December, 03 2018, 11:00pm EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Pete Sikora, New York Communities for Change, (917) 648-7786 pete.sikora@gmail.com, Brett Thomason, ALIGN-NY, (617) 938-9989 brett@alignny.org
NYers, Elected Officials Rally for #GreenNewDeal4NYC Before Council Hearing on Landmark Legislation to Slash NYC Climate Pollution
More Than 150 New Yorkers Join and Testify at the Council’s Hearing for Energy Efficiency Legislation, de Blasio Administration Also Supports
WASHINGTON
Over 150 concerned New Yorkers, unions and Councilmembers rallied in front of a large sign spelling out #GreenNewDeal4NYC before a City Hall hearing on historic, globally-unprecedented city council legislation. The proposed legislation would fight climate change and create good jobs by requiring all large buildings in the city, the top source of the city's climate pollution, to slash their pollution by over 80% by upgrading to high energy efficiency standards.
The proposal would be the first comprehensive standards anywhere in the world to slash climate pollution from existing buildings, which are the top source of climate pollution in many cities, worldwide. In NYC, building emissions are responsible for about 70% of all city emissions. The prime sponsors of the legislation are Council Environmental Committee Chair Costa Constantinides and Council Speaker Corey Johnson, both who joined and spoke at the rally. At the hearing, the de Blasio Administration also testified in strong support of the bill.
"If we are going to save New York City, we have to start with the dirtiest buildings," said Council Member Costa Constantinides, Chair of the Committee on Environmental Protection. "Passing this bill doesn't just mandate a 40% carbon emission reduction by 2030. It protects families from losing their home, makes our air cleaner, and holds bad emitters like Trump Tower accountable. I am grateful for the support this legislation has already seen, because so many recognize the time to act is now."
"Now is the time to fight climate change. Just days ago, President Trump discredited his own administration's report warning that human activity is contributing to the planet getting warmer. He said, 'I don't believe it.' Well, I do. Clearly, it is up to cities to lead the way to protect our environment. Buildings are responsible for two-thirds of the city's greenhouse gas emissions. Mandating energy efficiency for large buildings is a critical next step to combating climate change and I am proud this Council is taking action. I thank Council Member Constantinides for his leadership on this issue," said Council Speaker Corey Johnson.
Immediately after the rally, the Council's Environmental Protection Committee held an overflowing hearing on the bill (Intro 1253). A wide range of climate, environmental justice, community groups, labor unions, institutions and activists testified in support of the bill, backed by a large crowd wearing stickers labelled "#GreenNewDeal4NYC."
Intro 1253 would achieve the pollution reductions that the world's scientists, convened by the UN, have determined is needed to stave off the worst of the climate crisis. In particular, the bill cuts climate pollution from covered buildings by over 40% by 2030 and over 80% by 2050 (in combination with a greening electric grid). The bill requires the city's least-efficient, most-polluting large buildings to begin cutting their pollution in 2022.
"Unless the world radically slashes climate pollution, New York City will cook while slowly slipping under water, and we will be hit by far more extreme weather such as hurricanes, heat waves, intense rain and flooding. But there's also opportunity in solving this crisis," said Rachel Rivera, a Sandy survivor and board member of New York Communities for Change (NYCC). "It's time for a Green New Deal for New York of good, union jobs to clean up this city's dirty, polluting buildings. Councilmember Constantinides and Speaker Johnson's bold, transformative legislation gets it done and is a model for the world. It's time for the Council to pass it and the Mayor to sign it."
Intro 1253 legislation creates good, union jobs that hire from communities of color. These jobs would be career-track, sustainable jobs that would last for decades as about 50,000 large buildings throughout the city transformed to high energy efficiency over time. Buildings would need to end energy waste in order to meet high energy efficiency standards. Overall, the bill would create thousands of jobs in design, renovation and construction for upgrading building energy efficiency.
QUOTE SHEET:
"After years of hard work the Council has a bill which balances the concerns of reducing emissions locally, fighting climate change, and protecting housing affordability. In the wake of storms and extreme weather as well as increasingly dire predictions about the impact of climate change on our communities right now is the time to act," said Stephan Edel, Project Director at New York Working Families.
"In another year of devastating storms, fires, flooding and droughts as well as an IPCC report warning of the dire, and looming impacts of global climate change, we cannot afford any further inaction. By dramatically cutting pollution from the City's largest source, intro 1253 will create jobs, save lives, clean the air and protect low-income tenants. These are the bottom-line principles around which our Climate Works for All coalition has been organizing for several years. We applaud Council Member Constantinines and Speaker Johnson for pushing this first-of-its-kind legislation" said Brett Thomason, Climate Organizer for ALIGN-NY.
