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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.

The Delaware County Electric Cooperative (DCEC), SUNY Delhi and the New York Power Authority are planning a solar power generation system that will power the campus and the local community.

Hydropower has been a staple of power production in New York for centuries. It generates electricity by capturing the energy of falling water. The School Street hydroelectric plant in Cohoes now generates 172 gigawatt hours per year and Cornell University also has its own hydropower plant.

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.