De Blasio Takes Aim At Tall Buildings In His Green New Deal
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Taking a page from the progressive playbook, Mayor Bill de Blasio has unveiled a green new deal that bans future construction of energy inefficient glass-walled buildings and forces large existing buildings to reduce their carbon footprint or face massive fines.
You can tell de Blasio is thinking really seriously about running for president because in announcing a plan to attack global warming, similar to plans that have been proposed by an army of progressives, he wanted voters to know that his plan is better than everyone else's.
"For the first time on the Earth the first major city on the Earth to mandate that our buildings must stop emitting so many dangerous pollutants," de Blasio said.
MORE: Council Passes NYC's Green New Deal, Mandating Updates On Buildings
The mayor was referring to a law passed by the city council last week that will require all existing large buildings, including landmarks like the Empire State Building and Trump Tower, to make energy efficient upgrades or face fines of up to $1 million a year.
The mayor's plan also called for:
* A ban on all glass-facade buildings unless they meet strict guidelines
* Mandatory organics recycling
* Purchasing hyrdopower from Canada to run city facilities
"We have skin in the game. We're going to lead by example," de Blasio said.
Well, most of the time, anyway.
Asked if he would lead by example by forgoing his daily drive from Gracie Mansion to his Brooklyn gym to cut carbon emissions, he ducked.
"We've talked about it before. I'm not going to go over it again," de Blasio said.
And for the record, hizzoner originally proposed forcing buildings to cut greenhouse gas emissions in September 2017.
When told that some of the ideas are recycled, de Blasio said, "These are not recycled ideas because they haven't been put into action, Marcia. There's a lot of good ideas in the world, but what really matters is do you bring them to life? So, they actually work. Do they actually happen?"
Eddie Bautista, the head of the Environmental Justice Alliance, said he's been fighting for these things for a decade. He's worried about one part of the plan that will allow offsets.
"It opens the for emissions trading," Bautista said. "In the traditional concept of offsetting you say continue to pollute as a power plan in Brooklyn and pay for open space in Putnam."
City officials insist that's not going to happen, that big buildings will be able to offsets for the last 10 percent of the reductions they have to make, but they can do it by purchasing clean power, which currently is 50 percent more expensive than regular electricity.