"To protect our communities from grave climate catastrophes, we must act boldly and quickly," said Petra Luna, tenant leader at Make the Road New York. "We applaud Councilmember Constantinides and Speaker Johnson for hearing our call and putting forward a bill that aims to tackle our largest source of climate pollution: NYC's large buildings"
"Intro 1253 is climate legislation that actually addresses the needs and priorities of the low-income communities and communities of color who are disproportionately burdened by the impacts of climate change. It cuts emissions at the rate recommended by UN climate scientists while protecting affordable housing residents from unfair, permanent rent hikes. The bill will also help New Yorkers of color participate in and directly benefit from the emergent clean energy economy by creating thousands of good jobs each year, which will help strengthen our communities for generations to come. This is exactly what New York City needs: bold climate policy grounded in principles of justice," said Aditi Varshneya, Community Organizer at WE ACT for Environmental Justice
"The NYC Dirty Buildings bill is truly an example of a Green New Deal in action. It gets to the center of real solutions to the climate crisis: creating thousands of good jobs for New Yorkers most impacted by storms like Sandy, while tackling the City's biggest source of emissions. While the Trump administration props up fossil fuel interests, frontline communities are leading the charge for a Fossil Free New York and making sure those most responsible for climate change pay their fair share," said Betamia Coronel, native New Yorker and 350.org National Organizer.
"After all the bad news predicting catastrophic climate disasters that will certainly intensify unless we completely get off fossil fuels within the next 12 years, the 'Dirty Buildings Bill' is a global first step for diminishing carbon emissions from big city big buildings. Since 70% of the carbon emissions in NYC come from big buildings, this retrofitting bill will reduce carbon emissions significantly limiting the climate changing effects of their heating and cooling systems while saving energy costs, making apartments and offices more comfortable and making the air in NYC healthier to breathe. This bill will create good paying, skilled jobs and protect low income and rent controlled/regulated apartment dwellers. We are looking forward to more cities following suit and for the City and State to enact more climate solutions to address the urgent crisis of climate change," said Nancy Romer, a member of the leadership team of the Peoples Climate Movement-NY.
"The IPCC report tells us we have 12 years to meet the greatest existential threat to our city and world. We're here today supporting a #GreenNewDeal4NYC because this bill meets the scale of our greatest collective challenge by tackling the dirtiest buildings in New York City that produce over half of our climate pollution. The time is now for a transition to a fossil free future, and New York City can lead the way," said Sarah Lyons, a member of the Organizing Committee, NYC-DSA Ecosocialist Working Group.
"As nations around the world meet in Poland to discuss climate action, the New York City Council is actually moving that forward," said Carl Arnold, chair of the New York City Group of the Sierra Club. "Swedish fifteen-year-old Greta Thunberg just told world leaders that since they're acting like children by doing nothing that will essentially solve the climate crisis, people at the grassroots must take responsibility for saving human civilization. This legislation represents the fruits of dedicated effort by exactly these grassroots here in America's largest city. We urge the City Council to pass it," said Carl Arnold, Chair of the New York City Group of The Sierra Club.
Groups and unions at the rally included: ALIGN NY, Beacon High School Environmental Club, CWA Local 1180, Democratic Socialists of America, Environmental Defense Fund, Food & Water Watch, IBEW Local 3, Jewish Climate Action Network, Make the Road New York, New York City Coalition for Employment and Training, New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, New York Communities for Change, New York Tenants & Neighbors, People's Climate Movement - New York, PSC-CUNY, Sane Energy Project, Sierra Club NYC Group, Sunrise Movement, TenantsPAC, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, Working Families, UPROSE, 350.org, 350Brooklyn and 350NYC.
350 is building a future that's just, prosperous, equitable and safe from the effects of the climate crisis. We're an international movement of ordinary people working to end the age of fossil fuels and build a world of community-led renewable energy for all.
LATEST NEWS
Climate Crisis to Cost Global Economy $38 Trillion a Year by 2050
"This clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering noneconomic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity," a new study's lead author said.
Apr 18, 2024
The climate crisis will shrink the average global income 19% in the next 26 years compared to what it would have been without global heating caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, a study published in Nature Wednesday has found.
The researchers, from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), said that economic shrinkage was largely locked in by mid-century by existing climate change, but that actions taken to reduce emissions now could determine whether income losses hold steady at around 20% or triple through the second half of the century.
"These near-term damages are a result of our past emissions," study lead author and PIK scientist Leonie Wenz said in a statement. "We will need more adaptation efforts if we want to avoid at least some of them. And we have to cut down our emissions drastically and immediately—if not, economic losses will become even bigger in the second half of the century, amounting to up to 60% on global average by 2100."
"I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were."
Put in dollar terms, the climate crisis will take a yearly $38 trillion chunk out of the global economy in damages by 2050, the study authors found.
