Steve Cohen, Executive Director, Columbia University’s Earth Institute

I'm on vacation this week, enjoying the sun, surf and sand here in Long Beach New York, where we've had a small summer home since 1987. I'm on the West End of town, where the biggest problem over the last few years has been the proliferation of second and third cars and the difficulty of parking on the narrow and crowded streets: Until this summer. This summer the big news is the price of gasoline. In the last year and a half, the price of gasoline has doubled. In January, 2007 gasoline was less than $2.20 a gallon, today it is well over $4.  read more »

According to the June 25, 2008 edition of the DesMoines Register, many of the people who have lost their homes and farms in the recent flooding there do not have federal flood insurance:

"David Maurstab, an assistant administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency whose duties include overseeing the flood insurance program, conceded Tuesday that few Iowans have purchased coverage. FEMA reported that as of September 2007 there were 10,649 policies in force statewide.

"That is troubling to all of us," Maurstab said. "We have a remarkably low number of insureds in the affected areas."

The state of Iowa is in excellent fiscal condition and has a $620 million reserve fund that the state government appears reluctant to send on emergency relief.  read more »

There is a small town America that is idealized in myth and literature, but even in the internet age thrives outside our largest cities. In these places community spirit and what used to be called civic virtue (or values) is nurtured through local schools, churches, little league, scouts and a wide variety of community based organizations. The force of economic power is as present in these places as in large cities, and I do not want to leave the impression that all is light and joy in these places, but community is always present and taken for granted.

Here in New York City community must be nurtured in the face of big anonymous institutions and the speed and intensity that is always present and taken for granted.  read more »

In 1990, the first Bush Administration banned off shore oil exploration and yesterday the current President Bush decided to ask Congress to end the ban. This is the same policy now being pushed by Senator John McCain in his effort to show he cares about rising gasoline prices. According to Sheryl Stolberg in The New York Times on June 18:

The Congressional moratorium was first enacted in 1982, and has been renewed every year since. It prohibits oil and gas leasing on most of the outer continental shelf, 3 miles to 200 miles offshore. Since 1990, it has been supplemented by the first President Bush’s executive order, which directed the  read more »

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The good news is that more and more people want to reduce their ecological footprint- the impact that we all have on this fragile and interconnected planet. The bad news is that some companies care much more about looking green than being green. Companies have learned that people care about the environment and are willing to pay for green goods and services. Advertisers and marketing folks are busy painting the world green. Some of this is real and useful and some of this can be silly or even deceptive. Fortunately consumer groups and the Federal Trade Commission have started to pay attention to corporate claims of sustainability.  read more »

When congestion pricing was defeated earlier in the spring, it looked dead forever, but it’s becoming clear that the idea may make a comeback. The reason for the revival is actually the reason Mayor Bloomberg proposed it- we need the money for mass transit, and we need to reduce the volume of vehicles in lower Manhattan. As time goes by, it becomes clearer that the main reason for the fee is to raise money. The absence of the fee is contributing to a fiscal crisis for the city’s mass transit system.

The New York City region has the best mass transit system in the county, but the system that is in danger of going through the same decline it went through during the fiscal crisis of the 1970. It is an understatement to say that this would be a disaster for the city’s environment and economy.

According to a joint press release of the Straphangers Campaign and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group: “Public transportation in metropolitan New York saved 1.8 billion gallons of oil in 2006, a savings that amounted to $4.6 billion for the region. By taking cars off the road and reducing congestion, transit also prevented emission of 13,973,040 metric tons of global warming pollution.”

A decade of increased deficit financing of mass transit during the Pataki years has culminated in the long-predicted mass transit fiscal crisis. Mass transit has been underfunded for many years, and the lack of funding has finally caught up with us. As the Straphanger campaign release notes: “With the projected income from congestion pricing gone, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority faces a $17.5 billion deficit in its proposed $29.5 billion five-year capital program.”

Governor Patterson recognizes the problem and has brought back Richard Ravitch, the guy who rebuilt the mass transit system in the 1980’s, to do it again. Ravitch is heading a newly formed Commission on Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Financing. According to the Governor’s office:  read more »

While most of the people in New York City live in apartment buildings most of the land in New York City sits under single family homes. While New York is nearly completely built up, there are places within the city where there is enough land to grow some crops. While we are certainly surrounded by concrete and asphalt, the natural world is never far away in New York City.  From small plots to multi-acre urban farms, New York City’s community gardens turn abandoned lots into urban oases, feed city residents, and provide community spaces for birthdays, barbeques, and informal get-togethers.
 
