The Hudson Valley can arguably be called the birthplace of the modern environmental movement. Now, Ned Sullivan, president of the environmental group Scenic Hudson, which helped spark that movement, says the Hudson Valley can be home to a new movement to combat climate change and avert what increasingly looks like an environmental and economic catastrophe – not centuries from now, but in coming decades.
Riffing off of the NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) syndrome that has often sparked activists to fight harmful projects close to home, Sullivan posits – Start in My Back Yard calling for ordinary citizens to get active in our own homes and beyond to start changing the way we power our world.
And Sullivan is not alone in his vision. This Saturday, Nov. 3, the national “Step It Up” campaign against climate change has its second day of action, and at an Oct. 24 address to the World Affairs Council of the Hudson Valley held at Vassar College , Sullivan quoted 2007 Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore to remind leaders that the changing climate is “truly a planetary emergency and we have to respond quickly.”
Sullivan then recited a litany of warning signs and disturbing phenomenon, some as seemingly remote as the record-shattering amount of sea ice melted in the Arctic Ocean this summer, an area of 1.63 million square miles that liquefied from a white, heat- reflecting surface to dark water that absorbs heat. This could create an accelerating warming and melting trend that could raise sea levels by four feet in coming decades, a matter of real importance even as far inland as here in the Hudson River Valley, an estuary where tides already rise and fall as far north as Troy.
The area of summer melt recorded this year is about the size of the state of California, Sullivan noted, adding that last week that state’s driest season on record erupted in terrifying wildfires. In the area around Atlanta, the worst drought on record threatens the water supply for millions of citizens of the Southeast.
If emissions of carbon and other greenhouse gases that are fueling climate change are not controlled, Sullivan said, scientists predict that by the end of the century, the normal summer climate of Poughkeepsie will be like the current summer clime of South Carolina. Already the average winter temperature locally is about the same as Washington D.C.’s winter temperature from a decade ago. Beyond discomfort (or what some people welcome as an improvement in winter temperatures) is the prospect of longer and hotter summer heat waves threatening the lives of elderly people and others with respiratory trouble, along with an upsurge of the West Nile virus, Lyme disease and other hot weather-abetted health threats.
Essentially the new climate could completely alter the Hudson Valley as we know it, killing off sugar maples, dulling fall colors, melting snow and the ski industry into a mere memory and killing fir trees accustomed to changing seasons. “Stunning landscapes unchanged since the arrival of Henry Hudson will be denuded and barren,” said Sullivan, to the subdued crowd of about 75.
But while the effects of climate change are alarming, and what we are seeing is only a beginning of how bad things could get absent action, Sullivan also stressed that modest action by individuals can add up to enormous help against global warming. For example, if every American household used one additional compact fluorescent bulb where a standard incandescent bulb now sits, that alone would equate to removing one million cars from the nation’s highways. Fluorescent bulbs use 66 percent less energy.
“Walk whenever possible,” said Sullivan, explaining that every gallon of gasoline burned contributes an astonishing 25 pounds of carbon to the atmosphere. If you commute to work, try and carpool; if every commuter added a passenger to their car, it would save 8 billion gallons of gas annually.
“Plant a tree,” said Sullivan. During its lifetime, a tree removes a ton of carbon dioxide from the air. Use a clothesline and the sun instead of a gas dryer; doing so for half a year prevents 700 pounds of carbon from going into the atmosphere. Eat organic and local; frozen food uses 10 times as much energy to produce as fresh food, and organic soil stores so much more carbon dioxide that if all corn and soy were grown organically in the United States, nearly 600 billion pounds of carbon would be prevented from fouling the atmosphere annually.
And of course, we must use our power as citizens in a democracy, as Sullivan put it, “to lobby on behalf of the environment, making sure our leaders do the right thing.”