Sunset Park Activists Want 'Disadvantaged Communities' in Charge of Climate Policy

SUNSET PARK, BROOKLYN — Sunset Park activist organization UPROSE is calling on Gov. Andrew Cuomo to get even tougher on climate change — and to do so while addressing the needs of communities most at risk from both changing weather and, in the short term, job loss during the transition to a clean-energy economy.

The demands were made in a letter sent to Cuomo on Aug. 30, co-signed by dozens of organizations also focused on the state's response to climate change.

New York is part of a consortium of states — including Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont — that have signed onto an agreement limiting the climate change-causing C02 their power plants emit.

Known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI, the plan caps such CO2 emissions at a level set to decrease by 2.5 percent each year between 2015 and 2020.

But UPROSE wants that limit dropped by 5 percent annually, arguing that is the only way New York can reach its own goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent over the next 35 years.

The RGGI pact also created a carbon credit trading system by which states can pay to go over their allotted greenhouse gas limit.

Uprose is asking for at least 40 percent of the money paid into that fund to be used for climate adaptation and renewable energy development in "Disadvantaged Communities that bear burdens of negative public health effects, environmental pollution, and impacts of climate change."

Communities like Sunset Park and Red Hook fit that designation, according to Ana Orozco, the group's coordinator of Climate Justice Policy and Programs.

Both are low-lying and therefore susceptible to climate change-related flooding, she said.

At the same time, many workers in Sunset Park are employed by businesses, such as natural gas power plants, that could be shuttered or curtailed as new climate regulations go into effect.

For that reason, the letter UPROSE signed also calls on Cuomo to let communities like Sunset Park lead the development of a "Just Transition plan for workers of and communities home to fossil-fuel based industry," a plan that will help them secure work "in the regenerative energy economy, which includes pathways for good-paying jobs with fair labor standards."

Orozco said that as of Thursday, UPROSE had yet to hear back from Cuomo's office in response to the letter. Patch reached out to the governor for comment on Thursday, but did not immediately receive a response.

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