In addition to benefits such as fostering community and offering green spaces in neighborhoods lacking sufficient park land, community gardens also have a positive impact on the environment.  Unpaved garden surfaces absorb rainwater and reduce stress on the city’s sewage system, and many gardens partner with schools to provide outdoor classrooms for ecology and biology lessons.  

Community gardens help cool the city and reduce the urban heat island effect, caused when the city’s dark surfaces trap heat and make it hotter than surrounding areas.  Green spaces offered by community gardens can even reduce the amount of energy used to cool buildings. According to the EPA’s website, “Widespread planting in a city can decrease local surface and air temperatures. Strategic planting…directly cools the interior of homes and buildings, decreasing air conditioning costs and peak energy demand.”

While most of our food travels an average of 1,019 miles by the time it reaches grocery shelves, community gardens are a source of fresh, affordable produce for city residents which can be transported to the dinner table without the use of fossil fuels.  read more »

Now that the Democratic Party’s Presidential nominating process has ended, it is time to compare the records and positions of the two remaining major party candidates. For a Republican, Senator John McCain has shown some signs that he understands the issues of sustainability. He and Senator Joseph Lieberman have sponsored climate change bills that have almost been enacted. He is making noises like he might select the environment as the issue to show people that he is not George W. Bush. However, the League of Conservation Voters, a group that monitors Congress’ environmental records gave him a score of 0 percent in 2007 and 24 percent life time. In contrast, Senator Barak Obama Sen. Obama scored 67% in 2007 and 86% lifetime. Most of Obama’s decline last year was due to missed votes related to his campaign schedule. The average score for Members of Congress in 2007 was 53%.  read more »

Perhaps the most eminent climate scientist at Columbia University is Wallace S. Broecker, who everyone around here calls Wally. He and science writer Robert Kunzig have just published a wonderful and easy to read book entitled: “Fixing Climate: What Past Climate Changes Reveal About the Current Threat—And How to Counter It”. Both Wally and our engineering colleague Klaus Lackner concede that we have already emitted too much carbon dioxide (CO2) to prevent global warming and we will need to learn how to capture the excess carbon dioxide now in the atmosphere and keep new CO2 from being released when we burn fossil fuels. We need to learn how to capture greenhouse gasses and then learn how to store them underground.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the “myth” of climate change from some folks who consider the science of climate to be some kind of environmental conspiracy. The fact of climate change is just that, a scientific fact. I think the problem starts when people who do not understand economics or politics propose solutions to the climate problem that are unrealistic or infeasible. Wally and Klaus have proposed a solution which is both realistic and feasible—although difficult to achieve. These are two very practical guys who understand we are not going to shut down the world’s economy to save the planet. We need to figure out a path to sustainability that relies on technology and enlightened self interest to preserve the planet.  read more »

Growing population, drought, the use of biofuels and increased consumption have contributed to a growing world food crisis. The most vulnerable among us here in New York and poor people around the world are most affected by rising food prices and shortages. At the same time, we also see a growing awareness of where our food comes from and the environmental impact of food production. One result of that has been increased use of organic foods and increased use of locally grown foods. The movement toward organic foods and locally grown and marketed organic and non-organic foods is easy to see in our supermarkets and in the sidewalk greenmarkets located in many of the city’s neighborhoods.

Organic produce sales doubled from roughly $3 billion in 2002 to $6 billion in 2006, according to the Organic Trade Association. That figure is expected to jump to $8.1 billion by 2010. Just over 6% of all produce sales now fall into the organic category, up from 2.5% a decade ago. Organic food offers benefits to the environment, local communities and public health. It does not rely on synthetic or petroleum-based pesticides or fertilizers, resulting in less water and soil contamination due to run-off. Buying organic at local farmers market, reduces your carbon footprint. (Check out this article from EcoStreet on ways to reduce your food miles.) In addition:  read more »

I have a summer place on the West End of Long Beach, New York, that my wife and I bought in 1987. Long Beach is an urban beach—about an hour from the city and at the end of a branch of the Long Island Railroad. My small house is really a bungalow that is on a 60 by 40-foot piece of land a half block from the bay and a block and a half from the ocean. The house was built around 100 years ago and I’ve been wondering if will be around 100 years from now. The Army Corps of Engineers wants to build a huge dune on the beach to protect the island from the next storm surge, but the folks here rejected the idea and are willing to take their chances. I’m not sure how I feel about it. Barrier islands like this are truly wonderful places to enjoy, but it’s a little crazy to think we can avoid destructive storms forever.

