State-funded school meals are the responsible choice The time has come to protect our Earth

While most understand the value of investing in education, there’s more to learning than going to class and doing homework.

We must give all children an equal chance of receiving a proper education, and one way to do so is by ensuring that all students are adequately nourished, navigating the school day on a full stomach.

Last Friday, New York state elected officials joined school administrators and advocates in Huntington to call upon Gov. Kathy Hocul (D) to include fully funded school meals for all students in the 2024 state budget. The call comes after federal waivers that enabled schools to provide free breakfast and lunch to all students during the COVID-19 pandemic ended before the start of the 2022-23 academic year.

The universal free school meals initiative may make some pause at first. While New Yorkers understand that there are countless people among us — many right here in our own towns — suffering from food insecurity, they are aware that some of our residents can easily afford to feed their children breakfast and lunch.

However, advocates for the Healthy School Meals for All program contend that many families are eligible for the supplement but do not apply because they are embarrassed to ask for help. Some make slightly more than the income requirements to receive nutrition assistance but could desperately use the help.

In an era when most families need both parents to work to make ends meet, and as salaries and wages increases have lagged behind inflation, ensuring free meals for all children can keep our students healthy while easing household budgets. In addition to helping households, the program would eliminate unpaid meal debt for school districts, which increased after the federal waivers expired.

According to the speakers at the March 24 press conference at Jefferson Primary School in Huntington, including the program in the state budget could help nearly a quarter million students on Long Island alone. The initiative is one that state legislators have gotten behind with $280 million in funding included in their budget proposals.

Now it’s time for Hochul to support it.

With states such as California, Colorado, Nevada, Maine, Vermont, Massachusetts and Connecticut already implementing the Healthy School Meals for All program, it’s time for New York to embrace this initiative.

Research indicates that well-nourished students perform better on tests, are more present in school and retain information better. Advocates hope the program provides all children the opportunity to be fully prepared to take on a day of learning, something every student deserves.

We remind our readers that New York taxpayers are currently subsidizing a football stadium in Buffalo to the tune of $600 million — a deal brokered by the Hochul administration. Meanwhile, many of our school children here on Long Island are inadequately nourished.

The proposed school nutrition program is less than half the cost of the football stadium yet would go much further in advancing the interests of ordinary citizens. To our governor and state officials in Albany: The Buffalo Bills should never trump the health of our children.

Doing what’s right for our kids, and paving the way for a brighter future for all, starts with a solid breakfast and lunch. Our state officials are fighting for this. It is time for our governor to do the same.

Global climate change affects our Island and the world: stronger hurricanes, hotter summers, stronger rainstorms, winters with essentially no snow and a warming ocean causing the Long Island lobsters to move north to Maine and beyond.

Every sixth grader knows that the cause of this global warming is the release of heattrapping carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and methane (natural gas). The carbon dioxide level in the atmosphere has increased by 50% since the Industrial Revolution started in the 1800s according to NASA and increased by 13% since 2000.

wind farms. Those are starting to be built along the East Coast, from Massachusetts, off Long Island and New Jersey’s waters and further south. This transition eliminates much air pollution from our existing power plants.

be fossil-fuel free beginning by the end of 2025, and taller and commercial new construction by the end of 2028.

By Peter Gollon

Use of fossil fuel must be replaced by energy sources that release no climate changing gases. António Guterres, the cautious secretary-general of the United Nations, just called out, “Our world needs climate action on all fronts — everything, everywhere, all at once.”

Fortunately, climate-friendly sources of energy from the sun and wind are widely available and less expensive than traditional fossil fuels and will never run out. Of course, switching to them will involve change. As Americans, we embrace change when it improves our lives, which these changes will.

New York State’s transition to renewable energy through 2050 is mandated by the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. Details were drawn up in a scoping plan after two years of careful analysis.

A total of 19 of the 22 NYS Climate Action Council representatives voted for it, including Mario Cilento, the labor representative of NYS AFL-CIO. Only the three members representing the gas industry voted against it.

New York and a few other states are leading the way in the U.S. in this transition, setting examples for other states to follow. Many other countries are following our nation’s lead, even though we lag behind many European countries.

