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- [00:04]
A
Hi, I'm Jarrett Murphy from City Limits
- [00:06]
B
and this is Ben Max from Gotham Gazette. This week we're looking at the issues of climate change and resiliency and how the city's candidates in the 2021 elections, especially those running for mayor, are addressing these issues. Three serious candidates for mayor have already released detailed plans related to climate and resiliency, and we're expecting more and more candidates for other offices are also, of course, talking about the issue. And it seems like how New York City approaches climate change and resiliency is going to be a major focus of the 2021 campaign in a way it hasn't really been before. Right?
- [00:42]
A
I mean, so many of the issues, Ben, that we talk about in this race and others are ones you could have predicted since, like the 1920s. We're going to talk about crime, we're going to talk about jobs, about schools, about traffic. This is an issue that 20 years ago we wouldn't have discussed. Obviously, Mayor Bloomberg, pushed by some advocates and pushed by facts on the ground, began to make it a part of the city's sort of active policy discussion with Plan YC, which came out in early 2007. Of course, Superstorm Sandy made it very clear just how real the risk is and how real our vulnerabilities are. Mayor de Blasio came into office with really very little record as an environmentalist. I think people were generally impressed or pleasantly surprised by what got done during his term, both at his leadership and those of the council as well. Some strong environmental leaders there, certainly. But in terms of efforts to make the city greener, to cut down on emissions, to set some pretty ambitious goals. The latest one being reduction of emissions by 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050, with some early benchmarks for that, especially for city buildings occurring as early as 2024. So that is what's already on the table. That's what the next mayor will have to implement. But obviously, I think there is a lot of pressure to do more.
- [02:06]
B
Well, it's interesting you mentioned that, because when Superstar and Sandy hit in 2012, it sort of set the stage in part for that mayoral race that happened in 2012 and really into 2013. And yet this issue still was not sort of in the top tier of issues. And, and we'll see. Because of how often people think about climate change, think about resiliency, they don't often think about it as sort of part of day to day life, even though there's many that do. And many activists on the subject and advocates try to point out that this is an everyday issue now and it's a year round issue and it's not just about the next big storm, but it wasn't so much a part of the 2013 conversation. And now that we get into 2021, it seems like it will be more so. But let's talk about what we're really talking about here. When we talk about candidates for office and government addressing climate change and resiliency. There's a lot of different elements to that that I think, you know, often people who aren't paying close attention all the time, it just sort of, you know, the world is getting warmer and there's bigger storms and it's a big problem, you know, but there's a lot of different buckets to pull apart when we talk about how candidates and how government address these issues.
- [03:19]
A
Well, totally. I think one of them you just, you've sort of alluded to is that, you know, it's, it's about obviously how the city handles its own role as a greenhouse gas producer. You know, New York City, you know, for the density we have here, we obviously are more efficient than many places. But buildings still contribute mightily to emissions, obviously our transportation sector, to some degree, to a lesser extent industrial. But what's the city done and what's it's doing to reduce its emissions, to reduce its green greenhouse gas, its climate footprint, its carbon footprint, and how does it achieve those measures?
- [03:53]
B
Right, and that's both in terms of how the city's contributing to the larger global warming and climate change. But also that has a lot to do with the air quality in the city and in certain neighborhoods all the time. And that's where we've seen things that are climate related measures like how the trash is picked up, you know, the recent reforms in the city around commercial waste disposal and trying to limit the number of truck miles on the streets. You know, those things are all part of this conversation, you know, in terms of what the air quality is in the city and how, you know, what the vehicles are that the city uses and other regulations that the city controls.
- [04:36]
A
Right. And so that's the emission side. And then the other side of climate change is frankly, as Sandy and other events since then around the country and here have illustrated, climate change is already here. The effects are being felt. They will intensify over coming years, regardless of what the world does to reduce emissions. Just a question of how bad they'll get. But they are here. And so how is the city shoring up resiliency? So you have that emissions versus resiliency, building up the coast, figuring out how to harden properties, how to remove perhaps people from some properties. That's a kind of big lens to keep in mind as people look at what candidates are saying on climate change. Another factor in that is you're obviously talking about the city as an actor. You know, the city has plenty of buildings, lots of vehicles. What is it doing to reduce its footprint? And then you have what's going on in private property? And that goes to the resiliency question, too. One of the issues to this point has been you have a lot of private properties along the waterfront, small properties in some cases. How do you get them to be more resilient, to be elevated, to be hardened against the elements, and do you
- [05:42]
B
encourage them to move? You know, I mean, that part of that conversation about retreat from the coastline was a tricky one after Sandy, and it continues to be a tricky one. I just wanted to make a couple points. One is that when we are talking about emissions, you hit on the two biggest issues in New York City, which is buildings and transit. And so those are the two big buckets of emissions to keep in mind, as you got it. There's also some manufacturing, industrial. That's important to note on the resiliency front. We're not going to get into all the details here. We're trying to keep these video briefings fairly brief. But there's a huge list of resiliency projects that the city has announced over the last, let's say, decade, including under Bloomberg, including under de Blasio, that have moved extremely slowly. And these are projects, again, as you said, to deal with the current and upcoming impacts of climate change, even while the city is trying to take measures to reduce emissions. Go green, go renewable. And those projects really need a mayor and a city council and other elected officials to really focus on them and push them ahead. And that's got to be one of the biggest conversation points in this election. The other thing I wanted to mention is, you know, there's a lot of talk about what is a Green New Deal. You know, there's the Federal Green New Deal. Some at the state level have talked about, you know, what's a New York Green New Deal. And then there's like, New York City Green New Deal. And a lot of what we're talking about is reducing emissions, but also this sort of transition into a renewable electricity sector, renewable energy, and the jobs that come along with that. Right.
