Inwood Legal Action started this petition to NY State Residents and Environmental Organizations

If there is any lesson that can be learned from the COVID-19 pandemic as it relates to the climate crisis, it’s that we choose to ignore science at our own peril. The overwhelming consensus of climate scientists is that the most existential threat facing humanity is our own impact on the environment, which is creating global warming and climate change. So we must, at all levels of government, take responsibility for reversing course and mitigating these effects.

Land use decisions such as upzoning a neighborhood in an already dense city will cause air pollution, asthma, and other health impacts, as well as increase carbon emissions. Currently environmental impact statements only evaluate greenhouse gases and flooding as climate risk of new developments, and only over a 10 or 15 year impact period. But new buildings last far longer than 10 or 15 years, frequently 100 years, and so the study period should enumerate impacts for 100 years, and evaluate many more impacts of climate change.  
  In the coming decades, flood risk will grow considerably as sea levels rise and storm intensity increases.  Many other effects of climate change, for example carbon footprint of the proposed buildings, impact of increased carbon emission of development to create hotter, more humid summers, increased drought risk, increased ocean temps which increase evaporation and extreme precipitation events, are not even evaluated in current Environmental Impact Statements. This bill will correct these issues going forward as the New York Panel on Climate Change updates climate and flooding forecasts.  Environmental review rules will also be updated. That is why Bill S1977 stipulates specific analyses that would produce a thorough evaluation of the environmental impact that climate change would have on a community as a result of land use actions.

Please support this bill by signing this petition.