As world leaders meet in New York for a historic summit on climate
change, communities across the globe will flood financial centers to
confront the corporate and economic systems that are causing the climate
crisis.
Join a united global movement to attack the root causes of the climate
crisis and build an economy based on justice and sustainability. We need
climate justice. Take action in solidarity with communities on the
frontlines of the climate crisis for a day of:
Massive Coordinated Direct Actions Against Climate Profiteers.
9:00am – Gather at Battery Park for Breakfast and Music from Rude
Mechanical Orchestra
9:30am – Speakers including frontline community leaders of the Climate
Justice Alliance, Naomi Klein, Rebecca Solnit, and Chris Hedges
11:00am – Non-violent Direct Action Training and March
12:00pm – Flood Wall Street and Mass Sit-in at the New York Stock
Exchange
On the one year anniversary of the catastrophic Hurricane Sandy, Rupert
Murdoch’s Fox Business Network is promoting the conspiracy theory that
climate science is a liberal fiction. Fox Business host Stuart Varney
railed against the “global warming agenda” of the “mainstream media.”
It is one year since Hurricane Sandy ravaged the east coast. The
mainstream media continues to use the storm to push a global warming
agenda.
Watch it:
Varney’s guest, the conservative Media Research Center’s Dan Gainor,
complained that of the 32 segments in network news his group found that
mentioned Sandy and global warming, only two questioned the overwhelming
science that the increasing greenhouse effect from the combustion of
fossil fuels is accelerating sea level
rise
and making weather more extreme and chaotic. Despite numerous scientific
attribution studies on
wildfires, heat
waves,
droughts,
and
storms
that have found global warming fingerprints, Gainor falsely claimed that
“we cannot link climate change or global warming to a specific event.”
He furthermore dismissed the decades of work by thousands of scientists
in all earth-science disciplines that provide our understanding of
climate change as “stuff” and “guesswork.”
Gainor did not emphasize that his organization found only 32 mentions of
climate change and Sandy in an entire year of network news coverage. (In
contrast, for example, there were 52 segments on Iran’s nuclear program
in five months of network news coverage from November 2011 to March
2012.)
Climate denial is rampant in the financial press, not just the media
organs owned by Murdoch like Fox and the Wall Street Journal.
Forbes regularly
publishes climate-denial columns, and Reuters
editors
are openly hostile to climate science. And Comcast’s
CNBC features hosts such as Joe
Kernen,
who argues that the findings of climate science are a plot concocted by
a “bonafide
cult”
of “enviro-socialists” and the
“eco-taliban.”
Varney and Gainor also bemoaned the public stand the Los Angeles Times
has taken against global warming
denial
in its opinion pages. Over 25,000 people have signed a
petition
from climate accountability organization Forecast the Facts calling on
the nation’s other major papers, including the New York Times,
USA Today, and the Washington Post, to follow
suit.
On
Sunday, Forecast the Facts hosted a forum held in downtown New York City
looking at the role of Wall Street in financing the climate change that
threatens New York’s future prosperity. The panelists of the Turning
the Tide
forum,
including Center for American Progress senior fellow Bracken Hendricks,
Tom Steyer advisor Kate Gordon, and New Economy Lab’s James Slezak,
discussed how the financial industry needs to reject the anti-scientific
arguments pushed by Murdoch’s media properties and David H. Koch’s
network of think tanks and advocacy groups.
Gordon cited the Risky Business
initative,
led by Steyer, Michael Bloomberg, and former Treasury Secretary Hank
Paulson. The initiative, Gordon explained, is meant not only to provide
an economic assessment of the risk exposure different companies and
industries have to manmade global warming, but also to change the
culture of the financial sector. With that goal in mind, influential
Republicans and conservatives who accept the basic science of climate
change have been courted.
Wall Street is at a crossroads, all the panelists agreed. On the path of
fossil-fuel companies and climate deniers like New York City’s richest
man, carbon financier David H.
Koch, lies
accelerating sea level rise and intensifying storms that will swamp the
islands of New York City. But the investors and analysts can choose
another path, recognize the science, and invest in a sustainable future
that will save their city.
In
the New York City region, Sandy helped to mobilize a very necessary,
overdue conversation on climate survival, but the politics and economics
of ending climate pollution — specifically divesting from the fossil
fuel industries — has still largely been ignored.
The forum, webcast
live,
will confront the challenge that Wall Street faces in its financing of
the pollution that is threatening New York City’s future. We will also
tackle this thorny question: Why is David H. Koch,
NYC’s richest man, one of the people most
responsible for blocking US climate action?
- Moderator: Brad Johnson, Forecast the Facts - James Slezak, founder
of the New Economy Lab - Kate Gordon, VP and Director, Energy and
Climate, Next Generation - Bracken Hendricks, Senior Fellow, Center for
American Progress - Sophie Lasoff, founder of
NYU Divest
This forum follows the afternoon’s Turn the Tide on Sandy! rally at City
Hall, organized by the Alliance for a Just Rebuilding.
8 PM at Cooper Union’s Rose Auditorium in New York City.
RSVP
here.