New York City is blessed by a location right by the ocean and close to mountains. When I was growing up in Brooklyn, we had Riis Park, Brighton Beach, Manhattan Beach, and Coney Island. Later we discovered the beaches from the Rockaways to Atlantic Beach-Long Beach, from Jones Beach to Fire Island, from the Hamptons all the way to Montauk. To say nothing of the Jersey Shore from Bradley Beach to Ship Bottom on the beautiful Long Beach Island. If you love the ocean, New York City is near some of the world’s most beautiful beaches. Summer is a time for slowing down the pace or at least changing the scenery. For me, summer means the ocean, the boardwalk and the beach.  read more »

This week is graduation week here at Columbia and the campus has been hosting huge crowds of happy graduates and proud parents. I am reminded that in post-industrial New York City, education is a big business.  read more »

In a recent speech, Senator John McCain reiterated his support for mandatory caps on greenhouse gasses and for a cap and trade policy for carbon dioxide. He also criticized President Bush’s lack of leadership on global warming. It is good news to see some consensus among all the Presidential candidates on the issue of global warming and a definite step forward.

Two other elements of McCain’s climate and energy policy are a little less positive. First is his support for the suspension of the gasoline tax for the summer. I’m with Mike Bloomberg on this—the tax suspension is one of the most idiotic proposals of this endless presidential campaign. If you want to reduce production of greenhouse gasses you should not be lowering the price of gasoline. If you want to keep our aging highway bridges from falling down you might not want to defund the highway trust fund. Second is McCain’s support of nuclear power. He is not alone in pushing nuclear power. While no one argues, as they did in the 1950’s, that nuclear generated electricity would be too cheap to meter, many scientists are attracted to nuclear energy’s carbon free properties. This includes a number of my colleague’s here at Columbia University.  read more »

Earlier this week, New York Times reporter Felicity Barringer filed an excellent story on San Francisco’s successful waste management strategy.

The story discussed San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s zeal for keeping garbage out of landfills. Currently, his city keeps 70 percent of its disposable garbage out of landfills.

You might think that would be enough, but it’s not. He is about to propose legislation to mandate recycling of cans, bottles, paper, yard waste and food scraps. If you don’t recycle, the city won’t pick up the rest of your garbage.

How much of New York City’s waste is kept out of landfills? About 30 percent. Of course, that puts us ahead of Boston at 16 percent and Houston at less than 3 percent.  read more »

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the pandering Presidential politics of Clinton, McCain and Obama. McCain pandered on the gas tax and Hillary and Barack pandered on trade.  read more »

When we walk down Broadway in Manhattan, we sometimes forget that New York is virtually surrounded by water. In fact, the five boroughs have 578 miles of shoreline. If global warming ends up melting enough sea ice at the poles to cause the sea level to rise, New York City is in a world of trouble.  read more »

A little more than a year ago, Mayor Michael Bloomberg launched his pathbreaking "PlaNYC 2030" urban sustainability plan. According to the city’s own progress report on the plan’s first year:

The implementation of PlaNYC's 127 initiatives requires the effort of more than 20 City agencies; the help of our Sustainability Advisory Board; partners and supporters from all across New York City; and close cooperation with the City Council and other elected officials. In the first year since the release of the plan, we completed rezonings, planted 54,484 trees, moved our taxis and black cars toward fuel efficiency, encouraged bicycling with 60 new lane miles, and engaged New York City in the most significant transportation discussion in a generation.

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In his ceaseless effort to maintain his record as the worst President on the environment since the creation of the EPA in 1970, President George W. Bush has somehow managed to outdo himself with his latest Rose Garden pronouncement on climate change. He has decided that we should continue to increase emissions of greenhouse gasses, but at a slower rate of growth than today and in 2025 we should finally stop the growth of these dangerous emissions.

You can tell the President’s team must have lost some of its spin doctors, because this latest effort in environmental public relations had no snappy title. Earlier in his administration we saw the “Healthy Forest” initiative that was a thinly disguised attack on the nation’s wilderness; and the “Clear Skies” program that was a clumsy and ultimately unsuccessful effort to dismantle the nation’s air pollution controls. Now, I propose we call this latest endeavor the “Floating Cities Initiative” because that is what we are going to need to survive this pathetic excuse for a policy on an issue as significant as global climate change.  read more »

We may be seeing the limits to public-private partnerships in park development.

The plan to use funds from the development of the West Side waterfront to finance new park construction and maintenance seems to be collapsing. While this doesn’t mean an end to these partnerships, it is a signal that public amenities still require public investment. There really is no such thing as a free lunch.

The latest episode in the Pier 40 saga took place on March 28, when Hudson River Park officials rejected a plan by Related Companies to build a $625 million performing arts complex on Pier 40, located at West Houston Street.  read more »

I don’t know why it still surprises me, but the political pandering of presidential politics continues to reach new and even lower levels. With bridges falling down, potholes unfilled and mass transit never mentioned, John McCain wants to suspend the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax from Memorial Day until Labor Day this summer.

McCain’s idea of an economic stimulus is that we all get in our cars and take a ride. Why worry about global warming and collapsing infrastructure? Let’s all hit the road!

It may be painful to hear, but America’s gasoline tax is too low. It should pay for all the costs of road construction and maintenance and it doesn’t even come close to covering our needs.  read more »

Last week Mayor Bloomberg announced that the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) would request proposals from private developers to enter into a 20-year deal with the city to buy, install, own and maintain solar panels on city-owned buildings in New York’s five boroughs.

The goal is to deliver two megawatts (MW) of solar power to city-owned buildings. In 2007 New York City was selected by the U.S. Department of Energy (D.O.E) as one of 13 cities to help build the country’s solar-energy market. As part of this partnership, the city set a goal of increasing its photovoltaic cell capacity from 1.1 MW in 2005 to 8.1 MW by 2015.

This is of course a small drop in a very large bucket.  read more »

I stumbled into my first class in Environmental Politics at SUNY/Buffalo in the Fall of 1975 and first went to work for the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 1977, and if you told me back then that thirty years later they would replace pickles and blintzes with eco-fashion on the Lower East Side—I would have thought you were nuts. I also would not have had the slightest idea what an eco-fashion was.

Fortunately, Sara Schonhardt, a graduate student at Columbia University, joins me on this piece, and helps explain what it means to shop green.

It turns out that New York City is fast developing a green shopping district. To learn more about green commerce in New York City checkout the Green Apple Map.

Venture into many of the small shops between East Houston and Delancey and you’re likely to find a new world of environmentally friendly fare, from leather-less shoes to organic stockings to dairy-free cheesecake.

As Jill Fehrenbacher, a green-design consultant and graduate of Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning, told us by e-mail: “I live in the lower east side, and I think my little neighborhood is the center of the universe for eco-friendly shopping. Within a three block radius we have three eco-friendly clothing boutiques – Kaight, Ekovaruhuset and Organic Avenue; a vegan shoe store, Moo Shoes; Whole Foods Market; and tons of vegetarian/vegan restaurants, including Teany, Tien Garden and Babycakes.”  read more »

"Shelly just came out of our conference and said our conference does not have the support to bring this to the floor,” Democratic Assemblyman Mark Weprin yesterday told reporters after a meeting with Speaker Sheldon Silver and Assembly democrats about Mayor Bloomberg's congestion-pricing bill. “I want to be clear that the conference was overwhelmingly against it,” he further said.

To say that congestion pricing died because the Assembly members were against it is of course true, but not the point. When items are important to Speaker Silver he has this habit of “leading” his conference. He will maintain that his style is to engage his members and compromise, and his ability to bully the legislature is overstated. That is, of course, ridiculous—the Speaker usually gets what he wants. The bottom line is that Shelly Silver killed congestion pricing.  read more »

While New York City has terrific drinking water, many of us still buy and drink bottled water. Some resourceful types carry around reusable containers and fill them with tap water, but many of us buy new bottles water at the store, often once a day or more. My colleague Eleanor Sterling, the Director of Graduate Studies for Columbia’s Department of Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Biology and the Director of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History, is the curator of a wonderful exhibit at the Museum called, “Water: H20 = Life." According to the bottled-water facts and figures presented in that exhibit:

Worldwide, 2.7 million tons of plastic are used each year to make water bottles, but in the U.S., less than 20 percent of these bottles are recycled.

