State Legislature fails to act in face of climate emergency

There is a bumper sticker that haunts me for its simple truth. It says, “the climate is changing faster than we are.” This certainly seems true about the New York State Legislature, which failed to pass any climate-related bills this session, despite having a veto-proof Democratic majority in both the Senate and Assembly.

While our attention has been on the pandemic emergency and its aftermath, the news this past year has also been rife with stories about the accelerating emergency of climate change. 2020 was the hottest year on record, with 2021 on track to be even hotter and atmospheric carbon dioxide levels higher than they have been in 3.6 million years.

Last year saw massive wildfires in Australia, California, Colorado and even the Arctic, with the combustion resulting in increased atmospheric CO2 levels. Temperatures in Siberia topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit, melting the permafrost and releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas that increases global warming even more. Temperatures in several major western U.S. cities peaked at over 120 degrees.

Right now, 90% of the entire western portion of the United States is experiencing severe drought conditions, and Lake Powell and Lake Mead, the nation’s largest human-made reservoirs, are both two-thirds empty. There will be ripple effects of this drought across the country as our winter food supply dwindles because of a lack of water for irrigation.

The drought is also causing decreased power generation from these major hydroelectric dams, while 13 million people in the Northwest are expecting a heatwave of over 100 degrees for the next week.

Brownouts are considered likely as the demand for air-conditioning peaks, and there is the potential for overheated electric wires causing wildfires as happened in California in 2018. Even worse, scientists expect these drought conditions to continue in the coming years as snow-pack and runoff decrease.

Meanwhile, scientists suggest the collapse of the beachfront condo in Miami, Florida, was in part attributable to sea-level rise causing corrosion of the building’s foundation – a harbinger of things to come in coastal cities around the world.

Closer to home, over 13 million gallons of water are pumped out of the New York City subway system every day because of encroaching groundwater, and over 600 New York City residents die from heat exposure every summer. And as with the pandemic, Black, Brown and Indigenous communities are more vulnerable and disproportionately impacted.

Because of the desperation scientists are feeling, this past week, in an unprecedented move, a draft report was leaked from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, warning that we have begun to reach tipping points such as those described above, where fires increase CO2 levels and melting permafrost releases methane, resulting in more global warming. That results in more droughts, fires and melting in a vicious cycle that, if not addressed, will cause climate change to spiral out of control.

But the scientists are also clear on one thing — we have the tools we need, and if we act now, and act aggressively, we can still stop the worst effects of climate change. But we don’t have time to lose.

Thus, it is deeply disturbing that our Albany legislators ended the session without passing any legislation to help us reach the greenhouse gas reduction goals established in the nation-leading Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act that they passed just two years ago.

The Atlantic Chapter of the Sierra Club counts at least 30 climate-related bills passed by the New York Senate that never made it out of committee in the Assembly.

The climate crisis is every bit as much of an emergency as the pandemic has been, and our legislators must treat it as such. The window of opportunity to take the aggressive action needed to avoid catastrophic, unstoppable climate change is fast closing.

We do not need to panic. We have the solutions we need. What is lacking is the political will to act. I urge all New Yorkers to contact Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, (914) 423-4031, and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, (718) 654-6539, and urge them to convene a special session of the legislature to address the climate emergency.

Irene Weiser is a former council member from the town of Caroline and the coordinator of Fossil Free Tompkins.

The Democratic View is edited by Tompkins County Democratic Committee Communications Director Renate Ferro. Democratic residents with current topics are invited to submit them for consideration. Contact renateferroTCDC@gmail.com.