide. Now a national leader, Wolfe’s Neck Center has big plans to help farms across the country transform our food system.

The EPA on Monday announced that Maine will receive $3 million in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act for cutting pollution that contributes to climate change.

A United Nations treaty finalized over the weekend would designate 30% of the world's oceans as protected areas, and put more money into marine conservation. Advocates say it's breakthrough after more than a decade of talks.

Maine forests already absorb about 70% of the state's annual fossil fuel emissions. Now, a new study shows that Maine's commercial forest landowners could increase annual carbon storage by at least 20% over the next 60 years while maintaining timber harvest levels.

Mainers drive more than 15 billion miles a year, and transportation is the state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. But working remotely can reduce those numbers. And state employees are offering a test case of how much of an impact remote work can have.

The Kennebec Land Trust recently opened a conservation cemetery in Fayette that offers green burials – combining the climate-friendly burial process with land conservation. Green burial is growing in popularity in New England and nationwide as more people consider their carbon footprint in their daily lives – and long after they’re gone.

High tides are now occurring as often as 18 times a year, typically in late fall and early winter, and late spring and early summer. They are quickly becoming more common as climate change causes sea levels to rise.

The Maine Department of Marine Resources has hired Meredith White to lead the Nearshore Marine Resources Program, which was formally known as the Shellfish Management Program. The program will support communities and shellfish harvesters as they confront climate change in Maine waters.

For more than a year, Maine Public's news staff has been taking a deep dive into the all-encompassing subject of climate change — examining its effects, its challenges and what future adaptation might look like in Maine, one county at a time.

The announcement came on the second anniversary of the state's Maine Won't Wait climate plan.