Albany And The City Council Legislate Greener Buildings In N.Y.C.

New York City by definition is greener than most metropolitan areas. The widespread use of mass transit and higher population density put us way ahead of the sprawling cities of the South and West. However, being in the more temperate Northeast combined with old, large buildings where people live means that New Yorkers rely on antiquated heating oil systems. The large trucks bring it in, and the chimneys belch out the black, smoky byproduct that at first glance gives the impression that a building is on fire.

With hybrid taxis, prohibitive costs of driving in general and an extensive transit system (save for the recent death of the V and W trains), buildings are the last frontier in the green revolution within New York City's sphere of influence. Yesterday the City Council passed legislation that aims to curb that nasty pollution we are accustomed to.

From The N.Y. Times:

As announced earlier this week by the City Council speaker, Christine Quinn, and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, one of the new laws will halve sulfur levels in a common type of home heating oil, No. 4, starting in October 2012. The law also will require that biodiesel fuel make up at least 2 percent of all grades of petroleum heating oil.

With the enactment this month of a New York State law that will drastically reduce the sulfur content in No. 2, the most common type of heating oil, the city’s action is expected to make an important dent in soot pollution and asthma cases.

The City Council also approved a package of bills ushering in the first major overhaul of recycling laws adopted in 1989. The new laws will increase plastics recycling, put more recycling bins in schools and public areas and allow residents to recycle hazardous waste like paint.

Quinn might be ethically-challenged in other areas, but when it comes to the environment this was the right move. In the future our buildings will hopefully all be LEED certified, but for now those historic relics of the 1800s and early 1900s should be adapted to limit their pollution as quickly as possible. These city and state laws will help to accomplish that.

More From The Obama Transition Team

As they have done many times already, the Obama transition team posted another video on what is going on, now with only six weeks to go until the President-elect drops the "elect" from his title. Here we have discussion on energy and environmental policy in the next Administration...something we rarely saw if at all for the last eight years

Ah, The Many Crimes Of The Bush Administration

Keith Olbermann covers the top three scandals within the White House and what is going on with each. Particularly interesting is that the Feds are actually showing some signs about doing something about the felonious Alberto Gonzales!

Obama Shows His Dedication To Transparency

As the 43rd President geared up for office eight years ago, his newly elected Vice President held energy policy meetings in secret and kept the members of those committees hidden from public view. Now as Barack Obama becomes the 44th President, he not only tells people who's on the committees, but YouTubes them as well.

Bush Working On One Last Shot To Wreck Our Government

George Bush may only have eighty days and change left in the White House, but that doesn't mean he isn't hard at "work." Economists have been bashing the deregulation policies of the last twenty to thirty years as the main problem of our fiscal crisis but that won't stop the Pretzeldent from enacting more of the same failed policies. In one last trick on the American people and another treat for corporate America, a whole array of regulations that protect the environment and consumers will go out the door if Bush gets his way.

From The Washington Post:

The new rules would be among the most controversial deregulatory steps of the Bush era and could be difficult for his successor to undo. Some would ease or lift constraints on private industry, including power plants, mines and farms.

Those and other regulations would help clear obstacles to some commercial ocean-fishing activities, ease controls on emissions of pollutants that contribute to global warming, relax drinking-water standards and lift a key restriction on mountaintop coal mining.

Once such rules take effect, they typically can be undone only through a laborious new regulatory proceeding, including lengthy periods of public comment, drafting and mandated reanalysis.

"They want these rules to continue to have an impact long after they leave office," said Matthew Madia, a regulatory expert at OMB Watch, a nonprofit group critical of what it calls the Bush administration's penchant for deregulating in areas where industry wants more freedom. He called the coming deluge "a last-minute assault on the public . . . happening on multiple fronts."

White House spokesman Tony Fratto says that they have the "best interests of the nation in mind," but we know he is completely full of shit. The Republican Administration is doing everything in its power to make things as difficult as they can be for the next (presumably Democratic) President. The wealthy elite are going to miss their confidante in the Oval Office so they are hoping that this one last push will help them get through until the next time they can trick the people into voting against their own interests.

