The Oil Drum: Local

Eliot Spitzer's historic fall from grace was a blow to many progressives who believed that he would reform New York's dysfunctional state government, but his replacement may be equally transformative, but from a Peak Oil perspective.

David Paterson will be the nation's first legally blind Governor and only the fourth African American governor (New York's first)since Reconstruction ended. As I wrote back in 2006, Lieutenant Governor David Paterson is not only peak oil aware, but willing to make public speeches about it and fairly eloquent on explaining peak oil to ordinary folks.

What a week we have had in New York politics! On Monday the Mayor went to Albany to try to forge a deal with the state's power brokers to get approval on his congestion pricing plan (as well as many other environmental initiatives). With neither legislative branch even holding a vote on the matter and a Federal deadline for $500 million passing by, it seemed that the whole ambitious plan may have crumbled under the weight of Albany's inertia and political wrangling.

But lo and behold, there is some sort of deal that is shaping up to let the Mayor's congestion pricing initiative live to fight another day. Streetsblog has a good summary of where the politics stand:

Update: I went to the speech today and I'm pretty pumped. Bloomberg is pretty much staking the rest of his days as Mayor and his legacy on this initiative. Read all 127 proposals here

Get ready for some big announcements tomorrow from the PlaNYC 2030 folks. The mayor will be announcing over 100 specific proposals tomorrow on Earth day. And he will most likely call for some type of Congestion Pricing as a way to pay for increased mass transit options and service. The heart of his plan will probably revolve around increasing energy efficiency in buildings and building significantly more new housing.

But I'm really trying to not get my hopes up too much. There will be much political heavy lifting required to make this happen and I think we may have many of the right pieces in place. This is the Big Bang approach to sustainability and by bundling many of these proposals together, Bloomberg is taking a calculated risk that parts of his plan may not make it into reality.

Again, I'm trying to not get my hopes up too much! Stay tuned.

After seven years as Commissioner of the NYC Department of Transportation, Iris Weinshall has resigned and decided to move on to be a Vice Chancellor at the City University of New York (CUNY). While it is generally agreed that Weinshall provided excellent administrative skills in professionalizing an agency that had corruption and performance issues before her tenure, she failed to lead the agency into the new century and embrace policies of innovation around creating real pedestrian and bike friendly infrastructure.

New York needs leaders that can do more than simply fill potholes and keep cars moving on the roads.

Photo by Geofffox

We're currently on track to have THE latest appearance of snow in New York since they started keeping records. December was mostly above average temperatures (see chart above) and January has so far been above normal as well. The result has been very few days below the freezing point this winter and NO SNOW.

Julianne Warren, 40, a conservation biologist visiting New York from Lexington, Va., is concerned. She said she heard a white-throated sparrow in Central Park and saw an azalea blooming.

“Things seem a little —” she said, and then wiggled her outstretched right hand as if it were an airplane in turbulence. “It may mean the flowers don’t bloom at the right time and birds may not know to migrate at the right time.”

There are indeed reports all over the city of strange bloomings happening around the city: daffodils growing in Morningside Park , something that looks like a cherry tree in Riverside Park. Streetsblog calls it like it is: New York is the New Baltimore.

And it's not just NYC. Most of New England, the Midwest and Europe have significantly less snow pack than normal at this time.

The warmth and lack of snow are also affecting all of Europe. The famed Russian winter that stopped the armies of Hitler and Napoleon has failed to show up this year. Virtually all of Europe has seen the warmest and least snowy December on record, to go with their warmest fall on record. Temperatures in Moscow this December have hit 47 F, a full 87 degrees above the lowest readings recorded last winter. The brown bears at the Moscow zoo have refused to hibernate for the first time ever, thanks to the record warmth.

From local to global, December 2006 to March 2007 looks like it could be the year that winter never came. Stay tuned.

We're currently on track to have THE latest appearance of snow in New York since they started keeping records. December was mostly above average temperatures (see chart above) and January has so far been above normal as well. The result has been very few days below the freezing point this winter and NO SNOW.

Julianne Warren, 40, a conservation biologist visiting New York from Lexington, Va., is concerned. She said she heard a white-throated sparrow in Central Park and saw an azalea blooming.

“Things seem a little —” she said, and then wiggled her outstretched right hand as if it were an airplane in turbulence. “It may mean the flowers don’t bloom at the right time and birds may not know to migrate at the right time.”

There are indeed reports all over the city of strange bloomings happening around the city: daffodils growing in Morningside Park , something that looks like a cherry tree in Riverside Park. Streetsblog calls it like it is: New York is the New Baltimore.

And it's not just NYC. Most of New England, the Midwest and Europe have significantly less snow pack than normal at this time.

There are many very good and far reaching proposals, such as reducing NYC's greenhouse gas emissions by 30%, increasing parkland, upgrading NYC's aging infrastructure and building new housing on brownfields near transit. He was also downright dour about the consequences of inaction, saying that we risk a breakdown in basic systems that keep the city functioning and a deteriorating quality of life for its residents if we don't act NOW.

This is exactly what I and many other people have dreamed about for quite some time. It's a little overwhelming to consider how well this could be done and worry greatly about how badly this could be botched.

Bloomberg also says that he will be engaging in a serious period of listening to what the people recommend on making the city more sustainable. So what advice would us Oil Drummers give to Mayor?

With all the talk about congestion pricing that's going on in New York the last couple of weeks, momentum is building to do something other than continue to talk about it. And from the first reactions of the political establishment, you can break down the reaction to basically Manhattanites favoring the idea and folks from Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island opposing it.

But based on the chart above, 39% of the total number of people and 606,000 people by car entering the Central business district enter through 60th Street from either the Upper East or Upper West Sides. This includes the all the traffic that enters the CBD from Northern Manhattan, the Bronx, Westchester/Rockland Counties, Northern New Jersey GW Bridge) and Connecticut.

What if that's where we start with Congestion Pricing? What would the political landscape look like if we just started with all vehicles going over the strip line at 60th street going south in the morning and north in the afternoon / evening?

The report, titled "Growth or Gridlock" estimates the cost of traffic congestion at $13 Billion and states that "Every year, these losses will grow if something is not done to reduce the number of vehicles moving through the region during the peak periods."

We have written alot about congestion pricing here at NYC:TOD and I strongly believe that this is one of the best ways we could tame oil consumption and dependency in the city.

As usual Streetblog is also on the case tracking this and has a nice history of congestion pricing in NYC.

A much better and more expansive list of policy recommendations can also be found at "Energize America" platform put together by the good folks at Daily Kos. But rather than debate all these specific proposals I thought I might start defining the key overarching principles that should guide policy makers in drafting legislation aimed at decreasing oil dependence and carbon emissions.

The first principle is "End All Subsidies of Fossil Fuels".