The author is a resident of Saratoga Springs, a member of that city’s 2007 Comprehensive Plan Committee and former Saratoga County Green Party chairwoman.
The things I like best about living in upstate New York are the climate and beautiful countryside and mountains. But something about our climate is definitely much different from what it was 30 years ago. Not only is winter shorter, milder, and less snowy, and spring much warmer, but the harbingers of either season – Canada geese and robins—are not acting the way they used to.
Many people have noticed that both of these species stick around a lot longer than they used to. Up until the 1990s, by Election Day, the geese would have been gone along with the robins. Now you can see flocks of robins all winter long and Canada geese gather on Saratoga Lake well into December or later depending on the weather.
Another sign of permanent change in our climate is the fact that, for the past 15 years, Lake Champlain stopped freezing over in the winter. And what about our summers? I’ll never forget the summer of 2005 when we had two weeks straight of 90-plus degree days and it’s not unusual, considering the heat index, for the temperature to top 100 degrees.
Despite these undeniable changes, we continue to hear climate change deniers calling any concern over climate change “hysteria” or that the whole global warming idea is the biggest hoax of the century (Ron Paul). The dismissal of global warming comes as no surprise because if you accept that this problem is caused by greenhouse gases (carbon emissions mainly from the burning of coal and oil) then it would require politicians to actually enact some reforms to encourage Americans to drive their cars a lot less. Many folks would not welcome that kind of change—especially the drivers in their gas-guzzling SUVs.
Climate scientists are telling us that we must drastically begin reducing carbon emissions by 2015 if we’re going to prevent catastrophic climate change. They’re telling us that a 100-year flood like that caused by Hurricane Irene could happen a lot more often—even every 10 years. The cost of recovering from that mega-hurricane that destroyed so many towns in our region was estimated at $7 billion to $10 billion. And let’s not forget Hurricane Katrina and how it impacted New Orleans and the gulf states.
Scientists and organizations like the Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change (IPCC) are saying that the explosion of tornadoes just experienced by Kentucky, Tennessee, and other states could become the rule, not the exception. All of this, plus things like wind storms, extreme heat, and droughts have become commonplace in the rest of the world. In the summer of 2003, a heat wave in France was blamed for the deaths of 30,000 people.
Just last year, almost all of Texas experienced record heat and as I’m writing this almost 20 towns in that state are very close to running out of water.
Here at home, we’re having to deal with a deer tick infestation unheard of back in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The devilish insects have spread as far north as St.Johnsville, Vt. and are to blame for people, pets, and horses contracting lyme disease. Thanks to the increased pollution, the number of asthma cases has doubled over the past 30 years, and rare diseases like dengue fever have stricken folks downstate.
Despite his calling global warming one of the biggest challenges of the century, President Obama has not lead on this issue. At climate talks in Durban, South Africa this past December, Obama pushed for capping carbon emissions by 2020. Outrageous! when you consider that by then we will have missed the window for avoiding runaway climate change.
Since we have such gridlock in Congress these days, it seems that the only way we’re going to convert from dirty fossil fuels to green energy is on a state- by- state basis. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance, in 2008, published a series of studies that half the states could meet their energy needs entirely within their borders. They say that 81 percent of New York’s power could be provided with wind turbines and solar panels. As for transportation, Amtrak is becoming more affordable and as the price of gasoline continues to climb, we’ll have no other choice but to carpool or ride the bus.
It’s imperative that we all be prepared for the climate change that lies ahead of us and that we realize what’s really causing it. The oil and gas industry would have us believe that global warming is the result of planetary trends, but the IPCC has stated in no uncertain terms that the warming trend is mainly caused by human activity: agriculture, power plants, and using mainly fossil fuels for transportation. Climate change is here to stay, but how dramatic that change will be depends on us and our willingness to change the way we live. The more apocalyptic scenarios—flooding, rising sea levels, tornadoes, tide surges—may be unavoidable if we don’t start to dramatically reduce our carbon emissions by 2015.
