We have climate problems. They are here, they are real, and, increasingly, they are local, as sea levels rise and extreme weather take aim at communities in the Hudson Valley and Catskills. We also have climate solutions—and they’re already underway in our own backyard. Here are seven solutions that take aim at some of our toughest regional climate problems—and seven local people who are rolling up their sleeves and doing the hard work on decarbonization and resilience.
#1: Change The Law
Jen Metzger, former New York State senator, policy advisor to New Yorkers for Clean Power
Passed in 2019, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) is now the backbone of New York’s climate policy. The new law aims to decarbonize the state economy, and to invest in communities that currently take the brunt of both climate change and pollution. Metzger, who had a hand in crafting the CLCPA, lost her seat in a close election in 2020. But as a policy expert who knows how the legislative sausage gets made, she’s still working on state climate response.
THE OBSTACLES: Putting state climate targets into law was hard. Meeting them will be harder—and most of the supportive legislation needed to fund and carry out the CLCPA’s goals has not yet been passed. The fossil fuel industry has large influence and deep pockets, and opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure projects is politically costly for Democrats and Republicans alike.
THE BENEFITS: If New York State can muster
the will to deliver on the goals of the CLCPA,
we’ll do more than decarbonize the state’s power
system and overall economy. We’ll create new
green jobs, boost resilience and quality of life in
vulnerable communities, and dramatically reduce
the air pollution that currently kills and sickens
thousands of New Yorkers each year.
Metzger: “New York has really been a model. But now, this is where the rubber hits the road. We have to implement this law.”
#2: Collaborate Across the Landscape
Nava Tabak, director of science, climate, and stewardship at Scenic Hudson
As climate change redraws coastal maps, the job of protecting important ecosystems that serve as flood buffers is becoming harder—and more collaborative. In recent years, science-driven conservation organizations like Scenic Hudson are taking a more active role in helping communities understand, predict, and respond to climate risks, and in creating new online tools to help local leaders work through tough landscape-level climate problems.
THE OBSTACLES: People—and the local governments they elect—are generally more inclined to respond to problems that already exist than they are to spend resources on preventing future disasters. Even as it becomes clearer that rising sea levels will be destructive and force large future investments, there’s little political will to act before the damage has been done.
THE BENEFITS: Proactive work that makes communities and ecosystems more resilient is far less expensive than rebuilding after disaster strikes.
Tabak: “We and our partners believe that the Hudson Valley can be a model for climate resilience for the rest of the state.”
#3: Harness the Power of Farm Soils
Ben Dobson, farmer, cofounder of Hudson Carbon and farm manager of Stone House Grain
Agriculture is responsible for about 10 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA. More than a third of that is methane, a shorter-lived but much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But farming can also be part of the solution. At Stone House Farm and Old Mud Creek Farm in Columbia County, Dobson is working with scientists at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, with support from farm owner Abby Rockefeller, to develop best practices for locking carbon into farm soil. The goal is to create a road map that other farmers can follow.
THE OBSTACLES: Ecological research is notoriously slow and difficult. Even if Dobson’s research projects yield clear results, what works for one farmer might not work for another. And then there’s the problem of carbon offsets: Even if they work as intended to suck carbon out
of the air, they can be abused if people rely on them instead of doing the hard work of cutting emissions.
THE BENEFITS: To prevent the worst impacts of climate change, we need to go beyond
cutting emissions. Limiting planetary warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will require not just decarbonizing, but also ramping up practices and technologies that can capture and store carbon. And for that, we need projects like Dobson’s.
Dobson: “We don’t have an exact formula that works, but we’re getting closer and closer. In ecosystems, there is no ‘exact.’ But there is rigor and honesty, and both of those are needed.”
#4: Bring Back Zero-Carbon Shipping
Andrew Willner, founder of the Center for Post Carbon Logistics
Sometimes it takes a big idea to break free. Along the banks of the Hudson River, a small chorus of advocates has been pressing for sail freight as an alternative to fossil-fueled shipping. The idea is beginning to move from vision to reality: This summer, the Hudson-based schooner Apollonia met up with the French vessel Grain de Sail in New York Harbor to exchange goods, the first link in what might one day become a larger sail shipping network in the region. Sail freight advocates want to revitalize the Hudson River as a shipping thoroughfare, much as it was in the early 1800s, and to reimagine local waterfronts as powerhouses of jobs to support a slower but saner regional economy.
THE OBSTACLES: The wind may blow for
free, but time is money. Sail shipping is slow
and labor-intensive compared to other methods
of moving stuff from one place to another. And
after almost 200 years of relying on fossil-fueled
transport, Hudson River port cities no longer
have solid logistical systems in place to support
the movement of goods by sail.
