Forum On Green New Deal Held In Ossining

From the Village of Ossining:

October 4 2019

PUBLIC OFFICIALS, COMMUNITY GROUPS, FAITH LEADERS AND RESIDENTS ACCELERATE ACTION ON GREEN NEW DEAL WITH MOMENTUM FROM RECENT GLOBAL CLIMATE STRIKES

Ossining, New York – Community groups, faith leaders and residents gathered at the Center at Mariandale on the heels of the recent global climate strikes last week to harness action on the Green New Deal, a visionary proposal initiated in Congress by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY) and Sen. Ed Markey (MA) in February. The Green New Deal resolution is based on scientific findings from the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees celsius by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which concluded that human activity is the dominant cause of climate change that is causing global warming, rise of sea levels and increase of extreme weather events. The Green New Deal will create millions of good, high wage jobs, provide economic security and counteract systemic injustices while mobilizing rapid transition to renewable energy and resource efficiency. In the absence of any action on the federal level to address the urgency of a mere decade remaining to avert climate catastrophe, local and state initiatives are garnering support.

The forum was organized by Paola Dalle Carbonare, Co-Founder of Healing & Protecting Our Land Together: A Call to Prayer and Bette Ann Jaster, a Dominican Sister of Hope at The Center at Mariandale because they wanted to educate community members about the sweeping changes necessary to address both climate change and economic inequality. They see the Green New Deal as the hope for the future of our planet. Sister Bette Ann said, “Global instability, conflict and massive migration will continue with alarming increases in droughts, floods, extreme temperature changes and crop failures. We need to rapidly implement climate solutions on the local and state levels that include job training opportunities for a new green and equitable economy.”

Paola Dalle Carbonare, a Croton resident, said, “The forests are the lungs of our planet absorbing carbon dioxide and releasing oxygen but they are being destroyed. Burning fossil fuels is causing ocean acidification damaging our precious life-giving marine ecosystem. We have the cost effective fossil fuel free solutions now to heat and cool our buildings and drive our cars. We need to aggressively activate and incentivize those solutions in our communities now, ”

Santosh Nandabalan, an organizer for Food and Water Action, moderated a panel of environmental leaders, including Vanessa Agudelo, Peekskill Councilperson; Patrick Houston, New York Communities for Change; Liz Moran, NYPIRG; Gabriel Reichler, Sunrise Movement; Cata Romo, 350.org; Courtney Williams, Vice President of SEnRG and a Peekskill resident; and, Richard Webster, Riverkeeper.

State Senator Alessandra Biaggi (D-Bronx/Westchester - District 34). was invited, but was unable to attend, so she created a short video that was screened at the event, She said, "Mitigating the impending environmental threats to our planet and humanity, requires all of us to fully embrace an aggressive and ambitious strategy to combat climate change. The Green New Deal accomplishes this and tackles our climate crisis through a holistic approach – it invests in projects that will create good jobs and move our society to being emission free, while keeping justice and equality front and center. The work of the youth and grassroots organizations across New York State to build support for the Green New Deal is heroic, and I stand firmly with their call for justice-oriented policies that will save our planet and empower our communities.”

Courtney Williams, Vice President of Safe Energy Rights Group and Peekskill resident said, “The first step is the Green New Deal is stopping the harm--shutting down fossil fuel and polluting industries--the next step is putting people to work to right it. The GND will do that by banning fracking, stopping polluters, and putting people to work in jobs that don't jeopardize their health, their community, or their planet. Projects close to here like the AIM pipeline, Danskammer fracked gas plant and the Cricket Valley Energy Center only further the climate crisis. How can we stop fossil fuel projects nationwide when in New York all these proposals still exist? We need to be working on campaigns to ban fracking nationwide. That means volunteering for candidates for office that support a nationwide fracking ban, and volunteering for grassroots organizations fighting to beat back the deluge of fracked gas infrastructure projects. If fracking were banned today it would turn the fracked gas industry into a stranded asset tomorrow. Pipelines would be empty. Power plants would rumble to a halt. While we fight to make a nationwide fracking ban a reality, we need to do two things. One, call out climate hypocrites like Cuomo right now. Two, push hard to energy efficiency and renewable energy so we are ready to turn off the fossil fuel spigot.”

Santosh Nandabalan, a community organizer for Food and Water Action said, “Our window of opportunity to avoid the worst of climate change is getting increasingly smaller and smaller. Now more than ever, we need to fight for a real Green New Deal that moves us off fossil fuels entirely and supports the fair and just transition to 100% renewable energy nationwide. Our elected officials at all levels of government must listen to the youth and the grassroots environmental movement to take bold action and save us from climate catastrophe.”

Vanessa Agudelo, Peekskill City Councilmember said “We have no time to waste. If we are truly committed to pragmatically addressing the impending Climate Crisis we are facing, we must mandate policies that transformatively change and decarbonize our economy and society at the highest level. This won’t work if we are only taking small measures like plastic bags bans or recycling. Our local communities, especially low income communities such as Peekskill, need our state and federal leaders to lead the transition to decommodify our energy resources. This starts with the Green New Deal.”

"Arts Organizing will help us win Climate Justice for All, because if we can't imagine another world we won't have one." --Cata Romo, New York Organizer with 350.org

Gabriel Reichler of the Sunrise Movement said, "The Green New Deal is our best hope to respond to the climate crisis within the time science says we have left in order to avoid an unacceptably high risk of catastrophic impacts within my lifetime, but it is also a unique opportunity for us to come together to create a better world for us all. Any doubts about its technical and financial feasibility are baseless and concocted by the obscenely wealthy fossil fuel company executives who got us into this mess in the first place and do not want us to keep them from burning every last lump of coal, drop of oil, and cubic meter of gas so they can profit even more. The only remaining obstacle to implementing the Green New Deal is that those same executives have taken over our government over the past half-century or so. History tells us that there is exactly one way to rapidly overcome such entrenched power: build mass social movements, precisely what Sunrise has spent the past two years doing. After all, who better to build these movements than the young people who, when we grow up, will have to live with the impacts of the climate crisis that we are running out of time to solve?" ;

This press release was produced by the Village of Ossining .The views expressed here are the author’s own.