“I have a dream that the people in power, as well as the media, start treating this crisis like the existential emergency it is.”
– Greta Thunberg
In addition to their commute to work — often on foot or bike — one factor that New Paltz Village Mayor Tim Rogers and Town Supervisor Neil Bettez have in widespread is their dedication to use public coverage as an avenue to fight climate change.
We’re now in a brand new geological time interval, the Anthropocene epoch: a time period used to describe the latest interval within the Earth’s historical past the place the affect of the human species has been so excessive that it has completely altered the planet’s climate and ecosystems. The planet is warming at an accelerated charge due to carbon and methane emissions, sea ranges are rising, icebergs are melting and species are going extinct at a horrifying charge.
As the 17-year-old environmental activist Greta Thunberg has identified to world leaders on the world’s largest stage, “The climate crisis has already been solved. We have all the facts and solutions. All we have to do is wake up and change.” The younger activist from Stockholm, now a figurehead for climate motion, has known as on political leaders to step up and defend their residents from the cascading impacts of world warming and mass extinction.
Hudson Valley One requested Mayor Rogers and Supervisor Bettez what they’re doing or have carried out to be sure that New Paltz is on the frontlines of the motion to quiet down the planet, put inexperienced insurance policies in place and implement methods to fight the unfavorable impacts of climate change. The two native leaders handed HV1 a two-page checklist of initiatives they’ve been engaged on throughout their political tenure.
“There’s no one thing,” mentioned Rogers at The Bakery when requested what’s the most radical factor New Paltz can do to battle this disaster. “We have to come at it from several different approaches, which is what we’re doing.” He pointed to the single-hauler regulation that the Town and Village put in place, requiring that every one residents make the most of one refuse firm. “Not only do our residents get a better price from one hauler, but we also have one truck doing the hauling instead of four. That reduces carbon emissions and wear and tear on our roads. One garbage truck going down a Village road is equivalent to 10,000 trips of a Toyota Camry.”
Bettez pointed to the work that the Town and Village are investing in bike/pedestrian transportation. “The biggest impact on greenhouse gases comes from automobiles,” mentioned the supervisor. “We want to make New Paltz as walkable and bikable as we can through infrastructure like the Henry W. DuBois project [one linear mile of a shared bike/ped lane] and more sidewalks. The Village has almost no streets without sidewalks, and in fact is one of the oldest walkable villages.”
The supervisor additionally famous that the Town and Village, working with the Open Space Institute and the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail, have helped protect 16 acres of land that at the moment are half of the River-to-Ridge Trail that hyperlinks to each the Mohonk Preserve and the Empire State Trail, straight from the Village. “We’re trying to do whatever we can to make it easier and more attractive for people to walk and ride their bikes,” mentioned Bettez.
Rogers, who can at all times be seen touring the Village he governs both by foot or bike, echoed Bettez, saying, “The best thing people can do? Get out of their cars! Walk to work, bike to work, take one or two less trips a week in your car. In the City, people don’t think about walking a mile or two, because they don’t want to lose their parking spot. Here, we drive a few hundred feet. It’s not necessary, and we certainly know it’s not healthy for our bodies or the environment. It also feels great to walk to work and to walk home at the end of the day.” The two talked about upcoming e-bike regulation that they need to have in place by April, which might enable electrical bicycles to journey on public roads.
In phrases of electrical energy financial savings, Rogers factors to the Town and Village’s computerized account with Green Mountain Energy, a renewable power resourced firm through wind and photo voltaic. “We aggressively took that opportunity to change the law to have all residents who have an electric account to get their energy from Green Mountain,” mentioned Rogers. “They can opt out, but they’d have to choose to do that. It would make no sense because it’s cheaper and it’s greener.”
The Village has additionally transformed streetlights to LED with controls, put in ductless mini-splits with help from Rycor HVAC on the Village Hall and Youth Center and, most notably, together with the Town, went after inexperienced structure and engineering for his or her new police headquarters and firehouse. “We will have the greenest firehouse in all of New York State,” mentioned Rogers proudly.
In phrases of land use and zoning legal guidelines — one other massive element of any try at good progress — Rogers mentioned that he and his board proceed to push for larger density within the Village. This wants to be carried out with larger residential zoning restrictions within the Town, which nonetheless has five-acre zoning, consuming up land, costing tax {dollars} and disturbing wildlife corridors and watersheds.
According to Bettez, the Town Board is contemplating placing a Critical Environmental Area (www.townofnewpaltz.org/websites/g/recordsdata/vyhlif3541/f/uploads/shawangunkcea.pdf) into its zoning that might defend lands that border or are half of the Shawangunk Ridge, in an effort to protect important habitat, forests, waterways and lands steeped in environmental and cultural richness. “We’ve gotten pushback from our own Planning Board, so we’re trying to test the concept and take an incremental approach.” The Town additionally not too long ago handed an actual property switch tax that may fund open house preservation, however that has but to be utilized in phrases of any acquisitions.
Rogers famous that many of the enhancements the Village is making are occurring beneath the floor: water conservation, sewer therapy plant enhancements, upgrading century-old sewer pipes to scale back stormwater runoff infiltrating the sewage system. “These are the things that really start to move the needle, but they’re not sexy and they’re not seen,” mentioned the mayor. “We don’t have a ribbon-cutting ceremony when we replace an old sewer pipe or create more permeable surfaces or find better ways of burning off methane at the wastewater treatment plant. We only have 30-to-40-million-gallon capacity at our sewer treatment plant, so our growth has a cap. It’s finite.”
Bettez added that the Town is engaged on smaller issues — perhaps not big game-changers, however modeling inexperienced dwelling, corresponding to by including composting to the Recycling Center. “When residents come out to the Recycling Center, they can take their food scraps with them and put them into the municipal compost pile,” he mentioned. “When organic matter is put underground into a landfill, it creates methane gas, which is unnecessary. All you have to do with food scraps is put them in an area outside or take it to the Town’s Recycling Center. Bears won’t come out; it doesn’t smell bad; and you learn these things by seeing other people do it or having your municipality demonstrate it. That’s an easy lifestyle change that has enormous benefits to our environment.”
Rogers concurred. “Composting, walking, riding your bike, volunteering for one of our many citizen-run boards and commissions like the Planning Board, Zoning Board, Environmental Commission, Bike/Ped Commission…these are the ways that people can take direct action and be part of the change.”
To these scientists who do suppose that the Anthropocene epoch describes a brand new geological time interval, the subsequent query is, “When did it begin?” which additionally has been broadly debated. A well-liked principle is that it started in the beginning of the Industrial Revolution of the 1800s, when human exercise had an incredible affect on carbon and methane within the Earth’s ambiance. Others suppose that the start of the Anthropocene must be set at 1945, when people examined the primary atomic bomb after which dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The ensuing radioactive particles had been detected in soil samples globally.
It has been a very long time because the Town and Village have labored so cooperatively collectively, and perhaps this reveals residents that cooperation shouldn’t be solely useful, but additionally important to fight the climate disaster.