Finger Lakes

A Summer of Fire and Rain

/ Peter Bardaglio / Leave a comment
Here’s a short and by no means comprehensive list of the extreme weather disasters that have taken place since the end of June, eight weeks ago:
  • More than 90 people died from the extreme heat in Quebec
  • Record rainfall in Japan caused flooding and landslides leading to at least 179 deaths
  • Over 60 wildfires raged above the Arctic Circle in Sweden
  • Thousands of people have been forced from their homes in the U.S. West, especially in California and Colorado, which have experienced unprecedented wildfires sparked by extreme heat and drought
  • An epic monsoon left more than 220,000 people homeless in southern India and killed at least 324 people
  • And in the Finger Lakes last week a “rain bomb” dropped up to 8.75 inches overnight and caused major flooding in Seneca and Schuyler Counties, destroying homes and tearing up roads
Flooding in Lodi Point last week. Photo credit: Mike Groll/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo.

2018 is on track to be the fourth hottest year on record, and 17 out of the warmest years since modern record-keeping began have occurred since 2001. “It’s not a wake-up call anymore,” said Cynthia Rosenzweig, who runs the climate impacts group at the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in a recent interview with the New York Times. “It’s now absolutely happening to millions of people around the world.”

This summer of “fire and rain,” to quote a James Taylor song, has been relentless in its violence and destruction. It feels as if what was a slow-moving calamity has accelerated into a near biblical explosion of unceasing events, each day bringing news of another indication that climate change is looking more and more like climate chaos.

How do we know these are not isolated, unrelated events but rather part of a longer-term process that is nowhere near reaching its climax? Researchers, based on climate models, are now able to draw links between extreme weather events and climate change, and even quantify them. For example, the World Weather Attribution project, an international coalition of scientists, issued a study in July concluding that Europe’s record-breaking heat wave this summer was twice as likely to have occurred because of human-caused warming.

Scientists still think that it’s not too late to avoid the worst effects of climate change, but only if we undertake dramatic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions and changes in the way we live. Meanwhile, for those of us who are paying attention, the signs are all around us that the waters are not just rising; they are getting choppier and more turbulent with each passing day. What used to seem like something that would take place in the distant future is happening now.

“What we’re seeing today is making me, frankly, calibrate not only what my children will be living but what I will be living, what I am currently living,” Kim Cobb, a professor of earth and atmospheric science at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, noted recently in conversation with a reporter. “We haven’t caught up to it. I haven’t caught up to it, personally.”

Sobering words, indeed, that remind us what is at stake. There is no “new normal.” Our summer of fire and rain will only get much worse going forward if we fail, in the words of Taylor’s song, to “make a stand.”

 

No Moratorium for Climate Change

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As the 8th annual Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI) report makes clear, there is much to celebrate in our community. Viewed collectively, the report documents an impressive contribution to the fight against climate change. Perhaps most important it demonstrates how collaboration and a sense of common purpose can lead to real progress.

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The Willow Glen Cemetery in Dryden. Photo courtesy of the Town of Dryden.

There is one area, however, of significant concern: the growing opposition in the Finger Lakes region to commercial-scale wind and solar. The debate over solar farms in Dryden, in particular, reflects the sharp divide between those who want to hold on to a nostalgic view of rural life and those who want to address the future challenges that we face as the climate continues to destabilize at a rate that even the most pessimistic computer models have underestimated. “Hillside after hillside, farm land after farm land, field after field they are going to replace our beautiful, beautiful landscape with nothing but industrial solar panels,” declared one opponent in the Dryden controversy, while other opponents decried the disrespect shown to those buried in a nearby cemetery.

The same battle lines have formed in other communities such as Newfield, Enfield, and the Town of Seneca, all of which have recently passed moratoriums on large-scale wind and solar projects in an attempt “to preserve the rural character” of their communities. The irony is that there seems to be little acknowledgement of how climate change is threatening the very foundation of rural life in the Finger Lakes, the biosphere that makes our region so unique.

If we refuse to act with an eye on the future and move rapidly to a clean energy economy, we are faced with the prospect of a new ecosystem making its way north. Projections indicate that, given the current pace of global warming, in as few as 30 to 40 years the climate of upstate New York is likely to resemble that of Georgia. Clearly, such a shift will result in a very different countryside than what our grandparents experienced. Already the average temperature in New York during the winter has climbed 4.4 °F since the 1970s, heavy downpours have increased by 70 percent since the 1950s, and spring begins a week earlier  than it did a few decades ago.

