Here’s what we’re reading this week:
1% For Parks, And Why NYC Needs It Now
New York City’s parks and green areas not only bring the community together and give the city its unique character, but also serve as vital assets in environmental conservation. The preservation of these parks is one of NYLCV’s top priorities, and should be for NYC legislators as well. That’s why NYLCV joined New Yorkers for Parks and DC 37 to launch the Play Fair for Parks campaign. For the last few years, Play Fair has been pushing for the revitalization of these natural spaces to provide recreational opportunities for the community, improve environmental resiliency, and make the city more sustainable.
Green Tips: Sustainable Valentine’s Day
Giving flowers has become a hallmark of Valentine’s Day. Consider giving a potted plant instead which will outlive flower bouquets. The plant will also absorb carbon dioxide, and can freshen your space. If you do end up buying flowers, consider ordering from a florist that sells organic varieties and buy from local shops to reduce your bouquet’s carbon footprint. In addition to flowers, Valentine’s Day is one of the most common holidays for purchasing cards. According to the Greeting Card Association and Hallmark, it’s estimated that 145 million Valentine’s Day cards are sent each year.
This week, Julie Tighe co-authored an op/ed with Vincent Albanese, director of policy and public affairs at the New York State Laborers' Organizing Fund:
In 2021 New Yorkers experienced the effects of our changing climate firsthand. Hurricane Ida took the lives of 46 people across four states in the Northeast; our subways, streets, businesses and homes flooded, and we saw that our infrastructure is not equipped to handle intense storms. This was just one of many flash-flooding and extreme-storm events. It's time for our elected officials to prioritize climate resiliency. These storms reminded us how unprepared we are to handle extreme weather. Climate resiliency and all that's involved—from sewer systems to rebuilt bulkheads—must be front and center, and there are ways we can achieve this through legislative efforts at the federal, state and local levels.
New Yorkers have felt the brunt of the flooding caused by extreme storms, but it is lawmakers who will truly feel the effects at the ballot box if they do not make resiliency a priority. It's time to refocus our climate agenda.
The plans are laid out, but the federal government must act to finally fund climate resiliency measures. Now that President Joe Biden has signed the infrastructure bill, Congress is faced with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to pass the Build Back Better Act.
New Yorkers live in a world of choices. On everything from which cereal to pick up at the grocery store to the streaming service we want to mindlessly watch as we eat it, we’ve grown accustomed to a marketplace regulated mainly to protect consumers and otherwise open to the competition that we expect to make our products better and more efficient. Yet for someone in the market for an electric vehicle, the options are suddenly very narrow. You can head to a dealership that might not stock the model you want (or indeed any EVs at all), go to one of only five Tesla dealerships permitted to operate in the state, or buy out-of-state sight unseen, with no ability to touch and drive the car before virtually plunking down your credit card. If you want to simply purchase a car from the company that made it, you’re out of luck.
Julie Tighe joined the Governor and many other elected officials, advocates, and local leaders for the groundbreaking of South Fork Wind, a project developed by Ørsted and Eversource.
Watch the press conference here!
Crews began preliminary work on the roads of Wainscott Friday as a contingent of political and business leaders championed the start of construction of the state’s first offshore wind farm. "Long Island, you are the first, it’s always great to be first, congratulations," said Gov. Kathy Hochul to kick off a ground breaking ceremony in East Hampton Friday morning, saying the work was "just the beginning." The South Fork Wind Farm, which would bring up to 130 megawatts of offshore wind to the East End, powering 70,000 homes, is a small part of the state’s goal of 9,000 megawatts of wind by 2035, or around a third of the state’s energy needs, Hochul said. Compared with South Fork Wind’s average 21 cents a kilowatt-hour cost over 25 years, more recently contracted projects are priced at around 8 cents, which is about the same cost for conventional natural-gas power plants, which must be retired by 2040.
Advocates say that “collaboration” has to be more than just a buzzword, and has to extend to areas DEP has usually not considered like bus lanes and bike lanes if the city is going to hit its own greenhouse gas emission reduction target of 40 percent fewer emissions by 2030 and 80 percent fewer by 2050. Working with DOT leaves a wide purview for Aggarwala to get involved in, environmentalists pointed out. “Moving New Yorkers out of single-occupancy vehicles via improved and efficient public transit and micro-mobility programs are all part of the solution for a greener transportation sector and reducing harmful emissions,” said New York League of Conservation Voters President Julie Tighe. “We need to give people viable options to get out of cars. The bus network needs to be reliable and faster: that means more busways, bus lanes, and bike lanes that are protected and enforced. For vehicles that remain, we need to rapidly move to electric and in the interim shift to low carbon fuels. It is equally important that the city take a comprehensive approach to reimagine street space, by implementing the NYC Streets Plan and [Transportation Alternatives’s] 25×25, so that there is adequate infrastructure in place to meet the growth in sustainable transportation. As with any other major transition, the Administration must lead by reducing the size of the city’s fleet, using clean fuels, and more aggressively transitioning the remainder of the fleet to zero-emission vehicles.”
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