TUPPER LAKE — A concentrated Adirondack response to climate change is the topic of wide-ranging conversation at the Wild Center, starting today.

The two-day conference will bring Adirondack science together with policymakers, outlining potential action steps toward adaptation, both economic and environmental.

"The Adirondack Model: Using Climate Change Solutions to Restore a Rural American Economy" is just one of hundreds of other such strategy sessions under way in the United States and worldwide.

Even as New York Department of Environmental Conservation established an Office of Climate Change this year, other regions are starting to take a hard look at what could happen, especially if sea levels rise.

In June, Margaret A. Davidson, director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), testified before Congress on the potential impact of changing climate.

"The U.S. coast comprises merely 17 percent of national land area but supports nearly 50 percent of our population."

That means 50 percent of the population would likely have to move.

"The coastal margins are the first line of defense in tackling escalating challenges linked to climate change. Neither the federal government, nor individual localities have thorough plans, sufficient capabilities or communication frameworks that address these threats," Davidson said.

Projections from the Union of Concerned Scientists suggest major changes ahead for the largely forested Northeastern United States:

  By the end of this century, temperatures could rise by 8- to 12-degrees in the winter and by 6- to 14-degrees in the summer.

  As winter temperatures rise, more precipitation will fall as rain, and less will fall as snow. By the end of the century, the length of the winter snow season could be cut in half.

ADIRONDACK RESPONSE
Fueled in part by economic crisis and a steady move away from dependence on fossil fuel, the Adirondack sessions will look at how to protect ecosystems and finance green industry here.

As the largest carbon sink — a giant 6.2-million-acre swath of greenery, absorbing carbon emissions from much of the northeast — the Adirondack wilderness is seen by scientists as a huge part of the balancing act.

On day one, sessions telescope from global to local, looking at adaptation steps already taken by farmers, school officials and several Adirondack towns.

The goal by day two, conference planners said, is to bring forward recommendations for park-wide action.

The adaptation plan is looking to potentially protect the resource with improved energy-efficient construction, small-scale power generation, green economic development and by assessing the carbon-sequestration values in the Adirondack Park.

TAKING FROM NATIONAL SUMMIT
This conference follows from the American Response to Climate Change summit held here a few months ago, when an international body of about 170 economists, policy analysts and scientists did the same thing, only focused on a global level.

The national conference turned an action plan over to U.S. President-elect Barack Obama last week.

Bill Becker, executive director of the Presidential Climate Action Project, was at the Wild Center summit last summer and wrote the final report.

In an interview at Ohio State University, where the John Glenn School of Public Policy held a climate-change conference for journalists, Becker laid out what is ahead for policymakers.

Stabilizing carbon emissions is a primary goal of the overarching program, keeping emissions to current levels by the year 2015.

Reducing foreign-oil dependence would also reportedly stop the hemorrhage of billions of American dollars. This year alone, oil dependence will cost the economy $560 billion, part of a total $1.7 trillion spent in the past five years, Becker said.

Nearly $1 trillion in American wealth has been transferred to oil-producing nations in that time, he said.

"This is really a transition between an old energy economy and a new one."

While the mechanism for "transformative" change is under design, benchmarks show the global green market will reach $2.7 trillion by the year 2020.

Part of the new economy will be based on protecting green industry with a carbon "cap and trade" system used internationally or on a carbon tax assessed against emissions.

So far, economists are leaning toward a cap and trade model that fits international economic structures.

But Becker said 2009 is the year when denial at national policy level ends.

"We are looking for the new president to close the gap between science and politics and break the log jam on the hill. The old saw that tackling climate change hurts the economy is gone."

E-mail Kim Smith Dedam at: kdedam@pressrepublican.com