NEW YORK, NY (May 17, 2019) -- Chairman Englebright, and distinguished members of the New York State Assembly, thank you for granting Audubon New York the opportunity to offer testimony on the Climate and Community Protect Act. I am Erin McGrath, and I serve as the Policy Manager for Audubon New York.

As a leading state program of the National Audubon Society, Audubon New York leads our network of 65,000 members, 27 locally-affiliated chapters, seven sanctuaries and nature centers and our thousands of annual visitors, volunteers, and partners throughout the state. Audubon achieves its mission to protect birds and their habitats by connecting our vast and powerful network through science, advocacy, education and on-the-ground conservation programs.

In the absence of federal action, we are heartened by your leadership and commitment to addressing climate change with the urgency it deserves. Unabated, the impacts of climate change will put New York State’s birds, people, and environment at risk within our lifetimes. The stark facts presented by the report from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the recent report from the Intergovernmental Panel for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services, and Audubon’s own Climate Change and Birds Report all demonstrate that we need to develop a comprehensive mitigation strategy for reducing our carbon emissions and a robust adaptation strategy that combats the effects of climate change that we are already seeing in the natural world. And the time to do that is now.

Developing a successful mitigation strategy will require us to examine every sector of our economy - including transportation, manufacturing, agriculture, building emissions, and electricity production - to identify where we can reduce, neutralize, or eliminate carbon emissions. We must also analyze and catalogue the risks posed by climate change, and prioritize where we will need to pursue adaptation in response to either current risks or risks that will occur despite successful mitigation strategies. 

We are fortunate that we have many willing partners in the fight to combat climate change. All of the perspectives and concerns that are being presented today will ensure that New York State’s strategy to combat climate change is robust, inclusive, and targeted toward our frontline communities and ecosystems. We believe that by combining the best aspects of the Climate and Community Protection Act, the Climate Leadership Act, and additional proposals put forth by stakeholders, we can create a nation-leading proposal that will be worthy of New York State’s role as the foremost champion for our environment.

It is important that New York State back its climate and energy goals with the force of law. Successfully combatting climate change will be a decades-long effort, and we must ensure that New York State government continues to make progress toward climate mitigation and adaptation despite any future changes in political climate. In order to achieve lasting and comprehensive change, we urge you to work with your colleagues in the Senate and Governor’s office to author climate legislation that we can pass this year, and include the following critical components:

• Codify our current clean energy goals, including: 70% renewable energy by 2030, 100% emissions-free electricity by 2040, our commitments to increased wind and solar power, and additional energy storage and efficiency.
• Codify a goal of economy-wide carbon neutrality by 2050;
• Incorporate a climate action plan into the current state energy planning process;
• Requiring all relevant state agencies to regulate in a manner consistent with the state’s climate action plan;
• Identify the most vulnerable areas of the state, including disadvantaged communities, and ensure that they are prioritized to receive support and resources to address the effects of climate change;
• Include a robust plan to for pursuing climate adaptation in areas that are already being impacted by climate change;
• Ensure that there is affordable access to clean energy statewide; and
• Include a plan for maximizing ecosystem restoration, especially of forests and coastal marshes, which increases our capacity to sequester carbon and improves resiliency in the wake of increased extreme weather and frequent flooding across the state.

The last item is one of the subjects of today’s hearing, which is to examine how we should incorporate the use of offsets in our efforts to combat climate change.

Audubon supports the recommendation of the IPCC, which is to limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels in order to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change. To achieve this recommendation, the IPCC states that we will need to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050. That will require us to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions where technologically and economically feasible, and then neutralize or offset the remaining emissions to reach net zero carbon or carbon neutrality.

We are pleased to see that the Climate and Community Protection Act’s scoping plan recognizes the importance of long-term carbon sequestration and sustainable land management. Afforestation, promoting forest resiliency and regeneration, and restoring and maintaining coastal wetlands like salt marshes must be part of our strategy to reduce atmospheric carbon. Better management of our natural resources has the potential to offset as much as twenty-one percent of our annual carbon emissions, providing thirty-seven percent of the mitigation needed between now and 2030 to keep global temperature rise below 2° Celsius. These actions also have additional benefits, such as increasing water quality, improving resiliency to flooding and extreme weather events, and creating or improving quality habitat for birds and other wildlife.

We strongly recommend that the State undertake a baseline measurement of its current capacity for carbon sequestration as part of any scoping for a climate action plan, and then build out targets for achieving greater sequestration through ecosystem restoration and conservation within New York State. This will require us to inventory our forests, salt marshes, and other ecosystems to determine the total amount of carbon that we can sequester currently, as well as the amount of carbon we could store if our forests and wetlands were thriving and healthy. This will create a roadmap that shows how and when we can reach the State’s full potential for carbon storage and factor that into our overall plan for reducing and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

However, if we are to use ecosystem restoration and improved carbon sequestration to offset carbon emissions, we must ensure that such offsets are credible, verifiable, and only used for activities that cannot be eliminated due to extreme financial impacts or the constraints of available technology. To ensure these ends, we recommend that any proposed offset or sequestration program:

• Avoid the use of offsets in the electricity sector and for stationary sources in environmental justice communities;
• Only allow the use of offsets where emission-producing activities are necessary to preserve human health and safety, alternatives to such activity are technologically infeasible, or proposed alternatives would have a major negative impact on the state economy or vulnerable communities.
• Be governed by a transparent and inclusive waiver system or other regulatory scheme to ensure that our sequestration capacity is being reserved for the activities described above. Entities should only be able to utilize the State’s offsets if they have demonstrated that there is no other alternative to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
• Ensure that offsets are achieved through the restoration and conservation of naturally functioning ecosystems that support native wildlife and a diversity of tree and plant species.

By combining strong clean energy and emissions targets with our potential to increase carbon sequestration, we can interrupt the current trend of global warming and stall the worst effects of climate change. Audubon has pushed for aggressive climate change solutions since we released our 2014 Birds and Climate Report, and we believe that with smart policy and a variety of complementary approaches, New York State will lead the way to a clean energy future.

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Thank you again for allowing me to testify today, and should you need any additional information, please contact me at 518-869-9731 or emcgrath@audubon.org.