Good morning. It’s Tuesday. Today, we’ll explore a brewing battle over Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposal to ban gas and oil hookups in new buildings. And we’ll find out why New York City’s switch to electric vehicles from gas-powered vehicles is off to a slow start.
You might be surprised — given the proportion of the daily anxiety New Yorkers, whether they drive or not, spend on traffic and parking — that cars and trucks aren’t the state’s biggest contributor to climate change and the risks posed to civilization. to threaten. are buildings.
Yes, the threat comes from within. Or to be more precise, from our houses, apartments, offices, factories and shops. Statewide, 32 percent of the planet-warming gases in the atmosphere come from heating buildings and cooking in them.
How to cut those emissions will be one of the toughest political battles of the year, starting with Governor Hochul’s proposed state budget. One of the most aggressive and controversial climate boards is a plan to ban gas and oil connections in new buildings from 2027.
The move would make New York the first U.S. state and the world’s largest jurisdiction to stop adding fossil fuel stoves and heaters and require new buildings to use only electricity, which, under state law, would be sourced entirely. should be from emissions. free resources by 2040. Such a move by a real estate and financial capital could be crucial to the country’s energy future, experts say, as other states discuss similar measures. (New York City, where buildings produce 40 percent of emissions, took a similar measure last year.)
So much is at stake, with a fierce lobbying and public relations battle between climate advocates, who support the proposal, and the gas and oil industry, which opposes it. There have been unexpected political twists and turns — the most significant of which is that, according to lawmakers, the current obstacle to Ms. Hochul’s proposal is the State Assembly, the same body whose takeover by Democrats in 2019 ushered in the state’s ambitious climate bill.
For that reason, some proponents of the gas ban are frustrated with the leadership of the Assembly. The speaker, Carl Heastie, kept quiet about the measure, but generally said the budget debate should be reserved for tax decisions, not other policy issues.
Climate groups like Food and Water Watch argue that its position is not in line with its district in the Bronx, an area long hit by environmental inequality. The municipality has one of the highest rates of childhood asthma in the country and some of the dirtiest buildings in the state.
In another budget debate, both the Assembly and Senate are urging the governor to allocate billions of dollars more to fight climate change — including at least $1 billion a year just to help low- and middle-income households keep their homes to renovate to avoid burning fossil fuels . Without that level of spending, they say the state will not be able to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050. That goal was laid down in the Climate Act more than two years ago.
If the gas connection measure does not reach the budget, the discussion will continue about a new version in a separate bill. The controversies are legion: opponents say the state risks prejudicing its ability to produce enough renewable electricity to heat its homes and that electric heat pumps will cost consumers more. Proponents say the pumps are more cost-effective in the long run.
Weather
Prepare for a chance of showers in the late afternoon, with steady temperatures in the mid-50s. The showers continue into the evening.
parking on the other side
Valid until April 14 (Maundy Thursday).
Amazon deliverers, is there a spring in your step?
Amazon workers at a warehouse on Staten Island sparked the biggest union battle in recent memory last weekend. They organized the company’s multimillion-dollar advisory team — in a homegrown effort led by a recently fired employee, not the national union staff — and managed to win a vote to form the mail-order giant’s first union in the United States. United States to establish.
That’s a huge flex, so we’re wondering, how does it affect the mood of Amazon’s public face? By that, of course, we mean the people who deliver more than 2.4 million packages a day in New York City. (Per day. That’s more than one pack for every four residents. Folks: What kind of stuff is this and do we really need it all? But we digress.)
Do the people who wear Amazon gifts (or, say, specifically molded insoles like the ones I ordered recently) feel empowered, or indifferent, or inspired — or jealous? The new union doesn’t cover them — they work for what Amazon calls “delivery service partners” or as independent contractors. (The vote also won’t affect workers in more than 50 other city and suburban warehouses.)
But could drivers be next? The Teamsters hope so.
In the glow of last week’s victory, that union’s new national president, Sean O’Brien, told my colleague Noam Scheiber that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters was willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars to unify Amazon — perhaps starting in ” large metropolises with strong labor connections and strong political support.”
“Amazon is so deviant and so disrespectful to their employees, there’s a lot of turnover there,” he said. “But I think we can put just as much pressure on the company, be it politically, in the community and as a transport union. I think we will have tremendous success.”
Amazon reiterated its view on unionization in a statement: “We believe a direct relationship with the company is best for our employees.”
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NYC’s Chicken-and-Egg Electric Car Problem
Speaking of ambitious but challenging climate goals, New York City has pledged to electrify its entire municipal fleet — nearly 30,000 vehicles — by 2035.
Right now, as my colleagues Winnie Hu, Nadav Gavrielov and Jack Ewing report, out of 5,900 buses in the city, only 15 are electric. Less than 1 percent of the city’s 1.9 million registered passenger cars are fully electric. The police have only one electric patrol car and the Sanitation Service has only one electric garbage truck.
The obstacles in many ways reflect the same chicken-and-egg problem the state has with renewable energy.
The mantra for reducing greenhouse gas emissions is: Electrify everything. But just as the state still has a long way to go before it can generate enough renewable electricity to power, well, everything, the city is also grappling with technological and resource constraints.
There are only 86 public street-side chargers, a drop in the ocean in a city where many residents have the money and inclination to buy electric cars, but few have a garage or driveway to plug a car into.
Another kind of problem: an electric fire truck that meets city standards is not produced.
Many of these problems await solutions for which two things are scarce. The first are federal dollars to build infrastructure, train workers and educate consumers. The second is targeted bandwidth, in a chaotic time, for the public to decide what it wants in terms of climate action and for state, city and local authorities to work together on it.
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Class gift
Dear Diary:
I worked as a fourth-grade teacher at a private school on the East Side. As a Christmas gift, the parents had their daughters scratch their names on a silvery picture frame, which I got, wrapped in yards of tissue paper in a Tiffany box.
I cast a graceful look on my face as I unpacked it. I held up the frame and smiled at each of the 15 girls who “signed” it.
After school, I snuck into a pawn shop on Lexington Avenue. The man at the counter looked approvingly at the Tiffany box.
