Dick Ochs is urging you to hear Russell Gray of Extinction
Rebellion who will speak at Johns Hopkins University’s Garland Hall while the
students occupy the building on the Homewood Campus on Monday, April 22 at 6
PM. His talk is about climatastrophe. Then at 8 PM, Extinction Rebellion
will gather by the Washington Monument in Baltimore’s Mt. Vernon
neighborhood. Hold signs, wear animal costumes and sing songs.
Published on Portside (https://portside.org/)
New York City
Passes Historic Climate Legislation
Alexander
C. Kaufman
April
18, 2019
Huffington
Post
The nation’s
largest and most economically influential city passed a historic bill Thursday
capping climate-changing pollution from big buildings and mandating
unprecedented cuts to greenhouse gases.
The City Council
approved the legislation in a 45-to-2 vote Thursday afternoon, all but ensuring
its passage by a mayor eager to burnish his climate bona fides ahead of a
potential run for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020.
“We are on the
precipice of climate disaster, and New York City is acting,” Corey Johnson, the
council speaker, said in a statement. “I hope other cities follow suit.”
The effort
demonstrates one of the clearest examples yet of what a municipal version of
the Green New Deal, the national movement for a multi-trillion dollar
climate-friendly industrial plan, might look like. The legislation is forecast
to spur thousands of blue-collar jobs and make it easier for the city to take
advantage of future state and federal funding for clean energy projects and
climate change-ready infrastructure.
The
measure, introduced by Councilman Costa Constantinides, a Democrat from
Queens, is the centerpiece of a suite of six climate bills packaged together as
the Climate Mobilization Act.
The legislation
sets emissions caps for various types of buildings over 25,000 square feet;
buildings produce nearly 70% of the city’s emissions. It sets steep fines if
landlords miss the targets. Starting in 2024, the bill requires landlords to
retrofit buildings with new windows, heating systems and insulation that would
cut emissions by 40% in 2030, and double the cuts by 2050.
“This legislation
will radically change the energy footprint of the built environment and will
pay off in the long run with energy costs expected to rise and new business
opportunities that will be generated by this forward thinking and radical
policy,” said Timur Dogan, an architect and building scientist at Cornell
University.
Its proponents
bill the legislation as the largest single mandate to cut climate pollution by
any city in the world. The new rules would create demand for more than 3,600
construction jobs per year, by one estimate, and another 4,400 jobs in
maintenance, services and operations, fueled by the sheer magnitude of the
investment required to meet the emissions goals.
“The market
signals sent by this legislation are significant,” Nilda Mesa, a senior
research scientist at Columbia University and a former director of the Mayor’s
Office of Sustainability, wrote in Crain’s New York. “The largest real
estate market in the U.S. will be seeking products and services to cut energy.”
The Climate
Mobilization Act’s other components include a bill that orders the city
to complete a study over the next two years on the feasibility of
closing all 24 oil- and gas-burning power plants in city limits and replacing
them with renewables and batteries. Another that establishes a
renewable energy loan program. Two more that require certain buildings to
cover roofs with plants, solar panels, small wind turbines or a mix of the
three. And a final bill that tweaks the city’s building code to make
it easier to build wind turbines.
The cost to
landlords is high. The mayor’s office estimated to The New York
Times that the total cost of upgrades needed to meet the new requirements
would hit $4 billion.
There are
loopholes for houses of worship and buildings with at least one rent-regulated
apartment in hopes of preventing the law from triggering large-scale
improvements that would allow landlords to jack up rent and evict working-class
tenants. The Real Estate Board of New York, the powerful lobby that
represents large developers and property owners, came out against the
legislation last year, arguing it provided too many carve-outs for smaller
buildings and put an unfair burden on big landlords.
But the lawmakers
forged ahead anyway, vowing to update the legislation if state legislators in
Albany win better protections later this year for the city’s dwindling stock of
roughly 990,000 rent-regulated apartments.
Alexander Kaufman
is reporter at HuffPost, based in New York. He covers climate change,
environmental policy and politics. He has reported from Greenland, China,
Vietnam and Brazil. His climate reporting won a 2018 SEAL Award. He is a member
of the Society of Environmental Journalists, and a frequent guest on public
radio. Before joining HuffPost in 2014, he reported for The Boston Globe, the
International Business Times and The Wrap. Reach him at 917-606-4668 or alexander.kaufman@huffpost.com.
Direct message him on Twitter @AlexCKaufman for his phone number on the
encrypted messaging apps Signal and WhatsApp.
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"The master class
has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles.
The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject
class has had nothing to gain and everything to lose--especially their
lives." Eugene Victor Debs
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