Hopefully that day will never come.

Blue, White And Now Green Collared Jobs

Forget about the class differences in the old blue and white colors. Today we must focus on green collared jobs, work that not only benefits the employee and company, but the environment we depend on as well.

CNN Catches McCain's Flip-Flopping On The Environment

The media is having trouble keeping its love affair with McCain afloat when the candidate commits so many gaffes, so many blunders and flips his position with the change in direction of the wind. Kudos to CNN for pointing out his inconsistent remarks about oil, gas and the environment.

No Longer Can George Bush Claim To Be The World's Top Polluter

George Bush got sorrowful news today, learning that the United States can no longer be called the top fighter against the environmental enemy. He had been so helpful to oil producers, carbon-based power plant facilities and the mining industry. Every piece of legislation he helped push through was meant to keep the pace of pollution up, but alas China has passed us by anyways.

From RawStory:

"Our best forecast has Chinas CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions correctly surpassing the United States in 2006 rather than 2020 as previously anticipated," said the study by researchers at the University of California.

The report, written by economic professors Maximilian Aufhammer of UC Berkeley and Richard Carson of UC San Diego, is to be published next month in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management.

Researchers compiled information about the use of fossil fuels in various Chinese provinces and forecast an 11 percent annual growth of carbon emissions from 2004 to 2010.

The problem for Bush was that although he was helping polluters here at home, he was also screwing the American economy by borrowing so much money from China to pay for his other destructive projects (see: Iraq War). Other ill-advised moves include allowing the mortgage industry to rape and pillage those that bought houses with sub-prime loans, deregulating vast swaths of the economy that caused a massive imbalance that increased the income gap and many, many, many other mistakes. So even though George tried to bring environmental destruction to us all as quick as he could, like everything else in life, he failed at that too.

Cars That Run On Air Coming Sooner Than You Think

Kiss gasoline goodbye, forget about ethanol and leave the hybrids at the dealership, because in two years, there will be an automobile for sale that literally runs on air. Zero Pollution Motors has set up shop in nearby New Paltz and will be selling a vehicle that can get up to a thousand miles per 1-2 hour charge and can do 96 mph to get there.

From The NY Daily News:

New Paltz, N.Y., has long been known as a bastion of progressive thinking, living and being, man. So it's no surprise the town is headquarters for a company planning to produce the world's first air-powered automobile for the U.S. by 2010. The France-based Zero Pollution Motors says it's manufacturing 10,000 vehicles in its first year and expects to sell them for about $17,800. The cars will have 75 horsepower — that's a little less than the SmartForTwo — will seat six and will produce zero emissions.

"Electricity powers an onboard compressor to compress air to 4,500 pounds per square inch into a pressure tank contained in the vehicle," ZPM communications director Kevin Haydon told the Daily News from New Paltz. "This can be done in a garage overnight and it will take 1-2 hours. The compressed air is then used to power the engine."

Interest in the car is already high and it isn't hard to see why. With gas prices continuing their fast-paced ascent, people are looking for a better way to get around. The air-powered car (or AirCar for short) will be available by 2010 an orders will be taken much sooner than that. With inventions like this, all we need know is to fix the problem of where that 1-2 hour charge comes from. Getting rid of coal, oil and nuclear based power sources and switching to wind and solar will help complete an environmentally friendly way of making our country run.

You Cannot Placate The Environment

A rapid release of water from the Glen Canyon Dam is a great thing for the wildlife in the Grand Canyon....but only if it is part of a comprehensive plan to sustain the practice yearly with other water releases through the year. Unfortunately Dirk Kempthorne and the Bush Administration would rather make a good showing in the press and placate environmental groups instead. Um, Dick, no one is buying it.

