Climate Change

Since 1989, pub­lic aware­ness of glob­al cli­mate change has increased as the inter­na­tion­al sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty has learned more about its caus­es and effects. A vari­ety of cli­mate change impacts have already been observed and record­ed in New York State and across the north­east­ern Unit­ed States. Breed­ing bird and ocean­ic fish pop­u­la­tion ranges in the State have shift­ed north­ward over the last sev­er­al decades. Sea lev­els along New York’s coast have risen more than a foot since 1900. Accord­ing to some mod­els aver­age sea lev­els along New York’s coast are expect­ed to rise as much as 2.5 feet above the aver­ages seen from 2000 to 2004 by 2050. Addi­tion­al­ly, mod­el­ing has pre­dict­ed that New York is like­ly to expe­ri­ence increased and more vari­able or incon­sis­tent pre­cip­i­ta­tion. These impacts, along with many oth­ers, have altered and will con­tin­ue to alter the bal­ance with­in nat­ur­al ecosys­tems and land­scapes across the State.

The Town of New Cas­tle rec­og­nizes the ways in which cli­mate change can adverse­ly affect the com­mu­ni­ty and has acknowl­edged that the Town has a role to play in mit­i­gat­ing against and adapt­ing to the impacts of cli­mate change. In 2011, the Town Board adopt­ed the Cli­mate Action Plan (CAP), acknowl­edg­ing this respon­si­bil­i­ty and the envi­ron­men­tal and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits that come along with address­ing the issues asso­ci­at­ed with a chang­ing cli­mate. The CAP was adopt­ed with the goals of increas­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, increas­ing the use of renew­able ener­gy sources, reduc­ing vehi­cle miles trav­eled, and reduc­ing the gen­er­a­tion of sol­id waste. Since the adop­tion of the CAP, the Town has part­nered with New York State and oth­er local­i­ties in run­ning pro­grams and adopt­ing poli­cies that reduce munic­i­pal and com­mu­ni­ty ener­gy use and green­house gas (GHG) emis­sions. In Decem­ber of 2016, New Cas­tle became a Clean Ener­gy Com­mu­ni­ty, earn­ing the oppor­tu­ni­ty to uti­lize $100,000 in State fund­ing for ener­gy effi­cien­cy and renew­able ener­gy projects in the Town. As a reflec­tion of today’s best prac­tices in sus­tain­able plan­ning, this Plan estab­lish­es poli­cies that will enable New Cas­tle to con­tin­ue to mit­i­gate the effects of glob­al cli­mate change by fur­ther embrac­ing ener­gy effi­cien­cy, renew­able ener­gy, green build­ing and green infra­struc­ture prac­tices. This will include updat­ing the Town’s CAP and set­ting new munic­i­pal GHG emis­sion reduc­tion goals.