New York’s heart broke for L.A. as our sister city burned.
For those of us who had the ugly but fundamentally human thought that this was a California issue, a state long beset by fires — and that New York would be safe from that scale of climate disaster, a new Regional Plan Association study should provide little comfort: it found that our city could be in store for L.A.-level housing loss due to floods over the next 15 years.
It’s time to come to terms with the truth that severe weather is a kitchen table issue we all must face, urgently and together.
That starts with rethinking how we talk about it.
Too many of those managing the climate crisis have fallen prey to opaque language; discussions steeped in lingo are only informative to the well-informed. A 1.5-degree global temperature increase, the point of no return which we surpassed for the first time last year, hardly screams “clear and present danger.”
This isn’t merely bad form. A lack of clarity can build real schisms, a feeling that the climate change conversation is for them, not us — while houses and livelihoods burn.
But L.A. reminds us that extreme weather knows no borders and spares no one. Every year, more lives and property are lost to flooding and fire and childhood asthma rates tick up.
It’s time to talk less about resiliency and decarbonization, more about extreme weather, public safety and health.
The Adams administration is making swift, intentional investments, building smart to protect all New Yorkers from harsh rains, blazing sun and smog. Building for extreme weather is as essential as building bridges, roads and schools.
United Nations Climate Report Issues A Dire “Code Red For Humanity” Due To Global Warming
Spencer Platt/Getty Images
The island of Manhattan is seen from the Staten Island ferry in the Hudson River on August 09, 2021 in New York City. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
In the densest city in the nation, we no longer have the luxury of single-use development. Everything must do double duty.
Pavement and tree pits can soak up water; we’ll invest $385 million to deliver 100 miles of porous pavement by 2031, glugging up to 500 million gallons of rainwater per year. There are 68 miles in process.
Basketball courts and playgrounds can be sunken to hold rain until there’s room in the sewers. We’ve invested $400 million in building dozens of “cloudbursts” which double as playspaces citywide.
Marshland can be creatively re-engineered into bluebelts, routing water away from homes and businesses. It’s working on Staten Island — we just announced $300 million for three new borough bluebelts.
Our waterfront, which provides recreation space year-round, must be elevated to protect us from rising tides. This fall, we finished phase 1 of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project early and under budget; projects are underway across our coastline, flip-up-gates along the Seaport promenade and shoreline protection in Red Hook.
“Reduce your carbon footprint,” “circular economy,” “zero waste”: these terms hide, rather than highlight, that investments create jobs, raise wages and improve the economy. Doing good can mean doing well.
A $295 million commitment will increase the city’s solar capacity to 150 megawatts — enough to power 45,000 homes — by 2035. The Champlain Hudson Power Express will bring 1,200 megawatts of renewable energy to our grid by 2026, enough to power a million homes. We are investing $4 billion to electrify 100 city schools by 2030, the same year our full taxi fleet must be fully electric — which will encourage the private sector to get on board. That means a lot of jobs.
The green economy encompassed 3% of NYC jobs in 2021; it will more than double by 2040 to about 400,000 people, 7% of jobs, adding $89 billion to the city’s GDP.
These large-scale investments are expensive. Local tax dollars can’t fully fund them; we rely on the feds. Surprisingly, it has no recurring revenue source, “formula funds,” from which to build proactive severe weather protections; cities and states must compete to win one-time dollars against an unrelenting foe.
Though the Adams administration has won hundreds of millions of federal infrastructure dollars, being able to plan to a regular cadence — rather than waiting for post-disaster FEMA funds or the right political winds to blow — would help the pace of our work exponentially.
We ask the federal government to think of building flood protection and new energy sources in the same way it views building bridges, a basic building block of American life. The only thing we can predict is that things will get worse without it.
The consequences of climate change are here and urgent, addressing them head-on is as real as our need for transportation and housing. How we manage the change matters. Real talk about real conditions, and real reliable funding, will yield dividends: real opportunity. That’s what works for everybody, and working for everybody is the only way forward.
Joshi is New York City’s deputy mayor for operations.