From The International Herald Tribune:

The 60-hour release, being presided over by Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne, was the latest chapter in a long-running tug of war between the department's Bureau of Reclamation, which controls the two major Colorado River dams, and the National Park Service over how to balance the Southwest's need for hydroelectric power against the needs of an endangered fish, the humpbacked chub, for water flows that mimic the natural rhythms of the river.[...]

But the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, Steve Martin, argued that if such high flows were not repeated several times in the next five years, the overall water management plan was very likely to impair rather than improve the fish environment.

After this week's release, the rate of flow through 277 miles of the Grand Canyon is set to rise and fall for six months in a pattern that the United States Geological Survey is calibrating to match the demand for hydroelectric power in cities like Las Vegas, said Randall Peterson, a regional manager with the Bureau of Reclamation.[...]

This week's event was publicized by the Interior Department, to the anger of environmental groups, which said the attention masked the rarity of this occurrence. Ideally, some sediment scientists argue, high flows should be annual events.

"This experiment, this celebration, is a charade," said Nikolai Lash, senior program director of the Grand Canyon Trust, a private environmental group. "It was a glamorous event staged for the media that shows the Bureau of Reclamation is doing something for the environment, when in fact there's a lot more to do."

I wonder why the Dept. of the Interior even bothers with the rapid release. If they aren't committed to doing it right, then why do it a......oh wait, thats the official mantra of the Bush Administration, if you are going to do something then royally f-it up. Why should preserving the environment in one of America's national treasures be any different than how the government mismanages the war, the economy and everything else.

It's Easy.....And Beneficial Being Green

Do you wish for unimaginable things like swimming in the Hudson River without contracting some sort of disease? It sounds far-fetched but placing parks strategically around the city can help make that possible. Not only will more of those "green streets" make avenues look nicer, they'll be helping the environment in a big way.

From Streetsblog:

One of the more unsung PlaNYC initiatives aims to drastically reduce CSO, in part by managing streets more wisely. Certain traffic calming measures, it turns out, can not only make streets more ped-friendly, but also help make the city's rivers clean enough to swim in. To accomplish this, PlaNYC calls for retooling the Parks Department's Greenstreets program, and we are starting to see the results.

At their best, Greenstreets -- the pint-sized green spaces that Parks began planting in 1996 -- have served as modest traffic-calming measures, displacing asphalt with patches of greenery that send cues to slow down. The new breed goes a few steps further: They combine advanced stormwater capture techniques with more overt traffic-calming devices, like neckdowns and bulb-outs.[...]

Stormwater is captured by a drainage pipe on the north side of the blockbuster (right), where it is channeled under the sidewalk and into the soil of the planting bed. Any excess is stored in a chamber beneath the soil, where the plants can soak it up in times of drought.

"That's less water that our sewer system has to deal with," says Bram Gunther, the head of Forestry and Horticulture at Parks, who has been instrumental in implementing the new Greenstreets. He points out that by storing the water for later use, this Greenstreet won't require Parks to send a water truck out on the street to keep it maintained. "Anytime you get to recycle water, that's a good thing."

That is definitely a good thing, and despite some neighborhoods complaints, we need to build more of them. Treating our rivers like/with crap is wrong. Wrong for the wildlife that lives in the river and the overall ecology of the Hudson. Something so simple as a park can help solve that, and to me, that is a no brainer. See how easy it is to be green?

More Multi-State Lawsuits Against The Bush Administration

When you've got a good thing going for you, why not add to it? A few weeks ago several states sued the Bush Administration for denying them the opportunity to have stricter regulations on carbon dioxide emissions from cars than the federal government. The story got good press and more heat piled on the corrupted White House.

Now Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York are teaming up to take on a cold-weather climate problem, efficiency standards for gas furnances and home heating appliances. California may not use this as much as we do, but everyone wants to stay warm, but George Bush seems to want to have it be at the expense of the environment....and our pocketbooks.

From The New York Times:

The city’s Law Department, along with the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts and New York, argue that the new efficiency standards set by the federal Department of Energy last November are far too weak to significantly cut carbon dioxide emissions, or to help lower home heating costs that have hit people in the Northeast especially hard.

