Upper Green Side

A Chance for City Leadership on the Environment

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Today, in California, Mayor Bloomberg made a first step in creating a much more proactive environmental policy for the city. The highlights of the announcement are:

• The creation of the Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability.
• The undertaking of a major greenhouse gas inventory for City government and the City overall.
• The appointment of a Sustainability Advisory Board to advise the City on environmentally sound policies and practices.
• The creation of a new partnership with the Earth Institute of Columbia University to provide the City with scientific research and advice on environmental and climate change-related issues.

We applaud this annoucement and we look forward to hearing more tangible steps to make the city more environmentally sustainable. Sustainability is great word. Here’s how the mayor defined it:

“Sustainability is all about ensuring that economic growth and development today is compatible with the ability of our children and grandchildren to meet their needs in the future,” said Mayor Bloomberg.

We agree. We hope this will be the start of some really great new environmental initiatives to address our generation’s twin challenges of extreme climate change from carbon emissions and the economic impact of “peak oil”, the point at which the world can no long produce increasing amounts of oil.
One easy place to find some good off the shelf common sense proposals is the NYC Council Report on Sustainability that was prepared by former City Council Speaker Gifford Miller’s legislative director, Marcel Van Ooyen, now the president of the Council on the Environment of NYC and co-signed by current City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Specifically we hope that reducing our city’s dependence on cars and trucks is high on the list of priorities.

In this annoucement, we see hope. We see a chance for real leadership to change the way that our society approaches its relationship with the environment. We hope other leaders, stakeholders and interest groups will join this effort. We hope that soon, we will see promises turn into reality.