December, 03 2018, 11:00pm EDT
![350.org](https://assets.rbl.ms/32012661/origin.jpg)
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
Critics Warn Manchin-Barrasso Permitting Bill 'Is Taken Straight From Project 2025'
"You thought Project 2025 was just a threat after the election? It's actually happening *right now,*" said one climate campaigner.
Jul 26, 2024
Climate and environmental defenders on this week implored U.S. senators to block a permitting reform bill introduced this week by Sens. Joe Manchin and John Barrasso that one campaigner linked to Project 2025, a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right overhaul of the federal government.
Common Dreamsreported Monday that Manchin (I-W.Va.) and Barrasso (R-Wyo.)—respectively the chair and ranking member of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee—introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024.
The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) noted that although the proposal "includes several positive reforms for the accelerated development of transmission projects," it also advocates "limiting opportunities for communities to challenge projects, loosening oversight for drilling and mining projects, extending drilling permits and fast-tracking [liquified natural gas] permits, and several other provisions friendly to fossil fuel giants."
"This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
These are nearly identical policies to what's proposed in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership. The plan, which was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, calls for "unleashing all of America's energy resources," including by ending federal restrictions on fossil fuel drilling on public lands; limiting investments in renewable energy; and rolling back environmental permitting restrictions for new oil, gas, and coal projects, including power plants.
While Manchin has been trying—and failing—to pass fossil fuel-friendly permitting reform legislation for years, Brett Hartl, director of public affairs at the Center for Biological Diversity, said that his "Frankenstein legislation is taken straight from Project 2025, and it's the biggest giveaway in decades to the fossil fuel industry."
Hartl said the bill "deprives communities of the power to defend themselves and gives that power to Big Oil by making it harder for communities to challenge polluting projects in court," and "prioritizes the profits of coal barons over public health."
"And it mandates oil and gas extraction in our oceans," he continued. "The insignificant crumbs thrown at renewable energy do nothing to address the climate emergency."
"Monday was the hottest day in recorded history," Hartl noted. "It's shocking that as the climate emergency continues to break records around us, the Senate continues to fast-track the fossil fuel expansion that is killing us. This dangerous bill doesn't deserve a floor vote."
Hartl added that "to preserve a livable planet," Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "must squash this legislation now."
Manchin—who has said this will be his last term in office—has been a steadfast supporter of the fossil fuel industry, partly because his family owns a coal company. The senator says his permitting reform bill "will advance American energy once again to bring down prices, create domestic jobs, and allow us to continue in our role as a global energy leader."
However, Allie Rosenbluth, Oil Change International's U.S. manager, warned Thursday that "this bill is yet another dangerous attempt by Sen. Manchin to line the pockets of his fossil fuel donors, sacrificing communities and our climate along the way."
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else," she continued. "It would unleash more drilling on federal lands and waters, unnecessarily rush the review of proposed oil and gas export projects, and lift the Biden administration's pause on new LNG exports."
"We urge Congress to reject this proposal and commit to action that protects frontline communities from the impacts of fossil fuel development and the climate crisis," Rosenbluth added.
"Don't be fooled: The Energy Permitting Reform Act is another dirty deal to fast-track fossil fuels above all else."
NRDC managing director of government affairs Alexandra Adams said Wednesday that "this bill is a giveaway for the oil and gas industry that will ramp up drilling and environmental destruction at a time when we need to be putting a hard stop to fossil fuels."
"We cannot afford to roll back so many of our bedrock environmental and community legal protections and offer a blank check to the oil and gas industry," she stressed. "We need new solutions for permitting if we are going to meet our clean energy potential and address the climate challenge. But this is not it."
"This bill would altogether be a leap backward on climate, health, and justice if passed into law," Adams added. "The Senate should reject it and look toward alternative solutions already being considered."
Keep ReadingShow Less
'Nothing To Eat': War-Torn Sudan Faces Mass Famine as Military Delays Aid
Both parties in Sudan's civil war are to blame for a looming mass famine, experts say, and the military's blocking of U.N. aid at a border crossing with Chad exacerbates the problem.
Jul 26, 2024
Sudan's military is blocking United Nations aid trucks from entering at a key border crossing, causing severe disruptions in aid in a country that experts fear may be on the brink of one of the worst famines the world has seen in decades, The New York Timesreported Friday.
The border city of Adré in eastern Chad is the main international crossing into the Darfur region of Sudan, but the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), the state's official military, which is engaged in a civil war with a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has refused to issue permits for U.N. trucks to enter there, as it's an RSF-controlled area.
U.S. and international officials have issued increasingly alarmed calls for steady aid access to help feed the millions of severely malnourished people in Darfur and other areas of Sudan.
Last week, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the United States ambassador to the U.N., said that the SAF's obstruction of the border was "completely unacceptable."
Both warring parties in Sudan continue to perpetrate brazen atrocities, including starvation of civilians as a method of warfare. This piece focuses on the SAF's ongoing obstruction of essential aid. The situation is catastrophic. The policy is criminal. https://t.co/FKhqQh3EI9.
— Tom Dannenbaum (@tomdannenbaum) July 26, 2024
The Sudanese who've made it out of the country and into Adré reported dire and unsafe conditions in their home country.
"We had nothing to eat," Bahja Muhakar, a Sudenese mother of three, told the Times after she crossed into Chad, following a harrowing six-day journey from Al-Fashir, a major city in Darfur. She said the family often had to live off of one shared pancake per day.
Another mother, Dahabaya Ibet, said that her 20-month-old boy had to bear witness to his grandfather being shot and killed in front of his eyes when the family home in Darfur was attacked by gunmen late last year.
