#GasBanNYC

In NYC

The campaign to win a gas ban in NYC (that is, a ban on natural gas hookups in new construction and gut renovations) has officially launched. If you’d like to be a part of the effort, you can check out this fact sheet, these slides, and this Politico article on the mayor’s support for a gas ban. If you live in NYC, I hope you’ll then feel compelled to reach out to your councilperson to urge them to sign this pledge. If you’d like to do more than that, just get in touch with me personally as I’m volunteering with New York Communities for Change (NYCC) as an organizer on this effort.

Speaking of NYCC, Pete Sikora has a good op-ed in New York Focus on the ongoing struggle to block Part R in Albany. (Tl;dr – it looks like we’ll stop the governor’s effort to hollow out NYC’s landmark 2019 Local Law 97, but it’s too soon to tell, and one can never put something past Andrew Cuomo, especially as he’s politically wounded, flailing, and in need of all the support he can get from the real estate lobby.)

And Beyond

Further afield, a group of environmental justice orgs wrote this letter to congressional leaders in DC urging them to “Please pass, this year, President Biden’s priority legislation of achieving 100% clean electricity in the United States by 2035”; Rainforest Action Network released their “Banking on Climate Chaos: Fossil Fuel Finance Report” for 2021; and results of a recent study were “‘Mystery chemicals’ found in pregnant Bay Area women,” a stark reminder that climate change/global heating is only one of the multiple planetary boundaries currently at risk of rupture by out-of-control capitalist exploitation of the Earth.

Lots of urgent work to be done, and I hope you’re engaged in your own evolving process of being part of the transformative decade we need to make this one of which we’re at the start.

Postscript: The University of Michigan has announced it is divesting from fossil fuels as part of an ambitious program of climate action. When will my alma mater, UNC, do the same?