New York’s aggressive climate law takes aim at skyscrapers

ON THURSDAY, THE New York City Council voted into law a sweeping set of rules to fight climate change, a metropolis-scaled version of a Green New Deal. And if the lawmakers and policy wonks who built the bills have their way, they’ll be a model for cities everywhere to cut carbon emissions and save the planet.

Most of New York's carbon emissions come from the heating
and cooling of large buildings. The city's new laws will pressure
 its skyscrapers to shrink their carbon footprint.

The Climate Mobilization Act, an omnibus of a half-dozen bills, takes an aggressive posture to reducing carbon emissions from America’s most populous city. Those 8.6 million people emitted 4.5 million metric tonnes of carbon in 2016; in most of the world knocking that number down would probably mean cutting emissions from cars and trucks. And this Green New (York) Deal does include more work on converting the city’s school bus fleet to electric, and on spinning up wind turbines and replacing the city’s 21 gas-fired power plants. But New York, New York, is a wonderful town; the people ride in a hole in the ground. In other words, public transit use is widespread. Well, when it’s working.

Read the story from Wired by Adam Rogers - “New York’s aggressive climate law takes aim at skyscrapers.”