The new standard for the most common home heating appliance — the gas-fired furnace — was increased only slightly, going to 80 percent efficient from the previous 78 percent level.

Environmental groups had urged the government to raise efficiency standards for furnaces to at least 90 percent, which would represent meaningful reductions in home heating costs as well as the carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.

“By adopting such weak standards, the Energy Department is telling New Yorkers and others that reducing greenhouse gases and heating bills just doesn’t matter,” Ramin Pejan, a lawyer with the city’s Law Department, said in a statement.

You would think that after Bush's pathetic display of pandering for cheaper crude oil prices and the subsequent smack-down from the Saudis that may be he'd come up with a way to be less dependent on oil. Ah, but then we would be forgetting all his friends in the oil industry, and their need to make a ridiculous profit on processing all that crude. Who cares if demand cruises by the amount of supply of this environment-robbing substance? Oh, our children and their children....um, well, that's their problem.

NY In The Top Ten Of Greenest States

Who would have thought that the Empire State could beat out 41 others for the cleanest and greenest environment. Sure, we are no match for places like Vermont, Oregon and Washington (the top three) but when you compare regulatory efforts by state governments, we fare much better than some, like California and Colorado which ranked 14th and 13th respectively. So how did we do it?

From Forbes:

New York
No. 9
Score: 38.1 out of 50

New Yorkers (at least in the city) rely on public transportation and live and work in tight quarters--both great things for the environment. No, the air and water quality in the city is not so good, but overall the state has an exceptionally low carbon footprint (fifth best in the country), second lowest consumption of energy per capita and the fewest vehicle miles traveled (again, per capita) by its residents--another advantage of not owning a car in New York City. New York is also part of the regional effort in the Northeast to establish a market-based system to limit greenhouse gas emissions.

Not only does the state encourage a low carbon impact, but the city government and New Yorkers themselves live in a more environmentally friendly way than those that live in the country. Not driving a car makes a huge impact as does living in a big city. We walk more than most and are blessed with one of the most extensive mass-transit systems in the country, despite its problems.

Heck, we even beat out Arizona.

A Victory For The Environment

Although American Electric Power made no admission of guilt, their pocketbook paid a heavy price today in court and the benefits go to the air we breathe. After years of litigation, one of the largest generators of energy on the East Coast will pay millions in fines and billions to mitigate the damages they have done to the environment. Their neglect has led to acid rain and all the effects that it causes. Now the sixteen power plants they operate on this side of the Mississippi will be retooled at the cost of $4.6 billion dollars to reduce the amount of poisonous gases they emit.

From RawStory:

"The AEP settlement will have an unprecedented impact on air quality in the eastern United States," said Ronald Tenpas, acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's environment and natural resources division.

"This settlement is a major victory for the environment and public health, and it demonstrates our continued commitment to vigorous enforcement of the Clean Air Act," he said.

Joined by eight eastern US states and several environmental groups, the federal government accused AEP of making major changes to its power plants that drove up noxious pollution without first getting regulatory approval.

AEP denies any illegal activities, opting instead to sneak out of admitting their guilt by the "consent decree." Basically it is a legal loophole that infers they did something that has forced them to pay for their actions. Sometimes we need to compromise with the polluters so that ultimately we pay attention to the big picture instead of just incarcerating all the bad guys. It isn't ideal, but I think that in this case it is good enough.

NYC Takes Its First Step To Save Jamaica Bay

Studies and your very own eyes have shown that the marshes of Jamaica Bay have been steadily disappearing over the years. At this point in time the rate has been quickly increasing and many groups have cried out for something to be done. Well the City of New York finally answered and initiated a few measures to curb the problem.

From WNYC:

Jamaica Bay is steadily losing its salt marsh islands because of pollution from local development and dirty water from sewage treatment plants. Following a local law enacted two years ago, the city has now come up with a plan to save the endangered 39 square mile water body.

