Climate change is not only inevitable but is already occurring. For business therefore, the question is not what to do in the future, but what steps to take now in response to an emerging and still worsening situation. Yet while the problem globally is daunting the initial responses for individual businesses are relatively easy and potentially positive in terms of the bottom line. Â
“There are a number of firms in this country and globally to whom climate neutrality policy is part of the business plan,” said Dr. Stephen Breyman, of the New York State Office of Climate Change. “It”™s not an add-on, instead, energy efficiency is the very core of coming to grips with climate change. It”™s a no-brainer in terms of business strategy, because at the same time you are reducing your carbon footprint, you are reducing your energy bills, which contributes to the bottom line.” Â
Breyman was among the speakers at a day-long conference on climate change at the Mohonk Conference Center Nov. 21 sponsored by the Hudson River Watershed Alliance and called Meeting the Climate Challenge. About 150 participants ranging from municipal officials to small-business owners listened to an array of experts discuss the problem and point toward solutions. Â
While carbon dioxide is the primary greenhouse gas, others such as methane are even more potent at trapping heat. The greenhouse gases share a worrisome characteristic: They build up in the atmosphere slowly and they remain there for decades. Thus, the climate changes already being seen globally are the results of carbon introduced into the atmosphere in past decades, and we have yet to feel the full effects of the changed concentrations in our atmosphere, even as we continue to inject more greenhouse gases into it.
Thus, experts agreed at the conference that under the so-called low-emission scenario, if society soon controls the release of greenhouse gases, New York in coming decades will have a climate similar to current-day Virginia. Under the high-emission scenario on which we are currently tracking, New York”™s climate will in coming decades be similar to Georgia”™s.  Â
Results are already evident, said Paul C. Huth, director of research at the Smiley Research Center at Mohonk Preserve, where 112 years of daily and detailed weather observations have created a data base that has brought researchers from around the world. In New York state, the average temperature is now 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than it was in 1896. That may sounds like a relatively miniscule change, but for comparison Huth notes that estimates are the average temperature during the last ice age was only about 5 degrees colder than current averages.
And the warming trend has already had a huge impact on life hereabouts, with such subtle differences as plants opening earlier, and birds arriving earlier and such potentially dangerous changes as the advent of West Nile disease, formerly an ailment confined to the tropics. Winter hobbies and potential business opportunities such as skiing are simply melting away.
“Our winters aren”™t nearly as cold as they used to be and our snow pack isn”™t nearly as consistent as it used to be,” said Huth, showing a slide with a red line encompassing New York state from roughly Harriman through all of New England that represented the annual snow pack in the 1970s, now racing north in retreat. The white areas depicted in the Adirondacks and Northern Maine represent the consistent snow pack today, he said. Â
A consortium of environmental and civic groups called Rising Waters has been holding meetings on how the Hudson Valley region can proactively respond to the challenges of climate change. The Nature Conservancy is spearheading the effort and is seeking to foment planning across interest groups to arrange broad-based solutions that can be implemented with the least impact. Â
“We need to think about adaptation because the climate is going to change
even if we stop emitting greenhouse gasses tomorrow,” said David Van Luven, the Hudson River landscape director for the Nature Conservancy. He said adaptations that are planned across a spectrum of interests and adopted over time are preferable to emergency measures. For example, if rising sea levels create more flooding on the Hudson River, as is expected, infrastructure and housing development need to be planned with the new water levels in mind, as opposed to turning the Hudson River “into a 150-mile-long culvert.”
The Rising Waters project has been holding a series of conferences, workshops and small group meetings to foster strategies to coordinate response to climate changes. “One of the groups we have had the least representation from was the business community,” said Van Luven. “And that was to be expected, because they were not seeing the effect on their business interests. But what we need to communicate is that climate change is a social and economic issue, not just an environmental issue.”
Breyman, the state point man on responding to climate change, said that the idea that climate change should not concern business owners is false and said some of the world”™s major corporations are already responding aggressively to the challenge. He cites the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, a consortium of major corporations ranging from Alcoa to General Electric, General Motors and Xerox and dozens of other major companies jointly calling on the federal government “to quickly enact strong national legislation to require significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions,” according to the group”™s Web site. Among the six principles listed , No. 6 reads, “Reward early action.” Â
“Especially in the midst of our financial crisis the climate-savvy firm is going to be the one that emerges from this, perhaps in a better position than where they entered,” said Breyman.
