By Rosemary Misdary
“We are taking steps in the right direction, but we are not trying to get to the revolutionary change that we know is necessary,” said Dr. Gernot Wagner, climate economist at Columbia Business School. “If you keep stringing them [city agencies] along, telling them to do more with less money while also adding priorities, you are just not going to get there. You get people to cut corners and that’s exactly what we see so far.”
The department of buildings and Local Law 97 are only mentioned in the capital budget in reference to emissions generated by city government activities, though public buildings will receive $2.6 billion.
“When it comes to decarbonizing buildings in New York City, it’s all about relatively large investments upfront for massive benefits later,” Wagner said. “Timing is of the essence here. It takes a long time for these investment decisions to be made and then executed, and what we need to do in order to cut emissions on time and on the budget is to make sure that we are starting now, I mean yesterday.”
Quoted in: “Mayor Adams’ record-breaking $102B budget paints a foggy future for climate initiatives” by Rosemary Misdary, Gothamist (3 February 2023).
Related: “Our City Could Become One of the World’s Greenest, but It Won’t Be Easy” by Paul Greenberg and Gernot Wagner, The New York Times (7 February 2023); “Gov. Hochul’s state budget prioritizes climate fixes — but will it be enough?” by Rosemary Misdary, Gothamist (13 February 2023).