A big priority is cutting back on nitrogen from the two nearby treatment plants. It's also going to introduce oysters and mussels into the bay, which filter water naturally. To cut back on stormwater runoff, the city is planting more trees in the area and giving local residents rainwater barrels for their rooftops.

But some environmentalists question whether the plan goes far enough. The Natural Resources Defense Council praised the efforts, but says they will only get the city halfway toward meeting its goal of reducing nitrogen discharges by 20 thousand pounds a day.

Oysters and buckets sound nice, but the key to this problem is fixing the treatment plants. Our environment deserves better. Cutting ten thousand pounds of nitrogen is substantial but will only slow the inevitable end of the salt marshes. Unless we want them to disappear forever more needs to be done.

Chertoff Shoves His Foot In His Mouth

Homeland Creating Insecurities Secretary Michael Chertoff may not have realized it but he stuck his foot in his mouth and might never get it out. He spoke about the border Monday and how he sees that environmental issues are negatively affected by immigrants, not the giant (and idiotic) fence under construction. To him, the fence actually helps the environment.

From The Contra Costa Times:

"Illegal migrants really degrade the environment. I've seen pictures of human waste, garbage, discarded bottles and other human artifact in pristine areas," Chertoff said in a telephone interview. "And believe me, that is the worst thing you can do to the environment."

To curb illegal immigration, the U.S. government plans to complete 670 miles of fencing on the southwest border by the end of 2008.

But this has drawn complaints about damaging the cross-border economy and hurting the environment.

Wildlife enthusiasts fear the natural wonders of the Rio Grande Valley in Texas could be spoiled by fences and barriers and could harm some animals by cutting them off from the only source of fresh water.

Chertoff will also ensure that no one goes to court by invoking an environmental waiver passed by the 109th Congress. Not only does this statement show his ignorance about environmental studies in the Southwest, he obviously doesn't understand much when it comes to immigration and the border.

See, people are going to cross no matter what. Even if it takes five times to successfully make the harsh journey. Even if Chertoff talks his ass off about how the fence will solve everything. Economic realities in the world will trump political bullshit and xenophobia anyday. As long as there is a demand for immigrant labor and people in Latin America willing to meet that demand, no fence will stop that from happening.

Doublespeaking The Environment

More is less and less is more. Sometimes I feel like we are living 1984 every single day under George Bush. The President and his Administration have become pros at saying one thing while doing the opposite. The latest episode deals with climate change and Bush snubbing his nose at the United Nation's upcoming conference on what to do with our deteriorating planet. Instead of working together with other countries, Bush is having his own conference-of-one to talk about what he isn't going to do.

From The New York Times:

Mr. Bush’s aides say that the parallel meeting does not compete against the United Nations’ process — hijacking it, as his critics charge. They say that Mr. Bush hopes to persuade the nations that produce 90 percent of the world’s emissions to come to a consensus that would allow each, including the United States, to set its own policies rather than having limits imposed by binding international treaty.

“It’s our philosophy that each nation has the sovereign capacity to decide for itself what its own portfolio of policies should be,” said James L. Connaughton, the president’s chief environmental adviser.

Mr. Bush’s approach sets the stage for a new round of diplomatic confrontation. And it raises the prospect that he could once again put the United States in the position of objecting to any binding international agreement intended to slow or reverse the emissions linked to rising temperatures.

Whether Mr. Bush prevails remains to be seen, but the effort is the last chance in his presidency to shape the debate after years of being excoriated for keeping the United States out of the Kyoto Protocol, the international agreement that limits the emissions of greenhouse gases from most industrialized countries.

Actually, this is just a re-enactment of Kyoto. While other countries are beginning to meet the demands set at Kyoto and are looking forward to more stringent goals, we are going backwards. Snubbing Kyoto at the beginning of his Presidency showed the world that we are not committed to ebbing global warming and this diplomatic error is just another testament to where his priorities lie.

At least we have less than sixteen months of this torture to go.

