Four weeks after Linda James announced her resignation as chairwoman of East Hampton Town’s Energy Sustainability and Resiliency Committee, the advisory committee has a new leader. Lena Tabori was named the new chairwoman following a vote at its Jan. 15 meeting. The committee’s Paul Munoz was named vice chairman.
Ms. Tabori will carry on the work of Ms. James, who is now an associate of Renewable Energy Long Island, “hopefully by mobilizing committee members,” she said on Friday. “There are a lot of very passionate people on that committee,” she said, adding Ms. James, Gordian Raacke, the executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island, and Lauren Steinberg, an environmental analyst with the town’s Natural Resources Department, to a group that she said will form an effective partnership.
Action to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions is urgent, according to climate scientists, in order to limit warming that could prove catastrophic. “I’ve been working on climate change for three years,” Ms. Tabori said. “I’m also a huge advocate for what individuals, municipalities, and states can do. I think everybody, on an individual basis, will get more knowledgeable as they become involved, and will put more emphasis on policy, vote more, share more, pay more attention to what their children are learning in school. This is a movement that is a bottom-up movement as much as anything else — it’s certainly not a top-down movement in the country.”
In 2014, the town board announced the goal to derive 100 percent of its energy needs from renewable sources. Last year, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which sets the state’s goals of 70 percent of electricity derived from renewable sources by 2030 and 100-percent carbon-free electricity by 2040.
“The beauty now is that the town and state are on parallel paths,” Ms. Tabori said. “The complication: Because East Hampton was ahead of so many municipalities, that means there’s no road map.”
But she sees community choice aggregation, a model that replaces the utility as the default supplier of electricity and allows a municipality to choose renewable energy sources, as a priority for the town. “I’m particularly excited about that program,” she said.
"We’re not going to solve it immediately,” Ms. Tabori said of the climate crisis, “but I’m interested in the idea of trying to figure out if we can develop a road map that’s right for this community and if we can follow it.” Offshore wind power, should it come to fruition, “can’t solve all of our problems. I’m a huge advocate of it, of course, and interested that East Hampton has been an advocate, but I don’t think that’s going to solve all of our problems.”
She pointed to recent developments in the corporate world, such as companies announcing plans to become carbon neutral or divest from fossil-fuel interests, and the groundswell of youth protesting inaction on climate, as reasons for optimism. “Ask anyone where they find hope in this situation,” she said, “and a majority would say in the youth. That’s where it’s going to come from.”
The committee is changing its meeting schedule from 4 p.m. on the third Wednesday of every month to the same time on the third Monday. The public has been invited to attend the meetings.
