John,
We face many important near-term challenges in New York City. Housing affordability. Mental health and homelessness. Growing numbers of asylum seekers.
But we can’t take our eyes off the biggest long-term challenge: Climate change. Because the climate crisis isn’t just coming. It’s already here.
This past year, we experienced the hottest summer on record, a skyline smeared orange with wildfire smoke, and extreme rainstorms that flooded our neighborhoods, homes, and subway stations. Rising seas, hotter temperatures, and more frequent storms are the new normal – so we must keep our attention on taking bolder action to transition away from fossil fuels, building a more resilient city, and preparing more effectively for when disasters hit.
As New York City’s chief financial officer – assigned to keep a sharp eye on long-term risks – I’m doing everything I can to combat climate change’s threat to our city and our future.
The key, as I discussed this week at the New York League of Conservation Voters Annual Meeting, is to mobilize New York’s strengths: our finances, our infrastructure, and our people.
NYC’s public pension funds (managed by my office) are a long-term promise to retirees, so our obligations stretch out for decades. Our investments are spread broadly across the economy. Climate risk is one of the biggest long-term financial risks we face.
That’s why we’re taking the boldest climate action of any public pension fund in the U.S. We divested from fossil fuels and adopted an ambitious but highly specific plan to reach net zero emissions. We’re scaling up investments in climate solutions, now over $10 billion.
And we’re holding our asset managers and portfolio companies accountable for doing their share to reduce fossil fuel emissions.
This week, we announced new shareholder proposals that call on the largest U.S. and Canadian banks to live up to their climate commitments: Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, and Royal Bank of Canada.
Announcing our new shareholder proposals at the League of Conservation Voters Annual Meeting.
Despite a lot of fine talk, banks have made little progress toward the net-zero commitments they’ve made. In fact, since the Paris Climate Accords, they’ve lent well over $1 trillion on new fossil fuel projects.
Our shareholder resolutions call on them to disclose their energy-supply financing ratios (that's the ratio of lending on clean energy to lending on fossil fuels). Right now, they’re lending almost 2x as much on fossil fuels. To keep global warming from blowing past 2.0 Celsius, they need to move rapidly to 4x as much on clean energy. So we’re demanding that the big banks report regularly and transparently on their transition.
In addition to attending to the climate impacts of our finances, we are also taking advantage of one particularly abundant resource here in NYC – our rooftops!
“Public Solar NYC” is an innovative program to cut through the expensive and bureaucratic process of installing rooftop solar by having the City finance, install, and own solar panels on private rooftops. Homeowners would reap energy savings, workers would get good jobs, the city would diversify the power grid, and we’d all benefit from accelerating the transition to clean energy.
This fall, together with City Hall, we submitted the proposal for Public Solar NYC to the federal government’s “Solar for All” program, part of the Inflation Reduction Act. We hope to launch later this year.
Public Solar NYC will take our sustainability to new heights :-)
While we work to reduce emissions, we must also contend better with increasingly frequent climate disasters. NYC is a coastal city, and the reality is that we must adapt to a world with more frequent and intense flooding, storms, and heat waves.
After Tropical Storm Ophelia shut down 11 subway lines and 45 stations last September, my office launched an investigation into the City’s ability to manage extreme rainfall. The goal of the investigation is to help prepare for future extreme rainfall events. We’re reviewing whether the city has followed through on extreme weather preparedness plans made after Hurricane Ida.
The investigation focuses both on what City agencies need to do, and also on how we can better support and prepare community groups who are often the first responders in climate disasters.
When the storms hit, when the subway stations become waterfalls, and when the skies turn orange, climate disasters feel urgent. But then those memories gradually fade. In a city like ours, it’s hard to sustain our focus. And we end up unprepared when the next crisis hits.
But we can’t lose our focus. In future floods or heat waves, our preparedness could be the difference between life and death for many of our neighbors.
With good management, better coordination, and sustained focus, New York City can be a climate leader – more active in reducing emissions, and more ready for the future we face.
With hope,
Brad
