A brick of a bill

Climate change is a huge threat, especially to a coastal city like ours, says Councilman Costa Constantinides. We agree. New Yorkers contribute to the problem by relying on inefficient heat and hot water systems, and by using lots of electricity generated by greenhouse-gas-emitting power plants. Again, we agree — with the important caveat that urbanites, who take public transit, walk and live in close quarters, are actually part of the long-term solution to the crisis.

But that’s where the wisdom of Constantinides’ plan for attacking the emissions produced by New York’s biggest buildings (25,000 square feet and up), embraced by everyone and his brother and sister on the Council, ends.

Rather than meeting buildings where they are and putting them all on a sensible emissions diet that would produce the same ambitious overall result (40% greenhouse gas emission reductions by 2030), Constantinides sets hard targets by building type that kick in five years from now.

Meet the target, and you’re good. Fail to, and the city comes down on you with a ton of bricks in the form of huge annual fines. Apartment buildings could have to pay more than $1,000 per unit. (Good thing nobody in this city is concerned about affordability.)

Nobody gets credit for making progress, or

for slashing emissions below the threshold. Just a binary pass-fail grade.

The instrument is so blunt that all kinds of buildings have howled for exemptions. Constantinides has delivered. His bill sets far looser rules for houses of worship (do their prayers help stave off rising sea levels?); rentregulated buildings; and even the massive, working- and middle-class Penn South collaborative, with 10 towers, each 22 stories high.

When hospitals, some of which are already cash-strapped, pitched a fit about their energy-intensive operations being unfairly targeted, Constantinides and company said they could hit targets through a graduated approach — which is how every single building in the city ought to treated.

The Swiss cheese of carveouts, combined with the pass-or-fail fining mechanism, means the total burden for cutting emissions falls on a shrinking slice of buildings.

Which leads to one more fundamental question: Why should a property owner be punished for a handful of energy-hog tenants who run their air conditioners around the clock, or for renting office space to businesses with high energy needs and bad habits?

New York City must do its part to rise to the challenge of climate change. This is not the way.