The Sierra Club speaks locally, regionally, nationally, and loudly for environmental conservation. We are facing climate disruption and it is enormously challenging for us all. How will New Yorkers, and the world’s 7.3 billion people, grow food, and find water, safety and housing? Humans are a geologic force of the sixth mass extinction of our planet’s species. What can we do to overcome denial?
In my time on the chapter excom, we’ve accomplished a lot. At Forward on Climate, in DC, we rallied with our Club’s Executive Director and 350.org leaders to leave the carbon in the ground. Our atmosphere is regularly over 400 ppm of CO2, so, as an excom Energy Committee leader, I have introduced resolutions to work towards: 1) 100% renewable power in NYS by 2030 and 2) to divest NYS retirement funds from fossil fuel industries. We also need more coordinated actions, and NYS policies, to realize a future that works. At the first DEC hearing on hydrofracking, I daily welcomed via local radio, and at the Hearing rally, over 1,000 New Yorkers to say no fracking way. In 2014 our Governor heard us: The DEC banned high volume hydraulic fracturing in NY. Stopping gas infrastructure, as pipelines, storage, export terminals, power plant conversions, frack-waste imports, and explosive bomb trains remain challenges.
The future of our wilderness is in peril, as is our planet’s biome. I got that from my own biological research in the US, Canada, Germany and Tanzania. In NY, we work to conserve wilderness, protect wild lands and waters, promote local, organic farming and defend wildlife. So, please join us, get active, and share your passion, time and energy. Questions? Reach me at wilds@newyork.sierraclub.org.
Hal Bauer
“All nature wears one universal grin.”
NOFA NY 2013 Farmer's Pledge farmer