While international political leaders, environmentalists and scientists debate what to do about global climate change, Cornell professors have joined with a team of Northeast regional experts to tackle global warming on a local level, creating blueprints for communities like Tompkins County to identify and reduce their "carbon footprint."

A recent study by a team of Cornell professors estimates that Tompkins County could reduce its contribution to global warming by two-thirds by better managing existing technologies and investing in proven renewable energy sources.

Among the recommended strategies for the county: better manage forests, including harvesting wood and other "green" biomass to supplement existing coal, oil and gas supplies; synchronizing traffic signals; creating incentives for carpooling; turning home thermostats down to 65 degrees (which would save the average resident an estimated $1,400), running city vehicles on gas-ethanol mixtures; and using wind power to generate some of the county's electricity.

Of greatest concern is carbon dioxide, because it is increasing most rapidly in the global atmosphere, and its emissions are intimately tied to our energy economy, according to researchers.

Timothy Fahey, Cornell professor of natural resources, says local community planners need to get a better handle on their county's "carbon budget" -- how much does the county emit into the atmosphere and how much does it sequester?

"Once officials understand their carbon budget and can readily see the potential for mitigation, then there is a hope of affecting public policy and attitudes, otherwise it seems overwhelming and too big a problem to tackle," says Fahey.

Along with Cornell's Timothy Vadas, biological and environmental engineering; Ruth Sherman, natural resources; and David Kay, applied economics and management, Fahey found that Tompkins County is emitting 361,558 tons of carbon per year. The lion's shares come from transportation -- people drive long distances to work, shop and play -- Cornell's energy use, and residential and commercial heating.

Fahey and his colleagues report that while the area's vast tracts of forest and abandoned farmland serve as a significant "carbon sink," sequestering more than 133,000 tons of carbon per year, the county's net carbon emission is 228,178 tons.

The research team offers 30 strategies to reduce Tompkins County's carbon footprint, many of them simple and inexpensive.

"It isn't going to break the bank for this county, and by extension this country, to do its part to mitigate climate change," says Fahey. "But people have to want to do it for future generations, because it isn't our generation that will be directly affected by globally rising temperatures. For us, it is an 'absent' problem."

Fahey stresses the need to give public-policy officials workable tools for land-use management and other community-mitigation practices. Now taking a regional approach, Fahey and other experts have formed the Carbon Science Links Project to develop an online database, where town, county and regional planners could input their specific demographics, such as population, housing, commerce and transportation networks, and come up with an analysis and mitigation strategy, including potential costs. The project includes developing mitigation plans for diverse counties in the Northeast, including urban and suburban landscapes.

"If local planners have tools at their fingertips they might start to think about climate change as a 'present' problem they can do something about," says Fahey.

The project has been supported by McIntire-Stennis federal formula funds, the Cornell Biogeochemistry and Biocomplexity Initiative, and private foundations, including the Merck Foundation.

Lauren Chambliss is a communications specialist with the Cornell Agricultural Experiment Station in Ithaca.