New Scotland was in the spotlight — and the sunlight — on Oct. 17.

A bevy of bigwigs came to town to announce that New York state had hit a major renewable energy milestone a year ahead of schedule.

With a massive 5.7-megawatt solar array behind her, spread over 20 acres, Doreen Harris, president and chief executive officer of New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, cut a ribbon to applause.

“This is just the beginning, folks,” Harris said as cameras rolled.

The occasion was to celebrate six gigawatts of distributed solar being installed across the state, “marking the early achievement of the State’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act statutory goal a year ahead of schedule,” said an announcement from NYSERDA and the governor’s office.

The energy generated by the six gigawatts is enough to power more than one million homes, according to the announcement, which also said that solar projects so far have created 14,000 jobs across the state.

This is all good news.

For over a year-and-a-half, our reporter Sean Mulkerrin has covered the project that served as a backdrop for last week’s milestone announcement.

The length of the approval process was due in part to the proposed project’s location: the foot of the Helderberg escarpment, which led to a thorough analysis from the town’s zoning board, taking into account the view from John Boyd State Thacher Park.

The glare study required of the developer suggested “that a limited amount of glare may be seen” from the Thacher Park overlook parking lot for “a few weeks in April and again in August at 7:00 am for up to 20 minutes.” The zoning board was also told by the project engineer at the time there were no “high-potential glare” areas when trees and topography were taken into account.

The New Scotland Zoning Board approved the necessary variance requests in January 2021, allowing the 5.7 megawatt facility to be built. 

This was a model of home rule working to protect a local asset — a treasured view — while allowing for the greater good of renewable energy.

The town had wisely revised its earlier zoning, which was rightly protective of farmland, to accommodate solar facilities.

We commend New Scotland for its leadership and for being a Climate Smart Community.

While it is good to celebrate successes, we need to also understand the enormity and the necessity of the task before us.

When New York adopted its Climate Act in 2019, it committed to 40 percent reduction by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050.

Initial deadlines were met as a Climate Action Council drafted a scoping plan by Jan. 1, 2022 and then finalized the plan a year later to serve as a roadmap for the journey ahead.

The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation also started a community air-monitoring program on time. But the DEC did not complete a strategy to reduce toxic air contaminants in disadvantaged communities on time nor did it implement regulations for emissions reduction on time.

Without the emissions targets, polluters can’t be forced to comply.

These were to be achieved in 2024, and more benchmarks for next year lie ahead. On-site energy use in buildings, for example, is supposed to be shaved by a tenth by next year — and it doesn’t look like that will happen.

The cap-and-invest program to price emissions was supposed to start at the beginning of next year but that, too, is not likely to start on time.

Deadlines matter. 

The word became commonly used during the Civil War. In 1864, according to Merriam Webster, a Confederate prison, notorious for poor conditions, scarce food, and harsh punishments was built in Anderson, Georgia for captured Union prisoners.

Prisoners who crossed the “deadline” — a light railing 20 feet inside the fence line — were shot dead.

Union officers wrote to President Lincoln in August 1864 of the Andersonville prisoners:  “They are fast losing hope and becoming utterly reckless of life. Numbers, crazed by their sufferings, wander about in a state of idiocy. Others deliberately cross the ‘Dead Line’ and are remorselessly shot down.”

The announcement from NYSERDA and the governor’s office described the recently reached solar milestone as a “statutory goal.” That means it is required by law.

Some State Senate Republicans have drafted bills to extend deadlines. This is not the best way forward.

A goal is not a plan. What our state legislators need to do is not delay on the needed end point of zero emissions. Rather, they need to develop achievable plans to find a way forward.

The “dead line” we now face is just as fatal as that faced by Civil War prisoners. It is a matter of life or death.

We’ve all seen the horrors of the recent hurricanes Helene and Milton. We’ve all read scientists’ findings on how greenhouse gas emissions added rain, made winds more intense, and increased property damage. We all know that such horrific storms, worsened by climate change, are increasing.

We also all experienced sustained heat waves this summer. Between July and August, one in four people on our planet Earth experienced at least 30 days of health-threatening temperatures strongly influenced by climate change, according to a report from Climate Change.

“Risky heat” days reach temperature thresholds at which heat-related risks to human health increase statistically. Climate change has increased the likelihood of these days for billions of people worldwide.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes that heat-related deaths have been increasing in the United States, with roughly 1,602 occurring in 2021, growing to over 2,300 in 2023.

For those of us who aren’t killed by the extreme heat, there’s more heart disease and heat stroke, worsening asthma, kidney injury, and slowing brain cognition. 

The average length of the heat-wave season across the United States cities is 46 days longer now than it was in the 1960s, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA’s report on climate-change indicators, released this summer, lists not just heat waves on land but also marine heat waves and the shifts in marine species because of that. It lists, too, increased coastal flooding and wildfires as well as decreased snowpack and Arctic ice.

“For the past two decades, scientists have been raising alarms about great systems in the natural world that warming, caused by carbon emissions, might be pushing toward collapse,” wrote The New York Times this summer in a look at how close we are to the planet’s climate tipping points. “These systems are so vast that they can stay somewhat in balance even as temperatures rise. But only to a point.

“Once we warm the planet beyond certain levels, this balance might be lost, scientists say. The effects would be sweeping and hard to reverse. Not like the turning of a dial, but the flipping of a switch. One that wouldn’t be easily flipped back.”

Reaching these tipping points would not signal “dead lines” just for humans but for much in the natural world as well.

Sure, it’s nice scientists at the United States Department of Agriculture have found a way to preserve the sperm cells of monarch butterflies so, if the endangered species were to become extinct as so many species have, the butterflies could be re-created.

And, yes, it could be swell if Dr. David Keith’s theory of sending sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere reduced temperatures as volcano ash does; or if fungus could be used to pull carbon dioxide out of the air and store it underground; or if Israeli scientists’ idea of sending a huge parasol into space would actually block solar radiation.

 But really what is needed is for humans to change the way we live and reduce carbon emissions.

There is no more important crisis than climate change. It’s a global problem with wealthy industrialized countries like the United State wreaking havoc on poorer undeveloped nations. Climate change needs a global solution — and certainly our nation must be a central part of that.

New York, though, as a state had led the way in serving as a model on reducing emissions.

The July1 draft of the required biennial review of the Climate Act begins by saying, “New York has been a leader in building clean energy generation for over 20 years, since adoption of the 2002 State Energy Plan, which warned of the possible consequences of New York’s fossil fuel dependency.”

The review delineates an evolving history as well as pointing out current shortcomings.

Now is no time to falter. While we’re thrilled NYSERDA beat the Climate Act deadline for six gigawatts of distributed solar, we urge that missed deadlines be met — not extended.

And we urge communities as well as individuals to work toward a better future.

New Scotland, as one community, hosted a large solar facility.

Individuals can choose to use solar to power their homes and businesses.

We can buy energy-efficient appliances; we can drive electric vehicles; we can reduce our use of plastics whose production emits greenhouse gasses.

 If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem.