As an architecture critic, I’ve always maintained that the climate crisis cannot be tackled with flashy rhetoric, buildings with showy greenery, or glossy renderings of ecomodernist utopias that will never be built. The field’s most meaningful efforts to combat climate change are actually quite mundane. We need to retrofit the existing building stock with better insulation and ventilation, eliminate fossil fuels in the built environment, and reduce the immense pollution that buildings already emit (energy use in residential buildings accounts for 37 percent of all emissions in New York City).
New York has, in the last few years, made tremendous progress in its battle against building pollution. But thanks to the ever-circling vultures of the real estate industry, that progress is under threat. When New York City Local Law 97 (LL97) was passed in 2019, it was hailed as a kind of “Green New Deal” for the city level. The […]
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court with its 6 ultra-conservative justices side with building owners or any business at the expense of protecting the planet and people’s health. Until we get rid of at least 3 of them, they will continue to support big business and polluters.
The article would have you blame the Supreme Court, which in this case is inappropiate. Congress has failed in its duty to engage in appropiate debate regarding regulation for decades. It’s much easier for elected officials to rage against ” those unelected bureaucrates in Washington” rather than take responsibility for the regulations which are issued in the name of Congress. The Executive branch has been overreaching for decades. This decision is long overdue. What Supreme Court decision will due is to 1) force Congress or act or 2) bring out the political dysfunction for all to see. There is a reason the main stream media works hard to hide that we have a non-representative system. Note as well that the article indicates that the current mayor of NYC has long been a friend of the real estate industry. This should suprise no one. What enforing this law will do is to raise to awareness issues in buildings which have long been neglected. As anyone involved in even the smallest home improvement project will tell you – it’s always more complicated than you expect. The landlords know this. Just the complexities of adding insulation will be quite large. If you wish to blame someone, blame your so called elected representatives who have been falling down on the job for far to long.
As an intuitive, I’m sensing that we’re coming up on changes in the Supreme Court. Their posistions are not ‘absolute forever and ever, amen.’ More and more, people are being exposed for the damage they’re doing and
in one way or another, they’re going down! Same for Congress. We’re in a. period of taking out the trash and recycling.. Our job is to keep making noise and to stay focused on possibilities that support well being. Hoo yah! Time well spent is when you skip the resentful and move into relentless! Make noise. Bang the drums. I predict Clarence and Ginny Thomas are going first.