Latest News: State Wide

With 400 breweries statewide, beer is a big business in the State of New York. However, climate change is already affecting brewers. The Oxford Companion to Beer notes that the price of ingredients is “beginning to rise as the agriculture industry is affected by changing weather patterns.” Some brewers have been fighting climate change for decades.

Permaculture, a compound of the words permanent and agriculture, is about melding sustainable production with sustainable consumption. Environmentalists Bill Mollison and David Holmgren created the concept in their 1978 book “Permaculture One,” as an alternative approach to agriculture and community design and this idea is taking root here in New York’s rural and urban centers

Regenerative agriculture is a farming practice in which plants and the soil that nourishes them take care of each other. This practice brings benefits to our environment by pulling carbon out of the atmosphere into the soil.

Lead in school drinking water has been a concern in New York because children often spend all day in school facilities and receive much of their drinking water from them. NYLCV is working to prevent lead poisoning in schoolchildren by analyzing the lab reports from all 4,700 public schools in New York to model the impact of a lower lead action level on protecting school communities.

A process called holistic grazing can help combat global warming by pulling carbon out of the atmosphere into “sinks,” or giant carbon repositories. Farmers that use holistic grazing practices move grazing animals from one place to another for limited periods of time.

In New York, Harmful Algal Blooms are rising at an alarming rate. One cause of HABs is agricultural runoff, which occurs when chemicals from fertilizer end up in our waterways. Some houses in rural New York neighborhood leach nitrogen into waterways because they are not connected to a public sewer system. Another cause of HABs is climate change.

This past July, New York City had to suspend its use of speed cameras after lawmakers in Albany were unable to renew the program. Governor Andrew Cuomo, Mayor de Blasio, and the New York City Council worked together and developed a solution to state lawmakers’ lack of support.

A recent study by Data Driven Yale shows that sub-national efforts have the potential to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions and represent a significant step forward in meeting the global temperature goals of the Paris Agreement.  However, they are still not enough to prevent the dangerous warming that will trigger increased heat waves, mightier storms, rising seas and displacement of people.