Now the mothers and their families are refugees in Adré, where 200,000 Sudanese are living in an overcrowded, under-resourced transit camp.
In addition to those that have made it out of the country, there are 11 million people internally displaced within Sudan, most of whom have become displaced since the civil war began in April 2023.
An unnamed senior American official told the Times that the looming famine in Sudan could be as bad as the 2011 famine in Somalia or even the great Ethiopian famine of the 1980s.
In April, Reutersreported that people in Sudan were eating soil and leaves to survive, and The Washington Postcalled it a nation in "chaos," reporting that World Food Program trucks had been "blocked, hijacked, attacked, looted, and detained."
In late June, a coalition of U.N. agencies, aid groups, and governments warned that 755,000 people in Sudan faced famine in the coming months.
The U.S. last week announced $203 million in additional aid to Sudan—part of a $2.1 billion pledge that world leaders made in April, which some countries have not yet delivered on.
Some officials including Thomas-Greenfield, who has dubbed the situation in Sudan "the worst humanitarian crisis in the world," have called for the U.N. Security Council to allow aid delivery into the country even in the absence of SAF approval; it's believed that Russia would veto such a measure.
Sudan's civil war has seen a great deal of international interference. Amnesty International on Thursday published an investigatory briefing showing that weapons from Russia, China, Serbia, Turkey, Yemen, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) had been identified in the country. And The Guardian on Friday reported that the passports of Emirati citizens had been found among wreckage in Sudan, indicating the UAE may have troops or intelligence officers on the ground, though the UAE denied the accusation.
The International Service for Human Rights on Friday warned that both the SAF and RSF were engaged in wrongful killings and arrests, especially targeted at lawyers, doctors, and activists. The group called for an immediate cease-fire.
The SAF and Sudanese government figures have cast doubt on international experts' claims about famine in the country.
Keep ReadingShow Less
JD Vance Doubles Down on Attack on 'Childless Cat Ladies'
Vance "meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
Jul 26, 2024
After days of condemnation from critics including actress Jennifer Aniston and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, U.S. Sen. JD Vance was given the opportunity on Thursday to clarify his remarks from 2021 in which he said the Democratic Party was run by "childless cat ladies."
Instead, the Ohio Republican and running mate of former President Donald Trump assured SiriusXM host Megyn Kelly on "The Megyn Kelly Show" that while he has "nothing against cats," he meant what he said in terms of "the substance" of his argument.
Vance made it clear, said Aaron Fritschner, deputy chief of staff for Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), "that he meant no disrespect to cats, but he did mean to demean women and still holds the view in 2024 that they should be punished for not having children."
The comments in question were made by Vance to then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson when Vance was running for the Senate.
Calling out Buttigieg—who, the secretary disclosed this week, was struggling at the time to adopt a child with his husband—and Vice President Kamala Harris, a stepmother of two and the Democratic Party's presumptive presidential nominee, Vance said people without biological children "don't really have a direct stake in" the future of the country and therefore shouldn't hold higher office.
In separate remarks that same year, Vance said parents should "have more power" at the voting booth and that "if you don't have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn't get nearly the same voice."
He also specifically categorized people who don't have children as "bad" in an interview in 2021, saying the government should "reward the things that we think are good" and "punish the things that we think are bad," with people taxed at a lower rate if they have children.
While a spokesperson for Vance told ABC News that the senator's taxation proposal was "basically no different" than the child tax credit supported by the Democratic Party, Democrats who have pushed for the credit have heralded its proven ability to slash child poverty rates and help families afford groceries, childcare, and other essentials, rather than viewing the tax savings as a way to reward people for procreating.
In his interview with Kelly on Thursday, Vance attempted to pivot away from his own comments, saying his point was to criticize "the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child" and claiming without evidence that the Harris campaign had "come out against the child tax credit"—a signature policy of the Biden-Harris administration.
"I'm proud to stand for parents and I hope that parents out there recognize that I'm a guy who wants to fight for you," said Vance. "The Democrats, in the past five, 10 years, Megyn, they have become anti-family. It's built into their policy, it's built into the way they talk about parents and children. I don't think we should back down from it, I think we should be honest about the problem."
Vance and Kelly went on to lament the anxiety "hardcore environmentalists" and progressive lawmakers such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have expressed about the damage fossil fuel extraction is doing the planet, accusing them of pushing people to forgo having families—but said nothing about Republican policies that have made child-rearing less accessible.
In recent years, the entire Republican caucus in Congress was joined by conservative then-Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia in blocking the extension of the enhanced child tax credit, which had been credited with cutting the national child poverty rate in half. Republicans also allowed a pandemic-era universal school meal program to expire, while several Democratic-led states have passed state-level programs to ensure all children can have meals at school, regardless of their family's income.
Under Republican abortion bans, numerous stories have cropped up of pregnant people who have been forced to carry pregnancies to term despite finding out that their fetuses had fatal abnormalities and would die soon after birth—as have stories of children who were forced to give birth or had to cross state lines in order to get abortion care.
As with his position that nonparents should be "punished" for not having children, "who else does 'pro-child/family' Vance think should 'face consequences and reality' by way of curtailing choices, rights, and freedoms?" asked writer Alheli Picazo. "Women and girls who become pregnant through rape/incest."
University of North Carolina law professor Carissa Byrne Hessick said that one could test "empirically" Vance's claim that Democratic policies are anti-family.
"But I haven't heard the GOP talk much about things that would help my family and my kids," she said, "like reducing childcare and tuition costs."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular