By AMBERLEY CANEGITTA
Climate change was the big topic at Mayor Bill de Blasio’s session with the media on Thursday.
“Once the pandemic is done, all of our attention is going to go onto the climate crisis, and it needs to,” he said.
“We have to get this right. If we’re going to have a future in this city, in this country, in this world, we need to deal with the climate crisis.”
New York City became the first in the nation to commit to net zero emissions, with a plan to have net zero emissions by 2040.
This includes massively pulling out of fossil fuel public pension investments and instead redirecting that money to renewable energy. This would mean divesting from fossil fuel reserves — oil, gas, coal companies — and instead investing in renewables. That means getting involved in technologies focused on energy efficiency and in products such as electric cars and infrastructures around electric cars, such as charging stations.
Today’s declarations by the mayor come less than two weeks before the U.N. Climate Summit in Glasgow, with some politicians worried that the United States will not have new plans to reveal (for reducing emissions in accordance with the Paris Climate Accord).
“With the way that budget reconciliation is going in Washington, we cannot show up to Glasgow empty handed. We simply cannot,” said U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was with the mayor.
“And, right now, dark money interests in Washington are trying to ensure that we do show up empty-handed and essentially sacrifice the United States’ leadership role globally in global reductions of climate emissions. We will not allow that to happen. . . (W)e will divest and we will transition the United States’ energy infrastructure and our economy to be more just and to be better prepared to transition our energy infrastructure for clean and renewable sources.”
President Biden will be attending the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow, which starts on October 31.