Earth to mayoral candidates
Earth Day isn’t just a day for celebrating the planet, but a moment to reflect on what’s necessary to preserve and protect our home. So we took a look at what the leading mayoral candidates are promising to do to protect and preserve the air and land and trees and harbors and parks that make this beautiful city what it is.
In a world where the climate is changing, New York’s next mayor will have to transition the city away from fossil fuels and toward renewables without imposing unbearably expensive burdens on businesses and residents. The next mayor must fund and finish urgent resiliency projects the de Blasio administration left unfinished — like plans to guard lower Manhattan against sea-level rise and the Staten Island Seawall. Nearly nine years after the storm, both are unfinished, leaving our sea-surrounded metropolis endangered.
The eight leading Democrats all promise new offshore wind power near the city’s coastline and support more bicycles and electric car infrastructure. Many would electrify and green the city’s buses and vehicles and pledge to convert underutilized highway-adjacent spaces into parks. So far, so good.
But when it comes to climate, some promise New Yorkers the moon, while swearing it won’t cost a penny to get it. Five candidates — Scott Stringer, Andrew Yang, Maya Wiley, Shaun Donovan and Dianne Morales —have signed a Green New Deal for New York City pledge that commits them to 20 far-reaching climate goals. While some are laudable, others either laughably implausible or worryingly expensive.
Among the latter: pledges to enact a municipal takeover of Con Edison’s utility system, which would be wildly complicated and legally dubious; quickly ending the use of natural gas in residential buildings, which is costly and unrealistic without enough clean energy yet available to use in gas’s stead; and promising to fully fund and enforce Local Law 97, a loophole-ridden, overly onerous 2019 city law that forces large buildings to cut carbon emissions 40% by 2030 or begin paying hefty fines by 2024.
Green ambitions, meet green eyeshades.