"That seems like… a lot," writer and climate advocate Bill McKibben wrote in response to the findings. "The entire world economy at the moment is about $100 trillion a year; the federal budget is about $6 trillion a year."
This means that the costs of inaction have already exceeded the costs of limiting global heating to 2°C by six times, the study authors said. However, limiting warming to 2°C can still significantly reduce economic losses through 2100.
"This clearly shows that protecting our climate is much cheaper than not doing so, and that is without even considering noneconomic impacts such as loss of life or biodiversity," Wenz said.
The damages predicted by the study were more than twice those of similar analyses because the researchers looked beyond national temperature data to also incorporate the impacts of extreme weather and rainfall on more than 1,600 subnational regions over a 40-year period, The Guardian explained.
"Strong income reductions are projected for the majority of regions, including North America and Europe, with South Asia and Africa being most strongly affected," PIK scientist and first author Maximilian Kotz said in a statement. "These are caused by the impact of climate change on various aspects that are relevant for economic growth such as agricultural yields, labor productivity, or infrastructure."
However, Wenz told the paper that the paper's projected reduction was likely a "lower bound" because the study still doesn't include climate impacts such as heatwaves, tropical storms, sea-level rise, and harms to human health.
Unlike previous studies, the research predicted economic losses for most wealthier countries in the Global North, with the U.S. and German economies shrinking by 11% by mid-century, France's by 13%, and the U.K.'s by 7%. However, the countries set to suffer the most are countries closer to the equator that have lower incomes already and have historically done much less to contribute to the climate crisis. Iraq, for example, could see incomes drop by 30%, Botswana 25%, and Brazil 21%.
"Our study highlights the considerable inequity of climate impacts: We find damages almost everywhere, but countries in the tropics will suffer the most because they are already warmer," study co-author Anders Levermann, who leads Research Department Complexity Science at PIK, said in a statement. "Further temperature increases will therefore be most harmful there. The countries least responsible for climate change, are predicted to suffer income loss that is 60% greater than the higher-income countries and 40% greater than higher-emission countries. They are also the ones with the least resources to adapt to its impacts."
Wenz told The Guardian that the results were "devastating."
"I am used to my work not having a nice societal outcome, but I was surprised by how big the damages were. The inequality dimension was really shocking," Wenz said.
Levermann said the paper presented society with a clear choice:
It is on us to decide: Structural change towards a renewable energy system is needed for our security and will save us money. Staying on the path we are currently on, will lead to catastrophic consequences. The temperature of the planet can only be stabilized if we stop burning oil, gas, and coal.
McKibben, meanwhile, argued that the findings should persuade major companies to embrace climate action for self-interested reasons. He noted that most corporate emissions come from how company money is invested by banks, particularly in the continued exploitation of fossil fuel resources.
"If Amazon and Apple and Microsoft wanted to avoid a world where, by century's end, people had 60% less money to spend on buying whatever phones and software and weird junk (doubtless weirder by then) they plan on selling, then they should be putting pressure on their banks to stop making the problem worse. They should also be unleashing their lobbying teams to demand climate action from Congress," McKibben wrote.
"These people are supposed to care about money, and for once it would help us if they actually did," he continued. "Stop putting out ads about how green your products are—start making this system you dominate actually work."
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Congressional Progressives Unveil 'Bold' Agenda for Second Biden Term
The Congressional Progressive Caucus says its legislative blueprint for 2025 and beyond aims to "deliver equality, justice, and economic security for working people."
Apr 18, 2024
The Congressional Progressive Caucus on Thursday published a "comprehensive domestic policy legislative agenda" for U.S. President Joe Biden's possible second White House term that seeks to "deliver equality, justice, and economic security for working people."
The CPC's Progressive Proposition Agenda is a seven-point plan aimed at lowering the cost of living, boosting wages and worker power, advancing justice, combating climate change and protecting the environment, strengthening democracy, breaking the corporate stranglehold on the economy, and bolstering public education.
"Progressives are proud to have been part of the most significant Democratic legislative accomplishments of this century. We have made real progress for everyday Americans—but there's much more work to be done," Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said in a statement.
"That's why the Progressive Caucus has identified these popular, populist, and possible solutions," she added. "Democrats in Congress can meet the urgent needs people are facing; rewrite the rules to ensure majorities of this country are no longer barred from the American promise of equality, justice, and economic opportunity; and motivate people with a vision of progressive governance under Democratic majorities in the House and Senate and a Democratic White House."
Progressive lawmakers have already introduced bills for many items on the agenda, including a Green New Deal for Public Schools, expanding the Supreme Court, comprehensive voting rights protection, and legalizing marijuana.
