Coeymans set to lead the way on clean air
The town of Coeymans will soon vote on the Clean Air bill, a local law that will limit, not prohibit, some businesses in the town from burning solid waste and tires.
The proposed law covers various waste types (tires, solid waste, medical waste, sewer sludge) and limits facilities to burning less than 25 tons of waste per day. Facilities that burn waste are required to continuously monitor 19 different pollutants and post the results online in real time on a publicly accessible website.
New York state allows local governments to pass stricter air pollution and waste laws than those set by state and federal minimums. If passed, the Coeymans Clean Air law will set a new clean air standard in the Hudson Valley, a notable achievement for a town of about 7,000 people, and is already inspiring action in other towns facing similar challenges.
As a resident, I thank the town board for their work. I am proud that board members from both political parties agree that the town’s future should include clean air, clean water and clean soil, all supporting a healthy population in a successful economy.
CHRISTINE
PRIMOMO, R.N.
Ravena
Green New Deal will add jobs, opportunity
“Green New Deal a positive energy” (letter, March
5) gets it right. The Green New Deal will have massive benefits and it can pay for itself, at least the essential Green New Deal that will transition us swiftly to 100 percent renewables and net-zero emissions by 2030. It’s the only plan out there which can do that, and without it we’ll have “catastrophic” global warming costing hundreds of trillions, causing “global economic collapse” and then “societal collapse,” according to the National Academy of Sciences and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
The estimated cost of the clean energy part of the Green New Deal is $500 billion annually for a decade, according to one of the world’s most respected experts, Mark Jacobsen of Stanford University. The GND is also estimated to add at least $500 billion to our economy, mostly because by 2030 solar and wind energy will be essentially free, according to an analysis published in the Financial Times.
The GND will create about 15 million permanent (40-year) jobs with “family-supporting union wages” and good benefits, in every ZIP code in the country. These are the kind of jobs most ordinary Americans have not seen in many decades.
The contrast between impending disaster and economic opportunity couldn’t be more stark. We must act now to prevent the former and create the latter. The Green New Deal will, no doubt, like the original New Deal, be broken down into separate pieces of legislation. We must pass the energy portion, the heart of the GND, by February 2021, or nothing else will matter.
LYNN GOLDFARB
Lancaster, Pa.