Maryland’s Commission on Climate Change is urging comprehensive action to reduce air pollution, prepare for a warming climate and get ready for rising water along the region’s vulnerable coastline.

In a new report, the commission emphasizes the incentive of a potential $2 billion economic benefit to Maryland, if the state follows the report’s recommendations. An International Center for Sustainable Development study found that Maryland could create between 144,000 and 326,000 "green collar" and research and development jobs.

The report's 42 greenhouse gas reduction recommendations include tighter restrictions on coastline development because of sea level rise risks, new power generation standards, and stricter building codes for development.

The report shows "that aggressive pollution targets are possible and good for the state, not only environmentally, but economically…We can get it done this year," said Brad Heavner, state director of Environment Maryland.

Society has incurred "considerable costs," the panel argues, from past decisions that were "not in sync with past and present climate conditions...These costs are likely to increase as climate change accelerates." The benefits of warming temperatures are fleeting, the commission said, while "the costs of inaction are likely to stay and increase."

Neighboring Virginia is also a low-lying state at risk of the potential effects of climate change. "We have 3,500 miles of coastline and tidal shoreline [where] we have literally hundreds of billions of dollars of military, commercial and industrial infrastructure. We need to be concerned about that." L. Preston Bryant Jr., Virginia's secretary of natural resources and chairman of the climate commission, told the Washington Post.