The total estimated energy needed to make, transport, and dispose of one bottle of water is equivalent to filling the same bottle one-quarter full of oil.  read more »

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New York City’s 8 million residents and millions of businesses, construction projects and visitors generate as much as 36,200 tons of garbage every day.

The city’s Department of Sanitation handles nearly 13,000 tons per day of waste generated by residents, public agencies and non-profit corporations; private carting companies handle the remainder.

During the twentieth century, the City relied on a number of landfills for garbage disposal. Then, in December 2001, the city’s last garbage dump, Fresh Kills Landfill in Staten Island, closed. In response, we adopted a 20-year plan for exporting waste.

The city’s annual bill for collecting and disposing residential trash jumped from about $658 million in 2000 and to about one and a quarter billion dollars in 2008. The cost of disposal has grown from $300 million in 2005 to about $400 million today. While some of that is inflation, most of it is due to the higher cost of transporting and landfilling garbage out of state. The City’s long-term plan is to reduce costs by recycling more, reducing waste and building a waterfront waste transfer system less dependent on trucks and able to use containers to ship garbage by barge and train further away to cheaper dumpsites.

It is hard to imagine a more environmentally damaging waste-management system than the one we have in New York.  read more »

The "final" federal deadline of April 7 is approaching for the federal subsidy of $354 million to set up a congestion-pricing system for Manhattan’s Central Business District.

In these tough budget times the plan would produce an estimated $4.5 billion over the next five years for improved mass transit. It is the only source of funds available to reduce the M.T.A.’s dependence on fares and debt to improve transit. Even if the amount of funding ends up lower, it is still critical, found money.  read more »

With all the furor over the economy, congestion pricing and the philandering ways of New York’s governors, we forget sometimes that we are actually capable of acting like a real community and building for the future. I say sometimes, because, while this city has a magnificent system for delivering fresh water to its people, it has one of the worst solid waste management systems imaginable. Today let’s focus on the good news, New York City’s water supply system. I’ll get to the garbage soon enough.  read more »

The politics of congestion pricing is nearing a boiling point and opponents continue to make the case for a different approach to traffic reduction.

There are, of course other ways of reducing congestion, but Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal has the advantage of generating new resources for mass transit.

On Friday, our new Governor, David Paterson, demonstrated political courage and came out in favor of the plan to charge drivers for entering New York’s Central Business district during the work day. He joins City Council Speaker Christine Quinn and State Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno in support of the bill. Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver has yet to be heard from.

However, lots of prominent politicians are opposing all or part of the Mayor’s plan.

Today, New York's City Council begins formal consideration of the proposal.  read more »

As David Paterson took the oath of office as New York’s 55th governor earlier this week, you could almost taste the sense of relief in legislative chambers. Our new governor gave a remarkable, deeply personal and engaging talk and then left to face the challenges of rebuilding the broken machine of state government.

With Wall Street melting down, the economy heading south, and the war in Iraq continuing to drain the nation’s treasury and will, Governor Paterson faces a budget gap estimated at $5 billion. Upstate New York has been in a generation-long recession and now those of us in the City wonder if our own remarkably resilient post- 9/11 era will end with a crash.

New York City and New York State have been counted out before, and have demonstrated the capacity to come back. In the mid-1970’s, then-Governor Hugh Carey, the city’s labor unions and financial industry got together with then President Gerald Ford and figured out a way to dial back our near bankruptcy. Some of us remember the summer of 1977 as immortalized by sportscaster Howard Cosell’s famous phrase that “the Bronx is burning” during the Reggie Jackson-dominated World Series.  read more »

 Perhaps in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day, the New York Mercantile Exchange will begin a market to trade future and option contracts for credits representing reductions in greenhouse gases and other pollutants. This is part of their Green Exchange initiative formed by a partnership between the Mercantile Exchange and energy brokerage Evolution Markets.

What is this market selling?

In Europe, the European Community (the “government” that issues the Euro) regulates carbon emissions. In the U.S. we haven’t gotten around to regulating greenhouse gasses yet. Let’s hope we do before much longer. How it works in Europe: Let’s say a European company emits 10 tons of carbon dioxide a year, but under the rules they are allowed to emit 25 tons. They can sell their right to emit the 15 tons they are not emitting to a company that that is exceeding its target. But how does a company that needs to buy extra emission allowances find a company that has some to sell? Who sets the price for these emission allowances? The answer is that the market sets the price. On Monday, March 17th, one such market began operating when the New York Mercantile Exchange started selling option contracts for emission credits.  read more »