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Media Newswire
(Media-Newswire.com) - During an address today at the United Nations,
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced a long-term plan to reduce
tropical hardwood consumption by City agencies. The Mayor's Office also
released the Tropical Hardwood Reduction Report, which was developed
over the past 60 days by a working group made up of City agencies and
the Mayor's Office of Long-term Planning and Sustainability, directed
by Deputy Mayor for Operations Edward Skyler. The Mayor announced the
report, which details plans to reduce hardwoods, on December 13th in
Bali, at the UNFCCC Conference. In creating the long-term plan, the
City is seeking practical cost-effective solutions that considered
safety and durability.
The Report realistically outlines
strategies to move New York City away from tropical hardwoods to more
sustainable alternatives. In the short-term, the plan will reduce
tropical hardwood usage by 20 percent by eliminating these woods for
construction and maintenance of park benches, piloting alternative
materials for existing boardwalks, and reducing, to the greatest extent
possible, the amount used by the Department of Design and Construction,
the Department of Cultural Affairs, the Economic Development
Corporation, the Mayor's Office of Capital Project Development and
other City agencies. The Report also commits the City to avoiding
tropical hardwoods for any new waterfront promenades. To further reduce
the City's use of tropical hardwoods in the long-term in a safe and
cost-effective way, the Report includes a series of studies to evaluate
alternative designs and materials for our marine transfer stations,
Brooklyn Bridge Promenade, maintenance of existing boardwalks, and
Staten Island Ferry docks.
Below is the text of the Mayor's speech to the UN as delivered:
"Good
morning. Mister President; Mister Secretary-General; Mr. Escobar, and
permanent representatives to the United Nations; excellencies;
delegates; and particularly my country's ambassador, Mr. Zalmay
Khalilzad. We are pleased to me members of the United Nations and I am
thrilled to have the honor to address this august body. The United
Nations has been, and always will be important to New York City for the
vital work that you do and I think important to this country and to the
world. And its importance to New York is shown by the fact that the
Mayor's office maintains a Commission for the United Nations, Consular
Corps, and Protocol, whose commissioner is my sister, Marjorie Tiven.
So if it's good enough for my family, it's good enough for New York
City.
"And on a personal note, I was just thinking that
nothing would have made our father prouder than to see us here today. I
was born shortly before the United Nations was founded and it has
always been important to my family.
"Of course, being the Mayor
of New York - the world's most international city - is a bit like
presiding over the United Nations every single day of the year.
"If
you call our Citizen Service Hotline at 311, you can get information
about City services in any of the 170 different languages spoken in our
city. We do try to help everyone. I will say we're not always
successful. Earlier this year, someone called to ask for Oprah
Winfrey's phone number. I don't think we were able to satisfy her. And
not too long after, someone else asked: 'What is the capital of the
world?' Actually, that was an easy one for us to answer: the home of
the United Nations. But maybe I'm a little bit prejudiced.
"It
has been not quite two months since the close of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bali. And it was my privilege
to address that convention at the invitation of ICLEI, Local
Governments for Sustainability, a worldwide network of more than 700
cities and counties that, like New York City, are actively engaged in
combating climate change. Bali certainly was an historic gathering. It
set the stage for a global compact that advances the progress begun
some 10 years ago at Kyoto.
"However, between now and the
Copenhagen Conference late next year, we must establish, I think, the
preconditions for such progress. Both developed and developing nations
must recognize the need to alter their policies and make serious
commitments to change. And I believe that our experience in New York
City, and the experience of many of the world's other great cities,
too, can help guide that process.
"Because today I want to
outline just how much we and the world's other cities have already
contributed to the struggle against global climate change and some of
the new steps our city is now taking in this arena and why the world's
cities must be part of the next and critical phase of international
action.
"The first precondition for making the Copenhagen
negotiations a success, I believe, is that the United States, which
leads the world in greenhouse gas production, must finally set real and
binding carbon reduction targets. As long as there is no penalty or
cost involved in producing greenhouse gases, there will be no incentive
to meet such targets. And for that reason, I believe the U.S. should
enact a tax on carbon emissions. Now, others advocate a cap-and-trade
system - an approach that I believe would be less direct and therefore
less successful. But either alternative would be superior to our
current inadequate status quo. Instituting either would mark a major
and welcome commitment to addressing climate change. And I believe the
American people are prepared to accept our responsibility to lead by
example. America always has, and I think America should continue to.
And our President and Congress must begin to work together in a
bi-partisan fashion to make such leadership possible.
"The
carbon reduction targets that the U.S. should set must be ambitious but
also achievable. And here, as I have said, the experience of New York
City is instructive. Ten months ago, we adopted a set of long-term
sustainability goals, which we call our 'PlaNYC,' and which was
highlighted in the
United Nations Development Program's Human
Development Report for 2007-2008. Based on a careful assessment of what
existing technology makes feasible, we determined that New York City
can shrink our carbon footprint 30% from current levels by the year
2030. And recent authoritative studies indicate that the U.S. could do
something very close to that, too - and at nearly zero net cost,
because so many of the energy efficiency strategies involved actually
save money in the long run.
"The second pre-condition for
progress at Copenhagen is a willingness by nations with developing
economies to make serious commitments to address global warming as
well. Realistically, such commitments are likely to be different from
those required of the U.S. or other developed countries. But China and
India are also great nations and they must accept the burdens of
greatness by setting the energy efficient standards that will help meet
the most urgent environmental challenge of our era.
"New York
City's experience is illustrative here as well because as we've
embarked on reducing our carbon footprint, we've learned something that
I hope our colleagues from Beijing and Delhi are also realizing:
reducing your carbon production increases the social and economic
well-being of your people. Let me quickly cite four examples.