Critics noted the conspicuous absence of Medicare for All—once a top progressive agenda item—and foreign policy issues including ending Israel's genocide, apartheid, occupation, settler colonization, and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
Jayapal toldNBC News that the CPC is focusing its blueprint exclusively on domestic goals—especially ones it feels can be achieved.
"The way we came to this agenda is to say that we were going to put into this agenda things that were populist and possible... and affected a huge number of people," she said. "We haven't taken a position on particularly Israel and Gaza in the progressive caucus, and so that's not on here."
The CPC agenda is backed by a wide range of labor, climate, environmental, civil rights, consumer, faith-based, and other organizations.
"The Congressional Progressive Caucus is leading the way for Congress to address the major issues affecting working families, from reducing healthcare and housing costs to strengthening workers' rights to join unions, earn living wages and benefits, and have safe workplaces," Service Employees International Union president Mary Kay Henry said in a statement.
"SEIU is proud to partner with the CPC to move these priorities forward and build a more equitable economy in which corporations are held accountable for their actions," she added.
Mary Small, chief strategy officer at Indivisible, said: "House progressives were the engine at the heart of our legislative accomplishments in 2021 and 2022. They've continued that momentum to be true governing partners to the Biden administration as those laws and programs are implemented."
"That's why Indivisible is so supportive of the CPC's Proposition Agenda, a bold vision for progressive governance in 2025 and beyond. From reproductive rights to saving our democracy to economic security for all, the CPC is driving forward exactly the sort of legislative goals we want to see in our next governing moment."
That moment is far from guaranteed, with not only the White House hanging in the balance as Biden will all but certainly face former Republican President Donald Trump in November's election but also the Senate Democratic Caucus clinging to a single-seat advantage over the GOP. Republicans currently hold the House of Representatives by a five-seat margin.
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'McCarthyism Is Alive and Well': Google Fires 28 for Protesting Israel Contract
"These mass, illegal firings will not stop us," said organizers. "Make no mistake, we will continue organizing until the company drops Project Nimbus and stops powering this genocide."
Apr 18, 2024
The peace coalition No Tech for Apartheid accused Google of a "flagrant act of retaliation" late Wednesday night as the Silicon Valley giant announced it had fired 28 workers over protests against its cloud services contract with the Israeli government.
The firings came after Google organizers held two 10-hour sit-ins at the company's offices in Sunnyvale, California and New York City, demanding the termination of Project Nimbus, a $1.2 billion contract under which Google and Amazon provide cloud infrastructure and data services for Israel—without any oversight regarding whether the Israel Defense Forces uses the services in its occupation of Palestinian territories and bombardment of Gaza.
Workers have denounced Project Nimbus since it was announced in 2021, but Israel's killing of at least 33,970 Palestinians in Gaza since October and its intentional starvation of civilians led employees to escalate their protests.
No Tech for Apartheid said in a statement that Google officials called the police to both offices to arrest nine protesters—dubbed the Nimbus Nine—on Tuesday morning, before utilizing "a dragnet of in-office surveillance" to fire nearly two dozen other employees on Wednesday.
"They punished all of the workers they could associate with this action in wholesale firings," said the coalition, which includes Jewish Voice for Peace and MPower Change, a Muslim-led anti-war group.
Google accused the workers of "bullying," "harassment," defacing property, and physically impeding other employees—allegations No Tech for Apartheid rejected as it noted organizers "have yet to hear from a single executive about" their concerns over Google's collaboration with Israel.
"This excuse to avoid confronting us and our concerns directly, and attempt to justify its illegal, retaliatory firings, is a lie," said the workers. "Even the workers who were participating in a peaceful sit-in and refusing to leave did not damage property or threaten other workers. Instead they received an overwhelmingly positive response and shows of support."
The organizers staged the sit-ins on the heels of reporting in Time magazine about new negotiations between Google and the Israeli government regarding further potential tech contracts.
Kate J. Sim, a child safety policy adviser at Google who said she was among those fired this week, said the terminations show "how terrified [executives] are of worker power."
Google employees have a history of harnessing worker power to change policies at the company. In 2018, Google terminated a deal with the U.S. Defense Department to develop drone and artificial intelligence (AI) technology through a contract called Project Maven. The decision followed the resignations of several employees and the condemnation of thousands of workers.
Calling Google CEO Sundar Pichai and Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian "genocide profiteers," No Tech for Apartheid said Wednesday that they will not stop demonstrating against Project Nimbus until they get a similar result.
"The truth is clear: Google is terrified of us," said the group. "They are terrified of workers coming together and calling for accountability and transparency from our bosses... The corporation is trying to downplay and discredit our power.
"These mass, illegal firings will not stop us," No Tech for Apartheid added. "On the contrary, they only serve as further fuel for the growth of this movement. Make no mistake, we will continue organizing until the company drops Project Nimbus and stops powering this genocide."
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