WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Just one month into the year 2020, major steps have been taken in the Indiana Statehouse, with hundreds of bills filed and state legislative members introducing more to come. A majority of the new bills are to support the state’s environment and help encourage Hoosiers to improve Indiana’s carbon footprint and safety with health issues that we are facing.
One of the environmental bills was specified to Bloomington with its connection to IU’s School of Public and Environmental Affairs. However it was reported that the bill was not moved out of the committee therefore it is no longer active and will not be passed. The senate bill 276 was specified to require SPEA to assess the making of low-carbon and green industries in Indiana. SPEA would also need to study the effects that a low-carbon economy would have on jobs, economic growth and wealth generation in Indiana communities. The report would have been due December 1, 2020.
Chuck Carney, Director of Media Relations at IU and IU’s spokesperson reported on the bill and the school’s due diligence for progress in environmental issues in Indiana, however he stated that he was unsure of the reasons for the bill not passing through the committee.
“From the standpoint of Indiana University you know we’re happy to work with the state on things that legislators feel that we can be helpful with and we’re happy to serve the state in that way but I don’t know the reasons why it didn’t pass that’s really something that would be up to the individual lawmakers.”
For reference, a low-carbon economy is an economy based on low carbon power sources, which in return have a minimal output of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. With this senate bill, this seems to be what Indiana was striving for when the bill was first brought up.
Indiana University’s O’Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs (SPEA) is an undergraduate and graduate school. It is also one of the largest public policy and environmental studies school in the United States. Founded in 1972 it was the first school to combine public management, policy, and administration with environmental sciences. SPEA has been working on creating a more sustainable environment on campus since the beginning, with examples such as green buildings that began being built in the early 2000s.
Carney explains why this makes the school a primary source for helping to solve Indiana’s environmental issues.
“The O’Neill school certainly is a leader and one of the first to really do what it does in environmental research as related to public policy so it’s something that IU is known for because it’s been a leader for many years in this realm. So it would be natural for the state government to look to [SPEA] to lean on this issue and we’ll certainly be ready to step forward should that come again.”
In terms of what will happen to environmental issues of Indiana in the future, Carney assures that SPEA has the credibility and experts for the state to rely on when it comes to environmental policy.
“We’re happy to help the state in any way that we can if they feel that there’s a role for us to play in that. We certainly have a number of studies already on the books that could be helpful and we hope that they would rely on the scholarship of our faculty who have looked into these issues already but we certainly are happy to serve if given the opportunity but this is not something we sought out, it was asked for in this bill which has not passed on a committee.”
With Indiana’s known pollution issues, it’s important that there are people working to solve such crucial issues like environmental policy. Carney explains that one of the main focuses with the School of Environmental and Public Affairs is to “look at these issues very carefully and try to make sure that we’re bringing to bear the best research that we have to solve these tricky public issues that are common in Indiana and a lot of the Midwestern states.”
Looking outside Indiana and even the United States, steps have already been taken in China towards a greener future. President Xi Jinping recently proposed a blueprint of ecological civilization for the development of a low-carbon economy. As the world’s current biggest carbon emitter, it is important that China is making efforts towards a solution, however the United States is not far behind in terms of carbon emissions.
If the U.S. continues to go on without enough action for the environment, it will face increasing costs of climate damages to both the environment and the economy.