THE BENEFITS: As the cost of polluting
becomes more apparent, shippers that rely on
fossil fuels will have to pay increasing costs to
do so. Sail freight might become more cost-
competitive. And if we go big on reinvesting in
the river as a highway, there are opportunities to
reimagine waterfronts in ways that create jobs
and promote resilience.
Willner: “We have the beginning of a
post-carbon logistics system being
developed on the Hudson.”
#5: Get Buildings Off Oil and Gas
Melinda McKnight, VP and CFO, Energy Conservation Services
If New York wants to decarbonize its economy,
we have to get buildings off a fossil fuel diet.
That’s no small task. Fuel burned to heat
buildings accounts for roughly a third of the
state’s greenhouse gas emissions. From the
draftiest Victorian to the most futuristic office
space, every building is a unique challenge. The
good news, for building energy experts like
McKnight: Zero-carbon heating technology
has come a long way in recent years. And it
doesn’t involve electric baseboard heat that costs
a fortune to run, or tearing down your house to
build a passive-solar monument to `70s design.
THE OBSTACLES: Up-front expense is still a
huge barrier to the widespread adoption of heat
pumps, better insulation, and other building
energy fixes. New York State has some incentive
programs through NYSERDA, but they’re not
enough to meet the state’s CLCPA goals, and
there’s a forbidding amount of red tape involved
in accessing them. What’s more, if New York is
serious about home decarbonization, it will need
to train a small army of systems installers.
THE BENEFITS: Zero-emissions building heat
is obviously good for climate goals, but it’s also
good for the people in the building. Burning fuel
of any kind produces particulates that cause a
variety of health problems and premature death. And better insulation makes a house both more
comfortable and less expensive to maintain.
McKnight: “Giving contractors and
people who actually do the work a seat at the table to talk about practical
application would be a really big step in
the right direction.”
#6: Move the Important Stuff
Aaron Bennett, deputy chief of watershed lands and
community planning, New York City Department of Environmental Protection
One of the toughest problems in the battle for
climate resilience is knowing when to retreat.
It’s a difficult decision to make, but when the
increasing risk of repeated flood or fire becomes
too high for the community to bear, it’s time for
“managed retreat”: relocating vital assets out of
harm’s way. In Boiceville, a little hamlet in the
rural town of Olive, the local fire department and
the town board are working to move a fire station
out of the path of recurring floods. Bennett, who
until recently was an environmental planner for
Ulster County, has been helping with the effort.
THE OBSTACLES: Relocation is an
emotionally fraught decision for the whole
community. That goes double for a place like
Olive, which has a history of whole communities
being seized and submerged to build New York City’s reservoirs. On top of that, existing
programs that help communities do resilience
work have rules that don’t make sense for every
situation. The Boiceville effort has run up against
several roadblocks in the search for state or
federal funding.
THE BENEFITS: If the Boiceville Fire
Department moves to higher ground, it can
respond to future flood disasters without itself
being in peril. It’s small potatoes in the grand
scheme of global climate impacts, but it’s a
version, writ small, of the tough infrastructure
decisions now faced by climate-threatened cities
all over the world.
Bennett: “A lot of critical community
facilities are located within the floodplain.
We all know flooding is going to increase
in terms of frequency and intensity. So
we have to be prepared for that.”
#7: Build Zero-Carbon Energy
Rich Winter, Callicoon beef farmer and founder of
Delaware River Solar
Energy entrepreneurs like Winter are building
community solar projects in farms and fields
across the state. Anyone who pays a utility bill
can subscribe—and save on electricity costs,
while they’re at it. Solar and wind energy
currently take up just a tiny slice of the state’s
overall power generation pie, but they’re growing,
aided by plunging costs and increasingly
renewable-friendly state policy.
THE OBSTACLES: The biggest immediate
hurdle for wind and solar projects is community
opposition to siting, especially in wealthier areas.
Another factor that will loom larger down the road: As renewable energy takes over more of
the grid, we will need to develop more energy
storage to maintain grid reliability, since the sun
and wind aren’t constant.
THE BENEFITS: Building renewable power
will help New York meet its climate goals. That
might be a bit ineffable for rural communities
worried about their viewsheds, but when solar
begins to displace gas and coal in earnest, the
benefits will be felt keenly in communities where
fossil fuel plants have been creating public health
problems for decades.
Winter: “I would say 20 percent of our
farms would be up for development in the next decade if they didn’t have the income from the solar array. The
farmland is not disappearing. Maybe you
don’t see a tractor going by and baling
hay. But agriculture is still happening.”
The people featured in this story were participants
in an online panel conversation about local climate
solutions hosted by The River on July 14, “How
Do You Solve a Problem Like the Climate?” For
more on that event and their work, see our story on
The River: “7 Locals Tackling New York’s Toughest
Climate Problems.
This article appears in October 2021.