Al Gore: Moving Beyond Kyoto

The United States isn't even close to meeting the goals set by the Kyoto treaty several years ago. Other industrialized nations around the world are beginning to move towards compliance of the Kyoto Protocols but in these urgent times we need to do better than that. Al Gore knows this and he wants America and the world to step it up a notch (or for Bush to step up at all).

From The New York Times (Opinion Section):

...To this end, we should demand that the United States join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global warming pollution by 90 percent in developed countries and by more than half worldwide in time for the next generation to inherit a healthy Earth.

This treaty would mark a new effort. I am proud of my role during the Clinton administration in negotiating the Kyoto protocol. But I believe that the protocol has been so demonized in the United States that it probably cannot be ratified here — much in the way the Carter administration was prevented from winning ratification of an expanded strategic arms limitation treaty in 1979. Moreover, the negotiations will soon begin on a tougher climate treaty.

Therefore, just as President Reagan renamed and modified the SALT agreement (calling it Start), after belatedly recognizing the need for it, our next president must immediately focus on quickly concluding a new and even tougher climate change pact. We should aim to complete this global treaty by the end of 2009 — and not wait until 2012 as currently planned.

Al realizes that semantics are an important component to helping people realize the serious situation we face. Invoking the words of Reagan and Carter are also very good in helping to back up the point that this is a moral issue and not a political one. Read the whole piece here.

Enviro-Friendly Airplanes

We are still far from the time when jet airplanes leave no impact on our atmosphere, but a new model may significantly cut into the amount of carbon they emit into our skies everyday. Britain's easyJet is set to introduce the "eco-Jet" in 2015, a plane that will emit half the amount of CO2 and 75 percent less nitrous oxide. The plane is designed for short hauls, so it wouldn't have any effect on the international flights. However short hauls make up a tremendous share of airline flights today, since so many carriers offer cheap little hops in the U.S. and Europe.

From LiveScience:

A 2004 study by NASA documented a 1 percent per decade increase in cirrus cloud cover over the United States, presumably due to increased air travel. Jets leave condensation trails, or contrails, that sometimes spread out and are indistinguishable from clouds. The researchers claimed that this extra cloudiness could account for a warming trend of half a degree Fahrenheit per decade in the years between 1975 and 1994.

EasyJet said its projection that the ecoJet would generate a 50 percent reduction in CO2 emissions was based on the latest research by leading aerospace manufacturers. The ecoJet’s engines would produce 25 percent of the improvement and its lightweight airframe 15 percent, while improvements to air traffic control technology and design would provide the remaining 10 percent.

The airline said that given its current passenger-cabin configuration and network, the eco-liner would generate less than 47 grams of CO2 per passenger kilometer in easyJet service.

Although it isn't perfect, the new design in aircraft will go a long way in combating excessive carbon output. In a perfect world aircraft would emit water vapor, but we aren't quite there yet.

PlaNYC Into Action

Despite Bloomberg's faults (which are considerable) his environmental policies set forth in April were outstanding. If only the President would institute such projects nation-wide. One of the things the President is known for is talking tough and doing little when it comes to actually helping the American people. Here in New York, plans are being put into action rather quickly.

From WNYC:

NEW YORK, NY June 12, 2007 —Mayor Bloomberg wants to use solar power and cleaner-burning heating oil in municipal buildings.

He said the city will issue a request for proposals for a pilot program to install solar panels on city-owned buildings in hopes of generating 2 megawatts of solar capacity - about the same as taking more than 50 cars a year off the streets. New York won't pay for the installation, but will buy electricity from the provider.

By next summer, city buildings will be using a bio-diesel blend for heating oil. The renewable fuel emits far less soot than standard heating oil.

Replacing 50 cars doesn't seem like much but if the pilot program works like it is supposed to, we could see major change in a short time. The fact that NYC taxpayers won't have to pay for installation costs is a bonus as well. Replacing standard heating oil is also a nice touch. The city uses gobs of it in the winter and using a bio-diesel blend makes good sense. I am glad to see good proposals being implemented.