In his recent guest viewpoint in The Sun, state Sen. Dan Stec argues that New York’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) is too demanding and too soon, and risks leaving “our residents, quite literally, out in the cold.” (“Recent storms require a rethinking of New York state’s green agenda,” July 21, The Sun and Aug. 2, Adirondack Daily Enterprise.)

Stec argues that “recent storms require rethinking of the state’s green agenda.”

Where does his “can’t do” attitude come from? We are America — We can definitely do this! And we most definitely need to do this. Climate change is putting every development gain at risk — here and now in the North Country and around the world.

Given the similarity of his talking points, Stec’s piece reads like it was written by a Big Oil and Gas-funded think tank.

He states that the climate leadership and community protection act “means electric only power and an end to the use of gas and gas, hook ups and houses and buildings.” He further states that during a winter power outage “residents with gas stoves could still provide some heat to their homes in the winter” and that “at the very least, they would have the option of purchasing a gas stove for their residence, but that under the CLCPA, they were no longer have that ability.”

How exactly are people going to heat their homes with their gas stoves when the power goes out? Doesn’t our Senator know that virtually every modern gas stove (and oil furnace) needs electricity to work? Electronic pilots mean people with gas furnaces and stoves are SOL without electricity, and deadly gas leaks become more likely. Gas stoves are also becoming associated with asthma and other health impacts in children, information long suppressed by the industry.

Stec also totally misses the resilience of households with rooftop or community solar, with storage on-site or nearby. He makes the mistake that fossil fuels burned in centralized power plants are more reliable in severe weather. Homeowners can still use a woodstove, or keep their oil, propane, kerosene, or even gas furnace as backup when they get electric heat pumps.

The senator is missing the big picture here. His whole commentary is about the fact that we are getting hammered by severe weather, thunderstorms, flooding and fires. But he wants to slow down our response. Stec is correct when he says that now is the time to modernize our existing grid and energy sources, and to make them more resilient. However our energy grid is designed to accept power from many sources and we are fast running out of time to stop putting carbon into our atmosphere!

Stec treats 2040 — when the CLCPA carbon targets hit zero — like it’s next year. There are many ways things will change between now and then. Just look at how modern technologies with wind, solar and batteries are advancing and becoming much less expensive than their fossil fuel alternatives. Now give them 15 years.

Stec misses how we can use multiple sources of power: Electric, gas, wood stoves, solar and wind, hydro, storage. That’s what the electric GRID is for, to balance electricity from diverse sources. We can even keep some of the New York grid’s oil-fired power plants around for peak times and emergencies, to get us through this transition. They are dirty but affordable, we already have them, and we can store fuel on-site without leaking pipelines. We should keep existing nuclear plants online as long as they are safe. We have 15 years to build grid scale storage, and to get the cable down Lake Champlain from Hydro Quebec. A diverse and decentralized grid is a resilient grid.

Senator Stec argues that we need a “cost-benefit analysis of the CLCPA to reconcile its true costs.” Indeed, the full costs of not acting on climate include asthma, cardio-vascular disease, heat waves, wildfires, and yes, flooding. If New York doesn’t act, the U.S. won’t. If the U.S. doesn’t act, developing countries like China and India certainly won’t. We hear nothing about the costs of not acting from Stec.

It is sad to see how extreme weather worsened by climate change is being used as a wedge and an excuse to not act on climate. What is Stec’s solution? This piece makes that clear — he wants more of the same. Dan is stuck with old and harmful energy technologies while China puts their money into the future.

We ask Dan to be one of America’s leaders who really lead. He should not be like many other politicians following the dictates and talking points given to them by fossil fuel lobbyists. We have one planet and we owe today’s children something better.

Tom Duca and Timmons Roberts are concerned citizens of the North Country. Roberts is professor at Brown University and director of the Climate Social Science Network and a concerned homeowner in the North Country. Duca is a general contractor and active member of multiple community organizations. Duca and Roberts live in Essex.