This event took place on Wednesday, Sept. 16th at The Harley School. It was sponsored by Rochester People’s Climate Coalition.

Opening statement: (2 mins)

My name is Rajesh Barnabas and I am running as the green party candidate for county executive.

I spent the first 6 years of my life immersed in nature. My family lived on Glenn View court and unlike the false nature names streets are today named, there was actually a Glenn. There was also a big huge woods in which my brother and friends would build forts, and go on long hikes, and get lost in. The average American child today spends 4 to 7 minutes outdoors. For my parents, playing indoors was not an option. It was at this early age that I developed a love of nature. In order to want to fight for something, you first have to develop a strong relationship with that something or someone.

My parents helped instill in me a love of nature and a disgust for Kodak and the pollution it was pumping into the water and air. So much that I was called to task by my third-grade art teacher when I drew an airplane bombing the polluting smokestacks of Kodak.

Today our economic system is at war with our planetary system. Right now the triumph of the corporate political parties, their free-market logic with the ethos of domination and fierce competition is paralyzing all serious efforts to respond to climate change.

200 species go extinct every day.

Only collective action on a tremendous scale and dramatic reigning in of market forces will make a difference. Capitalism is destroying the earth and the two old tricks that dug it out in the past – war and shopping, will not work.

Give a concrete example of a program or initiative you will spearhead to both reduce greenhouse gas emissions (or otherwise mitigate the threat of climate change) and strengthen the local economy.

1) I will call for legislation and/or use my bully pulpit to push for referendums or ballot initiatives on the following items:

a) sweeping bans on polluting activities; styrofoam use, plastic bags, lawn fertilizer, etc.

b) deep subsidies for green alternatives; solar and wind energy, LED construction

c) huge new public works programs ex. mass transit, light rail.

d) a carbon tax and pricey penalties for emission abusers to pay for all this.

e) a reversal of privatizations; with the big one being a RG&E buy out. Private utilities have almost no incentive to invest in renewables.

f) currently the Monroe County government spends $223 million (22%) on public safety and less than 10% on environmental efforts ($96 million). I would reverse those percentages; double spending on the environment and half spending for police. We need more planet police, and green jobs, not a police state. There would be a program to retrain police officers as green servicemen; building green roofs, solar installations, etc.

To sum up we need to expand our low-carbon sectors of the economy and declare war against the high-carbon sectors of the local economy.

RG&E is currently propping up one of the most dangerous sources of energy around and footing you with the bill. You will be paying $175 million extra over the next three years to finance the oldest nuclear power plant in the country. This is INSANITY defined.

Buying RG&E out would force our utility to invest in renewable energy sources completely rather than superficially. It would be a huge green job creator.

What steps will you take to prepare your community for the impacts of climate change (e.g., increased flooding, heat waves, and vector-borne infections and diseases spread by mosquitoes and ticks)?

Zero Carbon Tolerance

1) Like I said, I would not fire the police, but transition some of them into roles of disaster relief. We already send firefighters from our region to places that are burning up or flooding. We need to ramp up our response to wacky winters caused by the Arctic melt. So the first thing I would do is map out a climate disaster preparation plan and make sure their protocols had funding ahead of time.

There has been a 71% increase in heavy rainfall events since 1958. This past summer those downfalls caused $400,000 of damages in the Ontario County town of Richmond. Rather than spend more money after the devastation occurs, we need to spend less money now to prepare and prevent worst case scenarios.

2) Since the mainstream corporate media is not covering climate change, we need to develop our own community and public tv programs to educate the people. In 2007 the three major networks CBS, NBC, and ABC ran a total of 147 stories about climate change. In 2011 the networks ran just fourteen.* Thanks to people like Steve Orr at the D&C and Frank Regan who publishes a local blog called: Environmental Thoughts. And the outreach RocSpot does and I Kate McArdle from New York State Pollution Prevention Institute. We need to ramp up our propaganda outlets.

3) People assume that the government authorities will protect them, but as we have seen with Katrina and Hurricane Sandy, that is not the case. There was no preparation ahead of time. Impoverished communities and populations that are less connected will suffer the most during these climate disasters, so this is as much a social justice concern as it is an environmental one. Much of the refugee problems you are seeing today in Europe are caused by consecutive dry seasons in Syria and North Africa. War on the climate precipitated many of the real wars.

3b. Your community has not yet taken New York State’s Climate Smart Communities pledge. Will you actively push the governing body you are part of to adopt this program? If not, why? If so, which aspects of the program do you intend to take advantage of first? (Monroe County Legislature and all other municipalities) 

Of course I would push for the adoption of New York State’s Climate Smart Community pledge, but it would do no good as long as Republicans dominate the Monroe County Legislature. Studies show that Republicans are overwhelmingly science deniers, in some regions 80% are Climate Change deniers, meaning that they don’t believe the conclusions from 97% of our climate scientists who tell us humans are changing our climate.

In sharp contrast 75% of self-identified Democrats and liberals believe human activity is causing climate change.* 

Aspects of the Pledge that I will take advantage of:

1st) Everyone should know that the pledge and program is a suggestion, not any kind of law-binding ultimatum for municipal governments. So the first thing I would do in office is formalize a paid environmental task force or commission, hire as many people like Susan Spencer to develop an aggressive GHG emissions reduction program. The engineers and the scientists tell us that we could go zero-carbon within a decade. The only thing missing is political will.

Post forum analysis and commentary:

* It makes sense then that no local media covered this event tonight. More reason we need more people like Frank Regan covering this in his blog: http://rochesterenvironmentny.blogspot.com

** The only problem is that the elected Dems are not even talking about climate change; for example there is not even a mention of it on my opponent Sandy Frankel’s platform of issues on her campaign website.  I don’t understand this given the fact that she has quite a good record in Brighton on environmental issues. Is this a calculation by her handlers that she won’t win Republican votes if she talks about these scientific matters? To the Dempublicans or Repocrats, climate change is just another issue like all the rest that is not part of their platform but all of a sudden a priority when they are in front of the correct audience. Very opportunistic of the legacy Democrat party politicians that showed up tonight, but also typical.