"First,
we're converting our city's taxi fleet to hybrid cars. This action
alone will reduce New York City's carbon footprint by half of one
percent. In the bargain, it will also clean our air of pollutants, and
save thousands of dollars a year in fuel costs for our cabdrivers.
"Second,
we've also proposed a program of congestion pricing, designed to
discourage driving in our busy business district during the peak
weekday hours. It's modeled on successful efforts in London, Stockholm,
and Singapore. Those cities have now been joined my Milan, where Mayor
Letizia Moratti will be a panelist later this morning. Not only will
the congestion pricing we propose reduce the carbon emissions produced
by autos. It will also clean our air, make our economy more productive,
and finance the new transit lines we desperately need.
"Third,
we're working to green our buildings - again, not just to cut carbon
emissions, but also because it will allow us to redirect billions of
dollars a year it now takes to heat and cool these buildings, often
inefficiently, to better purposes.
"Fourth, we're planting one
million trees throughout our city during the next ten years - and have
already put more than 30,000 of them in the ground, often in
neighborhoods where such trees are sorely lacking. They will not only
capture carbon dioxide, but also clean the air, cool our streets,
reduce street flooding, and raise property values.
"I could go
on and one, but I think I made my point: serious carbon targets will
not hamper growth, and it will leave us all better off. If the U.S. and
the developing nations make such commitments, then the prospects for a
new international global warming accord improve greatly. But it's also
clear that the world cannot wait for 2009. Global warming demands
immediate action. As the New York Times columnist Tom Friedman warned
in a report summing up the Bali conference: On this issue, 'It's too
late for later.'
"The world's great cities recognize that. Each
day, we confront the health effects of the air pollution produced by
power plants and auto traffic that's also raising the earth's
temperature. With half the world's population now living in our cities
- a trend which will only accelerate in the years ahead - leaders in
local governments around the globe are already moving aggressively and
creatively to fight climate change.
"As the officials who are
closest to the people, and the problems they face, we don't have the
luxury of talking about change, but not delivering it. So we are not
waiting for others to act first. And it's why the mayors of many of the
world's largest cities have joined forces to fight climate change in
the 'C-40' organization, whose conference it was New York's privilege
to host last May.
"It's why, even though our national
government has yet to approve the Kyoto Protocol, more than 700 cities
in the United States, representing more than 80 million Americans, have
pledged to meet its goals. And it's why, later this year, New York City
will convene a two-day conference of representatives from more than 20
major world cities. It will feature experts from around the globe in
such fields as transportation, city planning, public health, and other
disciplines. It will address the challenges that the world's cities
share in reducing urban air pollution and curbing climate change. The
conference is also being organized by New York City Global Partners, a
non-profit organization that conducts our city-to-city partnerships
with the world's most creative and far-thinking cities.
"We're
also working with the Climate Group, an extraordinary organization that
has partnered with governments and corporations around the world in
implementing 'green' policies. And these companies include that of the
luncheon speaker you're going to have today, Sir Richard Branson's
Virgin Group, who has made his company a leader in 'greening' the
aviation industry.
"The world's cities must also think globally,
even as we act locally. And so let me announce what New York City is
now prepared to do to curb tropical deforestation. The conference in
Bali highlighted the fact that such deforestation is an ecological
calamity - one with huge global warming implications. It accounts for
some 20% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. New York, like many
other cities, uses tropical hardwoods - in our case, for park benches,
ferry landings, our extensive beach boardwalks, and also for the
walkway on the world-famous Brooklyn Bridge. The physical properties of
these hardwoods, especially their durability and resistance to rot,
make them ideal for such uses. And, as any engineer will tell you, once
you've designed a structure for one material, you just can't use a
replacement; you've got to go back to the drawing board.
"Currently,
we purchase more than $1 million a year of such hardwoods, making us
one of the largest consumers of hardwoods in North America.
Nevertheless, I made a commitment in Bali that we would assess New York
City's use of these hardwoods and develop an ambitious and achievable
strategy to reduce it. And here is the result:
"Our City's
agencies will immediately reduce their use of tropical hardwoods by
20%. They will do that by specifying domestic wood, recycled plastic
lumber, and other materials in the design of park benches and other
construction projects. We are also going to undertake serious,
long-term studies of the design of our boardwalks and ferry piers to
see what alternatives we can use when these structures have to be
replaced. And from now on we will also refrain from designing new
boardwalks with tropical hardwoods. New Yorkers don't live in the rain
forest. But we do live in a world that we all share. And we're
committed to doing everything we can to protect it for all of our
children.
"And that's just one example, I think, of how, not
just New York, but the other cities of the world, can help shape a
better future for our world. We do small things but the small things
all add up and the key is that we do things. And as you and your
governments look forward to Copenhagen, let me conclude by repeating a
message that I delivered in Bali: Make the cities of your nations
active participants in that process because we bring much to the table.
From the dawn of civilization, we have always been the hub of human
industry and the matrix of human invention. The scientific curiosity,
thirst for discovery, and enterprising spirit fostered so long ago in
medieval cities launched the process that today knits our world
together into one global community. It was said then that "city air is
freer," because cities liberated people from the bonds of feudalism.
Cities unlocked human creativity and fired human imaginations. Now
cities can help make air not only freer, but also healthier, for
everyone who inhabits our globe.
"Our time for meeting this
urgent challenge is short. So I wish all of you attending this
conference every success as you work together to address it. Good luck
to all of you. And for those who have come from great distances to
attend this conference: Thank you very much for what you're doing, the
future of our planet really is in your hands, and welcome to the
capital of the world: New York City. Thank you."
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