Anyone who's lived in upstate New York or Vermont knows, and generally loves, Stewart's Shops. The chain of convenience stores, based in Saratoga County, is the Wawa of the North. But, because it derives much of its income from selling gasoline, Stewart's Shops is objecting to legislation passed, in April, by the New York State Senate mandating that only zero-emissions cars be sold by 2035. In an excellent letter to the Albany Times Union, a New Lebanon resident named Elizabeth Poreba chides the chain for embracing "nostalgia as a business plan." (Maybe the executives figure that, if temperatures continue to rise, sales of its renowned ice cream will, too.)
Meanwhile, climate action from the state legislature in Albany seems to have ground to a halt, as the veteran activist Pete Sikora, of New York Communities for Change, points out. "For another year, legislators slinked out of Albany after failing to take climate action," he writes. His remedy: more activism. Victories such as New York's ban on fracking and the divestment of its pension fund from fossil fuels were "not won in dingy backrooms," he writes, adding that it took "handing out leaflets, holding signs as backdrops for press conferences, blocking entrances to government offices to draw attention to the issues, lobbying and calling representatives to carry the day." (On Tuesday, Sikora predicted that, if early election returns hold and Eric Adams is New York City's next mayor, the city's efforts to force buildings to conserve energy may be derailed.)
Scoreboard
A United Nations report found that drought has affected 1.5 billion people so far this century. According to Mami Mizutori, the U.N. Secretary-General's Special Representative for Disaster Risk Reduction, "this number will grow dramatically unless the world gets better at managing this risk and understanding its root causes and taking action to stop them." Meanwhile, the U.N.'s 85-billion-dollar pension fund has set out to decarbonize its portfolio: a 40-percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions from 2019 levels by 2025 is the target, with divestment from fossil-fuel stocks a key tool. I have no idea who the Climate Change Jazz Fighters are -- although I'm guessing from the song title "No More Petrol" that they may be Europeanbut their album "Fridays for Future" is breezy listening on a hot summer afternoon. Bill McKibben
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