As many of you know, Maryland’s 2008 Global Warming Solutions Act died a slow and painful death mainly because of opposition from the industrial community – the usual suspects in the lineup of enviros vs “them”. That’s how I saw these folks – the other who obviously didn’t care about my future, and wanted to make as much money as possible while destroying any chance we’d have of combating climate change.

However, because the clashes of 2008 Session of the General Assembly were so acrimonious, a series of stakeholder meetings and discussions were set up by Maryland’s Department of the Environment to try and work out a compromise. Even though MD’s climate action plan calls for no explicit changes to be made in the industrial sector with a net benefit to the state’s coffers (check out pg 36 for a cool graph), I wasn’t too hopeful that the industry folks would be willing to compromise on anything that cut into profit margins, especially with the spiraling news of economic downturn.

As a matter of fact, these meetings have been eye-opening for me. We’re breaking down the us-vs-them mentality on both sides of the table. Yesterday afternoon, an industry representative turned to me and said “Maryland being a leader on global warming isn’t just about having the most aggressive reduction targets – we can lead by breaking the impasse between environmentalists and manufacturers that’s been around for decades.”

From the first meeting, everyone in the room agreed on three goals: 1) Significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 2)Protect existing jobs, and 3) Grow Maryland’s economy.

So I don’t want to jinx everything by preemptively trumpeting our victory, but I do want to share that there is some compromise on policy that would accomplish the above goals. Stay tuned – I’ll let everyone know what the details of the 2009 bill are as soon as they’re finalized! But what I’m really excited about, as cheesy as it sounds, are the relationships that we’re building. Who knows?