The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produces comprehensive climate reports.[1] Formed in 1988, it consists of 195 national governments and is assisted by hundreds of scientists and other experts.[2] These advisors review thousands of climate science research reports contributed by the global scientific community. The IPCC’s research and solutions at the global, national, and local levels enjoy significant respect.  If there is a single entity whose escalating warnings about the climate catastrophes ahead and formulation of solutions that can be trusted, it is the IPCC.

In February of 2022, the IPCC promulgated Climate Resilient Development (CRD) as a principal strategy for managing climate change.[3]  CRD, it states, combines adaptation and mitigation strategies to achieve sustainable development for all. A careful reading of its recent report reveals that local governments, wielding their land use regulatory authority, have been delegated a major role in managing climate change.  The IPCC identified local land use strategies as effective tools for implementing CRD.[4] The effects of climate change are intrinsically local; planning and action at the ground level are required. 

Local governments can adopt, enforce, and incentivize CRD strategies to control and shape land use through regulation, capital spending, and policy.  CRD components can be found in comprehensive land use planning. CRD is implemented by strategies that ensure low carbon building, reduce car dependency through decarbonized transportation, and foster green infrastructure and carbon sequestration. Additionally, cities provide increased job and housing availability through in-fill and adaptive reuse, taking pressure off greenfields for future development. Climate-related disasters can be anticipated and managed by hazard mitigation planning and execution. Strategies that incorporate resilient adaptation to sea level rise and inland flooding can minimize the impacts of climate hazards. To achieve sustainable development for all, local governments can incorporate equity and justice in these strategies. 

Amy Larkin lived in Tarrytown before moving to Cortland Manor. She is an award-winning  entrepreneur, activist, and  producer has been at the forefront of the environmental movement for decades.  Her 2013 book, Environmental Debt: The Hidden Costs of a Changing Global Economy revealed the links between our environmental and financial crises -  both causes and solutions.   From 2014-16, she served as Vice Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Climate Change.

In 2019, Amy co-founded PR3, a public-private partnership forging systemic solutions that dramatically reduce plastic production and consumption.  When globally deployed, the move away from single use packaging can reduce the manufacturing of plastic packaging by 90% and cut associated emissions by 80%. (Packaging uses ~40% of all plastic production).  ­Reuse is a solution commensurate with the gravity of both the plastic and climate crises. 

While Greenpeace Solutions Director, Amy led the collaboration with the Consumer Goods Forum, a consortium of 400 multinationals to eliminate HFCs.  The industry’s commitment directly led to HFCs’ inclusion in the Montreal Protocol in 2016, anticipated to save .5°C degree of global warming. This work won the prestigious 2011 Roy Award from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Amy has spoken around the world on Climate Change and its relationship to Money, Culture, and Spirituality, including at the 92nd St. Y’s 2019 Yom Kippur Kol Nidre service.  She wrote regularly for The Guardian from 2012-2015.  

Topic: Climate Solutions:  It takes a village...and a lot of courage.

From my 2014 Guardian column.

There is no replacement for courage...Right now, we are looking on with a mix of disbelief and ennui as extreme weather engulfs us. In some cases, we are trying to take what appear to be reasonable steps, mostly in order to protect our precarious perch in the world's economy. The trouble is, the time for "reasonable" has passed. We have somehow forgotten that if there is no nature, there is no business. We are in a global environmental emergency, but we are behaving as if incremental improvements to "business as usual" will do. 

This courage must be expressed with and within our local villages and our global village.  

I'll share my current work with PR3 drafting standards to create reusable packaging systems, a significant plastic and climate solution. We are working with multinationals, entrepreneurs, packaging producers, environmental justice activists, scientists, urban planners, and numerous government departments in cities, nations, and the Global Plastic Treaty currently being negotiated.  This diverse village of brave souls and institutions is going to lead the world away from single-use packaging to serve people, planet and profit.  

Cynthia Scharf is a Tarrytown resident. Since 2017, she has served as the Senior Strategy Director at the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative (C2G) and is a recognized international specialist on climate geoengineering policy. 

Scharf previously served as the head of strategic communications and chief speechwriter on climate change for the United Nations Secretary-General from 2009-2016. As a senior member of the Secretary-General’s Climate Change Support Team, she played a key role in organizing the Secretary-General’s two global climate change summits (2014 and 2009) and closely supportedthe Secretary-General during the UNFCCC negotiations, including the landmark Paris climate change agreement in 2015.

Prior to her work on climate change, Scharf worked on global humanitarian and public health emergencies at the UN and with international non-governmental organizations in the Balkans, Africa, the UK, and Russia. She also has private sector experience working in the social impact investing field. Scharf began her career as a journalist in Moscow in the early 1990s covering the collapse of the communist system in the former USSR and Eastern Europe.

Scharf’s articles on politics, the economy, and the environment have been published in The International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal Europe, Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, Moscow Times, Globe and Mail, and elsewhere. She received her MA from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and speaks Russian.

Every day we see more headlines about heat waves, forest fires, and flooding. What is going on and what should we be worried about in Irvington? The fundamental physics of climate change are well understood but some of the details are not. The talk will start off discussing what is happening at the global scale, discuss some of the weather this summer, and then look at the impacts of climate change on Irvington.