Upper Green Side

Mayor Bloomberg’s Sustainability Plan

Mayor Bloomberg has announced a new sustainability plan to make NYC more environmentally friendly in a bold initiative that will define his last two hundred days in office.

I make this promise to you: I will not spend my last 984 days in office pretending that all is fine and leaving these challenges to the next mayor, who may well pass them off to his or her successor. And we – the residents of a city that is a beacon to the world – will not abdicate our responsibility to that world. That’s not leadership. Leadership is about recognizing challenges and seizing opportunities. And we are going to seize this opportunity – to lead the way forward and create the first environmentally sustainable 21st century city.

I highly recommend reading through the speech or the whole report if you get a chance or you can focus on a few of the different sections on Land, Water, Transportation, Energy and Air.

There are many innovative ideas from congestion pricing, to planting a million new trees to cleaning up contaminated land, significantly reducing sewage output into our rivers and harbor and making a goal of reducing greenhouse gases by 30% by the year 2030, all while the city adds another million people.

It’s an ambitious plan that deserves thoughtful study by all levels of government to bring to fruition. For the rest of us, this is yet another reason to believe that all our hard work in raising awareness of the issues is making a difference. But the Mayor or any government agency cannot build a sustainable society through law and administrative procedures alone. It will take a dedicated public effort to make sure that we achieve the goals of this initiative.