The message is clear: the biggest risk of all is to do nothing. The ecosystem of the Finger Lakes is already experiencing significant stress and only by dramatically reducing our carbon footprint as quickly as possible can we have any chance to avoid exchanging it for a very different ecosystem. Without the development of large-scale wind and solar, there is little to no possibility of avoiding this fate. In short, there is a lot more at stake than spoiling the view.

Why a 2030 District in Ithaca?

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The drought in the Finger Lakes this summer has been a stark reminder that climate change is already under way not just in some distant land but in our own backyard, That doesn’t mean we should throw the towel in and concede defeat, however. On the contrary, we need to redouble our efforts to reduce our community’s greenhouse gas emissions and stave off the worst that could happen.

One of the most effective ways to do fight climate change is to improve the energy and water performance of our buildings. The built environment — commercial and municipal office buildings as well as multi-family housing — is a large consumer of natural resources and generator of emissions. In fact, 75 percent of all the electricity produced in the United States is used just to operate buildings, and the building sector is responsible for 45 percent of the nation’s carbon dioxide emissions.

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HOLT Architect’s new office — the site of a former auto parts store — is near net zero energy.

The Ithaca 2030 District got its initial impetus from a 2013 visit by Ed Mazria, the founder and CEO of Architecture 2030, which issued the 2030 Challenge. Mr. Mazria was the keynote speaker at HOLT Architects‘ 50th anniversary celebration and he met with the members of the Tompkins County Climate Protection Initiative (TCCPI) while he was in town. TCCPI and HOLT began soon after to explore the potential of a 2030 District in Ithaca. With the support of its coalition members, establishing a 2030 District in Ithaca became an official project of TCCPI in 2014.

The Park Foundation and the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), through the Cleaner, Greener Communities program, have provided support to plan and begin building the Ithaca 2030 District. In addition, Cornell Cooperative Extension-Tompkins County, HOLT Architects, and Taitem Engineering have contributed significant in-kind gifts in the form of pro bono services.

Besides promoting crucial climate protection measures, the Ithaca 2030 District seeks to demonstrate that healthy and high performing buildings make good financial sense. District members will do this by bringing together diverse stakeholders, leveraging existing and developing new incentives and financing mechanisms, and creating and sharing joint resources. They will develop realistic, measurable, and innovative strategies to assist district property owners, managers, and tenants in meeting aggressive goals that keep properties and businesses competitive while operating buildings more efficiently, reducing costs, and reducing the environmental impacts of facility construction, operation, and maintenance.

The District builds on the TCCPI model to provide a non-competitive environment where building owners, community organizations, and professionals come together to share best practices and accelerate market transformation in Ithaca’s built environment. These collaborative efforts will establish the Ithaca 2030 District as an example of a financially viable, sustainability focused, multi-sector driven effort that maximizes profitability and prosperity for all involved.

No Easy Answers

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With Earth Day weekend fast approaching, the calendar is filling up with all kinds of events to mark the observance: conferences, lectures, summits, fairs, and film screenings. Spring is late in coming to the Finger Lakes this year but, if we’re lucky, the weather forecast might hold up and the warmer temperatures will continue and maybe, just maybe we’ll even get some sunshine in time for the celebrations.

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Cayuga Power Plant

It’s no little irony that at the same time we recommit to becoming better stewards of our life support system otherwise known as “the environment,” we are faced with the dilemma of how to respond to the news that Cayuga Power Plant is seeking to shift from coal to natural gas. While many are touting natural gas as a cleaner burning alternative to coal, recent reports coming out of Cornell and elsewhere suggest that the methane emissions released during the life cycle of natural gas production and distribution, not just combustion, make it as dirty or perhaps even dirtier than coal.

So what to do? Cayuga Power Plant supplies over 300 megawatts of electricity to the grid and is not easily replaced. It also is a key source of property taxes for both the town of Lansing and Tompkins County. Shutting it down would have a major impact on the area’s economy.

There is no easy answer and there will be huge trade offs regardless of what course we take. If nothing else, the Cayuga Power Plant stands as a stark reminder of just how deeply embedded we are in the fossil fuel regime and just how difficult it will be extricate ourselves from it.

The debate over how to move forward has the potential to be a crucial teachable moment in the life of our community, reminding us that there are always consequences to our decisions, whether conscious or unconscious, intentional or unintentional. Perhaps one of the best ways we can observe this year’s Earth Day is to recognize there are no easy answers, only complexities and challenges that we must confront and work our way through.

A Drought in Common Sense

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Thousands of people from across the U.S. marched past the White House on Sunday, February 17, calling on President Barack Obama to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline and fracking, and take other steps to fight climate change.The record attendance at the rally in Washington, D.C. highlighted the growing movement in the U.S. among ordinary citizens who sense that the point of no return for runaway climate change is fast approaching.

