Last week was a depressing one in Albany: the all-too-familiar gridlock resulting from partisan differences, pettiness and legislative dysfunction.\u00a0 And while some of the issues that are stuck in the legislative morass are important \u2013 such as tenants\u2019 housing costs \u2013 some would, if enacted, have a limited impact on many people.<\/p>\n
Yet, last week one issue moved front and center \u2013 global warming.\u00a0 The push that moved the issue came from an unlikely source:\u00a0 the head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis.<\/p>\n
The Pope publicly issued a policy paper that stated, \u201cThe earth, our home, is beginning to look more and more like an immense pile of filth.\u201d\u00a0 Strong stuff.<\/p>\n
His encyclical further argued, \u201cThe problem is aggravated by a model of development based on the intensive use of fossil fuels, which is at the heart of the worldwide energy system.\u201d<\/p>\n
His analysis is based on facts.\u00a0 2014 was the hottest year in recorded history. \u00a0The world\u2019s experts have stated that global warming is largely due to human activity\u2014primarily the result of reliance on fossil fuels.\u00a0 They argue that the only way to respond to this crisis is to dramatically slash the use of fossil fuels, like coal, oil and gas, which, when burned, emit the greenhouse gases warming the planet.<\/p>\n
Over the past 150 years, the industrialized world has been able to use fossil fuels to power its societies.\u00a0 Those nations, now joined by China and other emerging nations, are generating too much greenhouse gas emissions for the planet to absorb, thus leading to the greenhouse effect that is heating up the planet.<\/p>\n
While global warming is a threat to civilization, given its wealth the most affluent nations should be able to mitigate some of the worst consequences.\u00a0 Yet the poorest nations, those least responsible for generating greenhouse gases, are the ones who will suffer the most.<\/p>\n
Not only will a hotter planet result in more droughts and thus famine, global warming can devastate in other ways.<\/p>\n
For example, a severe drought, worsened by a warming climate, drove Syrian farmers to abandon their crops and flock to cities, helping trigger a civil war\u00a0that has killed hundreds of thousands of people.\u00a0 The drought was the most severe on record, and its severity matched trends expected to occur with rising temperatures.\u00a0 The drought increased the risk that the country would unravel, and climate change was a factor in the drought.<\/p>\n
Another example is the impact of rising sea levels.\u00a0 Experts predict that global sea levels could rise more than three feet by 2100. \u00a0Bangladesh is one of the world\u2019s poorest nations\u2019 and much of its land is at or below sea level.\u00a0 Experts predict that by 2050, rising sea levels will inundate some 17 percent of Bangladesh and displace about 18 million people.\u00a0 But Bangladesh generates only a tiny fraction of the world\u2019s greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n
In a rational political system, our nation would act.\u00a0 Congress would hold hearings, introduce legislation and advance proposals to help curb the impact our nation has on the world\u2019s climate.<\/p>\n
But our national political system is anything but rational.\u00a0 Many of the nation\u2019s political elite simply don\u2019t believe in the fact that the planet is heating up, and many more ignore the evidence that humans are primarily responsible.<\/p>\n
Given that our national government is incapable of addressing this issue, it is up to the states to develop solutions.\u00a0 New York could be among the leaders in tackling the issue.<\/p>\n
New York is not only contemplating how to respond to the climate change menace, but it is also trying to move its energy system into the digital age.\u00a0 Under the current utility structure, the power sector in New York is on track to spend an estimated $30 billion to replace and modernize the state\u2019s aging energy infrastructure over the next decade.<\/p>\n
In New York, the proposed solution is the state\u2019s Reforming the Energy Vision<\/em> (\u201cREV\u201d) plan.\u00a0 REV is under active development before the state\u2019s Public Service Commission. \u00a0REV has the potential to fundamentally reshape the production and distribution of electric power and significantly reduce the creation of heat-trapping carbon emissions through the use of energy use reductions, efficiency measures and the move to reliance on alternative energy sources, such as solar power.<\/p>\n The old saying is that the states are the laboratories of democracy.\u00a0 New York\u2019s REV offers a vision for how to modernize the energy grid while mitigating the impacts from global warming.\u00a0 If it succeeds, it can offer a model for the nation and perhaps the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last week was a depressing one in Albany: the all-too-familiar gridlock resulting from partisan differences, pettiness and legislative dysfunction.\u00a0 And while some of the issues that are stuck in the legislative morass are important \u2013 such as tenants\u2019 housing costs \u2013 some would, if enacted, have a limited impact on many people. Yet, last week […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1499"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1500,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1499\/revisions\/1500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}