Please write or call your New York State Legislators today and ask them to veto the Rapid Act Part O of the Executive Budget.

The Rapid Act would give the Office of Renewable Energy Siting (ORES) the power of eminent domain to take private and municipal land for transmission lines — 1,000 miles — that ORES believes are necessary for renewable energy projects. It further erodes and violates Home Rule. It also expedites environmental review.

Talk about real environmental injustice! Already 90% emissions-free, yet Upstate New York rural communities are unfairly targeted and sacrificed to provide electricity for demand centers downstate. Instead of squandering trillions of dollars on low-capacity, intermittent, land-grabbing wind/solar projects, our nation should invest in research and development for emissions — free, reliable, next- generation nuclear and geothermal energy; they would not require the massive buildout of wind/solar/batteries and transmission lines.

Meanwhile, continue the use of natural gas-the chief reason for the USA’s lowered CO2 emissions. Transmission infrastructure releases significant amounts of SF6 — a Greenhouse Gas 23,500 times more potent than CO2. Seventy-five percent of all SF6 emissions in the U.S. is attributed to the electrical transmission sector. Solar panel production also releases large amounts of this gas with the highest warming potential. New York state’s contribution to global Greenhouse Gas is a mere 0.4%. Meanwhile China is building two new coal plants per week! New York state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act and massive new transmission won’t change the climate.

Wind, solar and biomass are about 7% of our energy mix, hydro 23% but the CLCPA requires 70% renewable electricity by 2030 — in just six years and zero emissions by 2040.

NYISO, the grid operators, warn we urgently need new, emissions-free baseload sources of energy that do not even yet exist at scale, to back up weather-dependent, wind and solar projects.

Per NYISO: “Dispatchable resources that are emissions-free (DEFRs), and on the scale needed, are not yet commercially available or currently in the NYISO interconnection queue.” “The policy for an emissions-free electricity supply will require the development of new technology.”

We have time to make a coarse adjustment and rethink our energy strategy. The real crisis is the media-driven climate hysteria causing knee-jerk reactions and damaging energy policy.

Joni Riggle is a Sinclairville resident.