The average New Yorker uses around 30% as much energy as a suburbanite, so the single most environmentally-friendly thing anyone in the USA can do is move to a dense city like New York and take public transit instead of private cars.
As New Yorkers, it’s our job to welcome new comers so they, too, can adopt our environmentally-friendly lifestyles.
This requires the “densification” of New York City, which we can encourage by up-zoning neighborhoods and investing in the transit infrastructure necessary to support a growing population.
We should also coordinate infrastructure investments and development policies with municipalities throughout the New York Metropolitan Area. Cities with rail lines that lead to NYC’s main transit hubs should have vibrant downtown’s with significant housing stock within walking distance of the train station. My proposed Regional Coordination Initiative will organize to achieve these goals.
Creating a denser New York City with more robust mass transit infrastructure is infinitely more environmentally friendly than the theatrical environmentalism popular among New York City’s political class.
Calling Out Performative Environmentalism
Our city’s political class loves to pretend like they care about the environment by making silly laws that are often very environmentally unfriendly. The plastic bag ban is a great example.
If you’re worried about the climate-change causing CO2 of plastic bags, don’t be. A Danish study shows that one “eco” cotton shopping bag take 10,000 times more energy to produce than a single plastic bag. That means you’d have to use a cotton bag everyday for over 20 years before it saves any CO2 from entering the atmosphere.
If you’re worried about plastic pollution in the ocean, don’t blame NYC’s plastic bags. Over 90% of ocean plastics come from 10 rivers in Asia and Africa where people don’t have modern sanitation systems.
The plastic bag ban might make some people feel good, but it’s bad policy, bad science. Don’t be conned. Our top environmental priority should be to make a dense, awesome city with abundant housing and efficient, pleasant and electrified transit systems.
Send Us Your Solutions
Have an idea for how we can improve the environment? Tell us about it!