Coming on the heels of President Obama’s State of the Union address, in which he challenged Congress to deal with the issue of climate change, the outpouring of people at the rally was good news indeed. As the president put it, “For the sake of our children and our future, we must do more to combat climate change.”

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Parts of the bottom of the Mississippi River appeared during the drought last summer.

Perhaps anticipating the demands of the thousands who would flock to Washington a few days later, President Obama struck an unusually combative tone in his annual address. If Congress refused to act, the president warned. then he would exercise his executive authority “to reduce pollution, prepare our communities for the consequences of climate change, and speed the transition to more sustainable sources of energy.”

It remains to be seen, of course, whether Obama will remain true to his word. But all signs indicate that he better do so, for our sake. Just one recent example: reports of a thin snowpack in the western mountains suggest that the High Plains, West, and Southwest are likely to experience a third summer of withering drought.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) latest three-month drought projections, which the agency released February 21, promises little relief. Forecasters predict that drought will continue in the Rocky Mountain and Plains states, expand throughout northern and southern California and return to most of Texas, which has suffered a severe drought since 2011.

According to USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service National Water and Climate Center, the February streamflow forecast predicts a decline in nearly every state and basin in the West. The winter snow season still has two months left, but “if the remaining season turns out dry, water supply conditions could end up in the 50 to 70 percent of average range.”

Those dry conditions and poor snowpack have also increased the risk that the Mississippi River could drop to levels later this year equal to or worse than last fall’s record dip, once again seriously disrupting barge traffic on the nation’s busiest waterway. According to Time magazine, if conditions do not improve soon, “the stoppage could last for months.”

We are fortunate, thanks to the abundance of water in the Finger Lakes region, not to have this kind of severe drought looming on the horizon. But we will not be unaffected by developments west of the Mississippi. One wonders what kind of national economic disaster it will take to finally force Congress to act on climate change, but perhaps the shutdown of a river that sees $180 billion of goods travel along it each year will do the trick.

Sustainability Thinking and Entrepreneurship at Ithaca College

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Academic entrepreneurship, in its narrowest sense, involves the creation of new business ventures by university and college faculty, administrators, and students. More broadly, academic entrepreneurship seeks to establish connections across disciplines, between student and academic affairs, and between the campus and community. It draws on the spirit of innovation, creativity, and opportunity that animates entrepreneurial activity in the business world to provide the richest learning experience possible for students

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Ithaca College

Academic entrepreneurship has been part of Ithaca College’s institutional DNA since its founding in 1892 as a music conservatory. Ithaca, an independent, predominantly undergraduate college of 6,400 students in the Finger Lakes region of New York, offers a diverse curriculum in more than 100 degree programs in business, communications, health sciences and human performance, humanities and sciences, music, and interdisciplinary studies.  The music program’s original emphasis on performance and hands-on learning spread throughout the curriculum as the college grew and influenced other programs in theater arts, physical education, physical therapy, radio, and television.

As a founding member of Associated New American Colleges (ANAC), a national consortium of about twenty small and mid-sized institutions, Ithaca is committed to Ernest Boyer’s vision of undergraduate education, one that combines liberal and professional learning with a strong emphasis on experiential learning and civic engagement. This marriage of pragmatism and idealism equips Ithaca students with the ability to solve real world problems in ways that advance the college’s core values: intellect, character, creativity, community, and global citizenship. The recent campus-wide sustainability initiative is but the latest manifestation of Ithaca’s distinctive brand of undergraduate education.

Ithaca College has been exploring and applying the concept of sustainability for several years. Our sustainability initiative involves three dimensions: 1) the curriculum, 2) college operations, and 3) community outreach. The framework supplied by sustainability thinking—with its emphasis on interconnectedness, the dynamic nature of complex systems, and the importance of taking the long view—has much in common with the strategic approach adopted by the college’s institutional plan. Indeed, the move towards sustainability has emerged organically out of the priorities established by the institutional plan.

Sustainability thinking and entrepreneurship, then, have become inextricably linked at Ithaca College. The institution’s long history of innovation and pragmatism has furnished a fertile seedbed for the growth of the sustainability initiative, which in turn has helped to facilitate the integration of a liberal education and professional studies, with a strong emphasis on civic engagement. As a result, Ithaca is helping to forge a unique approach to undergraduate learning, an approach that represents the cutting edge of U.S. higher education in the twenty-first century.

Note: This is an abridged version of an essay that first appeared as “Sustainability Thinking and Entrepreneurship: A Case Study,” Peer Review, Vol. 7, no. 3 (Spring 2005): 18-20.