We are already switching electric generation away from fossil fuels — mostly gas at this point — and to nonpolluting solar generation and offshore

We’ll heat and cool our buildings with efficient heat pumps. In the summer they will run like superefficient air conditioners. In the winter they will run backward, taking heat from the outdoors and moving it indoors, just as your refrigerator moves heat from its inside to your warmer kitchen. Cold weather heat pumps work quite nicely in Minnesota winters, and they will work just as nicely here.

The obvious place to start this transition is with buildings that haven’t yet been built. Installing heat pumps during construction is less expensive than installing separate boilers and air conditioners. Heating heat pumps powered by renewably generated electricity are less expensive than with oil or gas, whose prices fluctuate according to worldwide supply and demand.

Cooking will be done on the modern induction stoves that professional chefs love because they cook faster and with better heat control than gas stoves. A benefit of not having a gas stove is not having to breathe the indoor nitrogen oxide air pollution it produces — air pollution that the American Lung Association said causes and worsens asthma.

State Sen. Mario Mattera (R-St. James) [in “Perspective: Mandate would dramatically impact New Yorkers,” March 16] bemoans requiring new homes and buildings up to three stories high to

Who could object to building all 1,500 new homes on Long Island yearly fully electric, starting in 2025? Obviously, the gas industry objects. The construction industry and trade unions object, probably because they would have to build slightly differently than they are used to.

The groups that prioritize their vested interests above your health and that of our only planet have spread misleading horror stories about these laws to gradually phase out fossil fuels use in New York state.

Mattera said that he has “spoken to experts in the fields that will be involved and impacted” about the “disastrous” and “dangerous” consequences of these acts on Long Island businesses and homeowners. Do these “experts” know about climate change and the need for immediate and urgent action? Are they members or staff of the state’s Climate Action Council? Or are they affiliated with the construction industry corporations, trade unions and fossil fuel interests that provided 67% of his campaign contributions, according to the NYOpenGovernment website, since his election in 2020?

He speaks of a “potential disaster on the horizon.” It will come from not switching rapidly from climate-changing fossil fuels to a fully renewable energy economy. We have already seen just the beginnings of the coming climate disaster here and elsewhere. And we don’t like what we have seen.

Yes, “the time is now to work together” to protect our Earth for the future of our children and grandchildren by embracing a fully electric, fossil-fuel free economy.

Peter Gollon, of Huntington Station, is a retired physicist, former business owner, active on environmental and clean energy issues, and a former Long Island Power Authority trustee.

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Opinion

My predictions for the action in the stands as baseball begins

No, I’m not going to predict anything about the on field action this year as the “boys of summer” take the field this week for the start of the 2023 baseball season.

hey’ll win some, they’ll lose some, and it’ll rain, and they’ll have to play some other day.stadiums and be too awestruck to speak. He may have been to other games, but returning to his favorite stadium and looking at the shimmering green grass, the bright foul lines, and the oversized baseball bag will take his breath away, even if only for a moment and even if no one notices the goose flesh on his arms despite the warm temperature.

will reach into history. Who was the best left fielder? Should Pete Rose be in the Hall of Fame?

Fans will celebrate birthdays, waiting for that fleeting moment when their name appears on the screen with best wishes from Joe, Mo, Mary and the rest of the crew.

making it tough for them to focus on the game. Some of those people will have to leave the game and go back to the office, while others will talk through a document or deal amid a series of ongoing crises.

Instead, I’m going to make some predictions about the action in the stands. After all, the number of people and stories from the stands far exceeds the paltry size of the teams, umpires, grounds crew and everyone else involved with “The Show.” So, without further delay, here are a few predictions for the upcoming season. Someone will walk into one of the local

Someone will share some of their favorite lines from baseball movies, suggesting that the team is a “bunch of lollygaggers,” or that, in as deep a James Earl Jones voice as they can muster, “the one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.”

D. None of the above

During long day games, fans, clad in T-shirts, jerseys or tank tops, will forget sunscreen and will develop a sunburn. For some, that sunburn will be a reminder of the game. For others, it might provide sore or red skin.

Debates that border on arguments will occur in every part of the stadium. Some disagreements will arise over whether the umpire made the right call, while others