- [07:20]
A
I mean, that's one of the fascinating things with the issue, is that it's so linked to other issues in the city. I mean, jobs, racial equity, what we do with our waste, how we handle our streetscape and, like, open space. And that's why it ties in, I think, interestingly, to the conversation going on in the City Council about comprehensive planning. It'd be hard to have comprehensive planning without a strong climate lens. And also public housing, which has obviously been a big topic of itself for recent years and for a long time, a lot of public housing is uniquely vulnerable to the effects of climate change because of where it is geographically and because of the conditions of those buildings physically. So it really is kind of a meta issue, an uber issue that brings a lot of different topics together and it brings a lot of players together. I mean, our focus, as always, is on the mayor's race, but as you mentioned at the top, a lot of candidates are talking about climate change. Candidates for comptroller and City Council as well. But this clearly is an issue that also involves the state and the governor. And they have combined in 2019 to create a much higher standard, a much higher goal for New York State to reduce emissions. And they also have something to say about resiliency. The state buyout program after Hurricane Sandy was much more extensive than anything the city has done and is something that might be a model for what's going forward. And obviously, and we say this, recording it on the eve of the Biden administration, the federal role is huge, both in terms of will there be a national commitment to reducing emissions so that New York City doesn't have to worry about any kind of competitive issues with other areas if it has stricter rules? And on the resiliency front, particularly for New York City, the Army Corps of Engineers, its study of the New York harbor, and ways to potentially mitigate storm surge. A controversial study, but an important one, one that was shut down last year by the Trump administration. People are hoping it's resumed this year, but that is a very big piece of the puzzle in terms of resiliency in the city.
- [09:16]
B
Yeah, I think you frame that really well. And as you mentioned, you know, the discussion around climate change and resiliency is happening in other races. The City Council will play a big role. So individual City Council races are important here. As we've seen in the last several years, the City Council has at times really driven the discussion on legislation around shifting the city's emissions. And this and this big new law that passed with the mayor's support, around trying to green the city's buildings and insist on new regulations around new buildings and even Retrofitting many, many, many of the city's largest buildings. So a lot there. But also the race for comptroller. You know, the current comptroller, Scott Stringer, who's running for mayor, work with the current mayor and others to try to divest city pension. That's still in process. It's unclear exactly where that's going to land in terms of the end result. But divesting city pension fund dollars from the major fossil fuel companies, that's an issue. To watch how the comptroller candidates in this election talk about that plan and the path forward on that that they'll inherit is important. And then I also wanted to give people just a few more planks of sort of the specifics that people are talking about. You know, there's. There's this question around whether the city will be home to fossil fuel infrastructure, pipelines, et cetera. There's the question of creating a public utility. There are issues around, as you mentioned, NYCHA, what to do about kind of greening NYCHA's infrastructure, greening NYCHA's energy, putting green roofs on all NYCHA buildings. Again, something the city has a lot more control over than the private sector. There's so many different pieces and planks that it's important to hear from candidates about the specifics of what they want to do. Not to mention things like what's going to happen with the transit network in the city. Congestion pricing might be coming. Are there ways to get city residents out of their cars more, build out more public transit, get buses moving better, while also electrifying those buses? A lot of nitty gritty here.
- [11:23]
A
Yeah. And I think to that point, talking just not about goals, but also the means to getting there. And that's where I think you'll see a lot of separation in the candidates. For instance, I mean, we're not going to talk too much in detail because it's early in the race and these plans are very complicated, touch on a lot of different spheres of life. But just the question of how the city gets to its goals of reducing the carbon footprint, how do you finance that? How do you urge people to do that? Do you have a punitive system of fines? Do you do carbon trading that's a bit more incentive driven? Do you create new forms of financing that make it easier for city as a whole or individual property owners of businesses to do that? That'd be something to look for, too. And so, Ben, as you look at the race and the candidates, as these plans begin to come out, what are some questions that you have that you think people should answer as they discuss their approach to climate in the next term?
- [12:13]
B
Well, I think one of the big ones is going back to what I just kind of got at a little bit, is what are the sort of potentially big fundamental changes in life in the city that need to happen to make the city's contributions to fighting climate change more serious? And a lot of that will boil down to some of the building regulations, the energy regulations, and things related to transit. What will the next mayor do about trying to reduce cars and trucks on the city roads, improve air quality, and potentially try to get people more out of cars and build out a public transit network? You know, what are those sort of big changes to city life that the next mayor envisions?
- [12:57]
A
I think along with that, one of the big ones, speaking of getting people out of places, and we referenced this earlier, is the question of really vulnerable neighborhoods in the city and whether the city is going to encourage or facilitate or even force people to leave those areas. These are places that are not just going to see storm surge when there is a century, once in a century storm, but every day, high tide, flooding, increasingly, life will be very difficult there. Will the city do that? It's a topic that not every candidate broaches. It's a topic that many don't touch even when you try to get them to. But that, I think is a fundamental question about what life in the city is going to look like.
- [13:37]
B
And one more I'll add is just this question. You know, as the city is facing such high unemployment, you know, the question of how quickly can a green jobs sort of program and a real green jobs vision be outlined and be implemented? And how does that relate to the ability to bring the green energy online quickly enough to replace the outdated energy and reliance on fossil fuel burning and such that folks want to get away from?
- [14:06]
A
Obviously, it's a complex issue, really a complex web of issues. And as you know, there's a huge field of candidates, one by one, starting to talk more in detail about it, something to look at in close detail. And so that's why we hope you will listen to WBAI's Max and Murphy show every Wednesday at 5pm and also check out citylimits.org and gothamgazette.com for details on this, the candidates, other issues, the whole race, it's your home for a detailed look at the issues New York City faces and how the 2021 candidates are talking about it.