State Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, joined 14 of his Republican colleagues last week in calling for Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul to either lift the state’s electric school bus mandate or to fully fund the conversion process.

Stec and his colleagues are correct in many of their criticisms of the mandate: Electric buses are expensive, the timeline for school districts transition is relatively short and there are many logistical challenges.

In an ideal world, the state would not impose broad, sweeping mandates that put small, poorer districts on the same timeline as bigger, more affluent districts.

But we are not in an ideal world. Climate change is very real, and it’s happening right now.

The average global temperature has increased by about 1.8 degrees between 1901 and 2016, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. The effects of this are broad, and we’re already seeing some of them in our everyday lives. The mean number of local storms that drop more than 2 inches of precipitation within 48 hours has doubled from the early and mid-1900s to the early 1970s, according to a paper co-authored by Paul Smith’s College biology professor Curt Stager and local science writer Mary Thill in 2010 for The Nature Conservancy, which cites data collected from a weather station in Lake Placid.

More severe weather translates to more damage to property and a larger impact on quality of life. As the climate gets warmer, the atmosphere has more moisture in it because water evaporates from the oceans and the land faster, Stager told the Enterprise in July. When it rains, more rain drops out of the air because it is carrying more humidity. With more heat in the atmosphere, Stager said heat makes the air above us circulate more vigorously — that’s what makes rain happen. A more energized atmosphere carrying more water means more rainstorms, and more evaporation means heavier rainfall.

In the past few months alone, we saw frequent air quality impacts as Canadian wildfires burned throughout the summer. We saw severe flooding tear through the Long Lake area and destroy roads, bridges and homes, while also disrupting the economy at a crucial point in the summer tourism season. We saw the towns of Keene and Jay contend with severe flooding this week and saw minor flooding in Tupper Lake and other towns around this region. The damage to roads and homes is still being repaired.

Stager said the rising global temperature is caused by burning fossil fuels. Burning these releases more carbon dioxide into the air. CO2 is a “heat-trapping” greenhouse gas, which raises the global temperature.

Diesel-fueled vehicles — such as the 45,000 diesel school buses that transport children to school every day in this state — are major sources of harmful pollutants, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Though the EPA has imposed standards in an effort to curb the sulfur content of diesel fuels, the U.S. transportation sector accounted for roughly 28% of this country’s 6,340 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2021, according to the EPA.

Diesel school buses typically cost approximately $100,000 to $200,000 each, while electric school buses of comparable size typically cost $300,000 to $400,000. Chargers, which are necessary to keep the buses running, are another added expense. A top-of-the-line charger can cost around $40,000. Stec and his colleagues point out that full conversion of the state’s school buses by 2035 will cost about $20 billion.

This investment in our future will never get easier. Coming out of the huge economic disruption that was the coronavirus pandemic, and with the recent period of inflation, people across New York state are struggling to survive.

Ideally, the state would fully fund the transition to electric buses, and rural regions such as ours would have a different timeline to meet these climate goals than the rest of the state. But again, we don’t live in an ideal world.

If there is a way to lessen the burden of electrification on rural school districts, Hochul should heed the senators’ request to revisit the financing structure of this mandate.

Either way, climate change is happening now, and we simply can’t wait any longer to make these changes. No matter how it’s funded, school bus electrification would be better for the environment, and that’s a win for everyone.