New York City faces an unprecedented existential threat: climate change. Climbing sea levels, hotter summers and gusty, unforgiving winters put far too many neighborhoods in harm’s way. The irony is, it’s our city’s stunning, awe-inspiring skylines that help make our future grim. Experts estimate that nearly 70% of the city’s greenhouse gases are emitted by its largest buildings.
To combat the threat, the City Council is poised to pass sweeping legislation aimed at buildings 25,000 square feet or larger, which account for about one third of our carbon output. It would require about 50,000 structures to reduce their carbon output a collective 40% within a decade.
It’s no surprise that the most ambitious carbon reduction bill ever passed by a city faces desperate opposition from deep-pocketed, special interest groups that far too often reject any call for change. These groups have spread a great deal of misinformation, most of it designed to exploit economic anxiety, in order to stop this legislation. For example, they have brazenly, and falsely, predicted financial ruin for co-op owners.
What detractors ignore is that the bill before the City Council gives building owners the freedom to determine how to upgrade their buildings for efficiency. It creates a new city office employing experts who will work with owners to devise the best way for them to meet their carbon reduction targets.
Existing state grants will be better utilized, while a companion bill establishes a low-cost financing system to ease the burden. Landlords also have the option to buy green energy, which will save money in the long run. These measures make it possible to take bold action without imposing huge costs on those already struggling to get by.
Without massive carbon reduction by 2030, we’ll start to see regular, catastrophic flooding in the Rockaways, Coney Island and virtually all communities located along our coastlines.
And there’s a big economic upside as well. Early estimates predict this legislation will result in as many as 20,000 construction jobs and thousands of related, permanent positions. Look no further than the Empire State Building, where efficiency upgrades almost a decade ago created 250 permanent jobs. Done properly, retrofitting buildings nationwide could add one million jobs.
Though the Bureau of Labor Statistics warns green sector employment isn’t growing as fast as hoped, this bold move in New York would spark greater demand for cleaner, renewable energy employment. That means we’ll need more solar panel installers, whose median salary is a pathway to the middle class. And it will free us from the market whims and rate hikes we’re currently beholden to when we rely on fossil fuels or natural gas.
At the same time, we will enhance the health of the same New Yorkers who should fill these jobs. For too long, power-plant smokestacks have loomed over low-income communities of color, who breathe in the worst toxins imaginable. All the while, recent studies show affluent communities disproportionately drive up the demand for power.
Green energy growth could justify closing those power plants in favor of something cleaner. We can finally see an end to the awful trend of asthma and other respiratory illnesses that exacerbate the cycle of poverty.
This is a defining moment in New York City history. We have the opportunity to enact bold legislation to fight climate change that keeps costs down, enhances our quality of life and guarantees a healthier future. Or we can succumb to cynical interests that employ scare tactics from the shadows whenever they perceive even the slightest threat to their exorbitant profits.
We choose the bolder way — the path to a safer, greener, and better New York City.
Constantinides is chair of the City Council’s Environmental Committee. Garrido is executive director of District Council 37, the city’s largest public employee union.
