In 1962, the modern environmental movement was born.
On Sept. 27, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring was published. Her book led to the banning of the pesticide DDT, which contributed to the preservation of the bald eagle, then facing extinction, and caused many Americans to reconsider their relationship with industrial chemicals that were increasingly becoming part of everyday life.
That same day, The New York Times reported that Con Edison, the largest power company in the country, was planning to build a hydroelectric plant inside Storm King Mountain. The battle over that plan saved the mountain and led to the concept of environmental law and the formation of at least four organizations (Scenic Hudson, Riverkeeper, Clearwater and the Natural Resources Defense Council), and laid the groundwork for the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the passage of the Clean Water Act and the Endangered Species Act.
Sure, our corner of the world deserves credit. But what have we done lately?
That question was on my mind as I reported on two stories that appear in this week’s issue about climate action plans for Dutchess County and Beacon. They come a few weeks after Leonard Sparks’ look at the new Climate Smart certifications and planning efforts in Putnam County and Cold Spring. It’s not a coincidence that these local plans all came out about the same time: They each received assistance from the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.
The Hudson Valley is one of the top four regions in the U.S. when it comes to local climate plans, according to the ICLEI. (The others are the Bay Area, Chicago and Miami/Dade County.) Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis may have removed most references to climate change from state laws, but the Sunshine State is chockablock with climate plans from Pensacola to Key West.
“The difference between the Hudson Valley and the other three hot spots is that, in the Hudson Valley, it’s primarily small towns, villages and rural counties that are climate leaders,” says Kale Roberts, the ICLEI deputy director. “The other hot spots are more urbanized, with well-resourced cities” that employ full-time planners. In the Hudson Valley, it’s more likely a few employees leading volunteers.
Roberts has personal experience with this: While he works with municipalities all over the country, he happens to live in the Hudson Valley.
The most common answer I get when I ask people why the Hudson Valley has been such an outsized contributor to the national environmental movement is that it’s astonishingly beautiful and full of people who deeply appreciate that beauty. From personal experience, the same can be said of Athens, Georgia, inland Maine and the entire state of West Virginia, but there’s not a climate action plan to be found among them.
Roberts thinks New York’s state and local governments play an outsize role. At the state level, the Climate Smart program is unusual, he says. Other states are not encouraging municipalities with expertise and grant money to develop climate action plans. “It’s allowed cities and towns across the state, and particularly in the Hudson Valley, to show a level of national leadership that we only see in a few other pockets across the country,” he says.
New York also has an unusual layered structure of local government. Villages are located within towns and each has its own authority. But this plethora of legislative bodies means that local government is far more accessible than in other states, Roberts says.
“We have a long history of residents being close to the government and having many more opportunities to participate in how their community is run,” he says. “That has created a culture of civic engagement that makes people feel empowered to work on climate issues in a way that others across the country don’t feel.”
Sixty-two years after Silent Spring was published, as we struggle with regulating and mitigating PCBs, PFOS and other “forever chemicals,” Rachel Carson’s book is as relevant as ever. In December 1963, a few months before she died from breast cancer, Carson gave a speech to the National Audubon Society and noted a movement that had begun to swell. “There is more organized effort; there are many more individuals who are conscious of conservation problems and who are striving, in their own communities or on the national scene, to solve these problems,” she said.
Here in the Hudson Valley, long after the Battle for Storm King, locals are still striving and leading the way.