Today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg
presented the city’s long-term
plan
to prepare for the impacts of a changing climate in the wake of
Superstorm Sandy. “We haven’t waited for Washington to lead the climate
change charge,” Bloomberg said at the Duggal Greenhouse in the Brooklyn
Navy Yard. “If we did, we’d still be waiting.”
The adaptation
plan he
presented, the work of the Special Initiative for Resilience and
Rebuilding, which was established by the mayor in December of last year,
is an important step for New York City in the right direction. Most
impressively, the plan has a comprehensive approach for reducing the
risk of catastrophic flooding through multiple initiatives from surge
barriers to improved building codes from Staten Island to Far Rockaway,
from Red Hook to lower Manhattan. The plan looks not just to the regions
devastated by Superstorm Sandy but uses projections developed by top
climate scientists for the rising threat of man-made global
warming
in the coming decades, Bloomberg said:
In fact, we expect that by mid-century up to one-quarter of all of
New York City’s land area, where 800,000 residents live today, will be
in the floodplain. If we do nothing, more than 40 miles of our
waterfront could see flooding on a regular basis, just during normal
high tides.
On Friday, the City of New
York allocated $294 million of Superstorm Sandy recovery
funds
for resiliency projects to respond to the threat of fossil-fueled
climate change. The announcement was part of the unveiling of
NYC’s plan for $1.77 billion in Sandy recovery
initiatives by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Housing and Urban Development
Secretary Shaun Donovan, and Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) at New York
City Hall:
The City has set aside $294 million for resiliency investments to
be detailed in a report issued by the Special Initiative for
Rebuilding and Resiliency later this month.
“HUD’s approval of our comprehensive Action Plan enables us to take
the next critical step toward recovery – launching the programs for
home rebuilding and business assistance that will rejuvenate the
neighborhoods Sandy hit hardest,” said Deputy Mayor for Operations Cas
Holloway. “We’ll also take the first steps toward making the City
more resilient to the impacts that we know climate change will
bring.”
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has
announced
an allocation plan for the $1.77 billion in federal Community
Development Block Grants that are part of the Sandy disaster relief bill
HR 152. It is not clear if mitigation of
climate pollution is part of planned investments in housing, business,
and infrastructure resiliency.
Housing Recovery – $720 Million
Single-Family Rehabilitation: $350 million to establish a grant
program for up to 9,300 homeowners whose residences were sustained
damage as a result of Hurricane Sandy and need additional funding to
restore their homes, implement resiliency measures and remediate
mold. Will assist up to 1,000 low-, moderate- and middle-income one-
and two-family homeowners whose primary residences were destroyed or
had major damage, and 8,300 low-, moderate- and middle-income
homeowners whose primary residences were damaged but not destroyed.
Multi-Family Rehabilitation: $250 million to fund programs to
enhance the resiliency of up to 12,790 units of housing for low-,
moderate- and middle-income New Yorkers damaged by Sandy that still
require significant resources to permanently address damage and
resume sustainable operations. The City’s program will provide
grants and low-interest loans, depending on need and scope.
Public Housing: $120 million to address initial resilience measures
for public housing developments, such as permanent emergency
generators at key buildings to provide backup power to critical
building systems.
Business Recovery – $185 Million
Business Resiliency Investments: $100 million to provide grants to
up to 1,300 businesses. $100,000 per company will go to small- and
mid-sized companies, and $1 million per company will go to large
companies in vulnerable areas. Program will require companies to
commit to reinvest in their New York City presence.
Expanded Loans and Grants: $80 million to provide loans and grants
to as many as 1,000 businesses. This program will provide expedited
low-interest loans of up to $150,000 on similar terms to the City’s
existing emergency loan program; provide expedited grants of up to
$60,000 to affected businesses; and invite community development
finance institutions to compete in a business plan competition to
solicit ideas for additional loan and grant programs which would
then be funded on a pilot basis, with the best program(s) then
funded at scale.
Innovations in Resiliency Technologies Competition: $5 million to
allocate, through “Race-to-the-Top”-style competitions, grants to
the most innovative and cost-effective ideas for demonstration
projects featuring resiliency products and technologies that can be
replicated citywide.
Infrastructure Resiliency – $140 Million
Neighborhood Game-Changer Investment Competition: $100 million to
jump-start economic activity in the five Business Recovery Zones by
allocating, through “Race-to-the-Top”-style competitions, grants to
the most innovative and effective investment ideas for spurring
long-term economic growth. Possible ideas could include attraction
of growing companies and/or companies of significant size,
attraction of companies that serve the needs of underserved
populations, or other transformative investments in key corridors.
Critical Utility Infrastructure Resiliency Competition: $40 million
to allocate, through “Race-to-the-Top”-style competitions, grants to
the most innovative and cost-effective resiliency measures
identified by the utilities for their critical networks. Grants will
be allocated to utilities in one or more of the following
categories: i) liquid fuel networks; ii) other energy networks
(power, steam, natural gas); and iii) telecommunications networks
(wires and wireless).
Today, Mayor Michael Bloomberg
presented the 
On Friday, the City of New
York allocated