Letters

I am a former science teacher, school administrator and 37-year town resident writing to raise awareness concerning a vote that the Town Board will be making in early October.

As part of a Community Choice Aggregation program, the Southampton Town Board will have the opportunity to select which alternative electricity power supply option will be the default for town residents and small businesses. It is the most important vote the Town Board will take to achieve the renewable energy goal that it set for the town in May 2017.

I am encouraging the Town Board to select the renewable energy option as the default, from the competitively bid price proposals you have requested. In Resolution 2017-475, you committed to achieving 100 percent of the communitywide electricity consumption needs through renewable energy sources by 2025; this vote could allow you to achieve your goal two years earlier, which would be very admirable and particularly meaningful, given our climate crisis.

For the past three years, I have been working with Darr Reilly and Sheila Peiffer to create the Carbon CREW Project — Carbon Reduction for Earth Wellbeing. We have brought hundreds of people together in small groups to inspire and empower them to take steps to help reverse global warming and build a regenerative future by reading the book, discussing, and then building personal climate action plans. We focus on science-based solutions.

The decision to move the town toward renewable sources of energy is one of the key ways to reverse global warming by reducing the burning of fossil fuels.

Since pricing is a key issue in your decision, our research indicated that the fossil fuel industry is subsidized by governments worldwide to the tune of $5.3 trillion per year or $10 million per minute. It would not even be a close price point difference if the subsidies to fossil fuels were removed.

The climate crisis is especially critical to address in our coastal town. Every crisis is an opportunity. It can cause people to pull together or split apart. None of the people who have done a CREW do it for political reasons. They participate to learn the scientific-based solutions to help them decide what are the most impactful actions they can take to make an impact on their carbon footprint. I can say with great confidence that they would all support your decision to take the next step and vote to select the 100 percent renewable option as the default, which I understand is the equivalent of taking 22,000 cars off the road/year.

Choosing a renewable electric energy source for Southampton will be a legacy decision positively impacting our community for generations to come.

Josephine DeVincenzi, Ed.D.

Sag Harbor Village