Fighting Climate Change

Annual Report 2018

2018 was the 2nd year of NYCC’s new program to fight climate change and inequality. It’s gone spectacularly better than we expected!

2018 started with NYC’s Mayor, Comptroller and Public Advocate committing to divest its mammoth pension funds from oil and gas, which means the likes of Exxon will lose about $5 billion in investments. It’s the world’s largest divestment win at the local level – and has sparked other large funds to divest, for example the entire country of Ireland! That was a hard fought campaign, detailed in last year’s report.

Now, 2018 has ended with the New York City Council on the verge of enacting the world’s largest cut to climate pollution by any municipality, ever, thanks in large part to our work.

In November, the City Council Speaker, Corey Johnson, and Chair of the Council’s Environmental Committee, Costa Constantinides introduced Intro 1253, which would require large buildings over 25,000 square feet ––– the top source of climate pollution from NYC –– to slash their climate pollution by over 80% by upgrading to high energy efficiency standards.

According to media, Intro 1253 is “historic” … “aggressive” … the “most ambitious city level climate bill in the world” that will “deliver the largest cargon reduction in any city in history”. It’s true! If enacted, the bill will set the world’s first comprehensive requirements to slash pollution from the city’s top pollution source: energy use in build- ings. It will set a worldwide example. Just as with New York City’s divestment, the bill will lead to other cities taking similar action.

Intro 1253 also creates thousands of good, union jobs yearly hiring from communities of color for renovation and construction work to rehab and upgrade the city’s most polluting buildings to high energy efficiency. The legislation is a #GreenNewDeal4NYC.

We’ll push hard to enact Intro 1253, but with the Council’s leadership as well as Mayor’s support, we’re in a strong position to win. Both of these victories are the result of NYCC and our allies’ hard-hitting organizing and campaign work.

Our political theory is: win transformative policy victories by combining our base in communities of color with predominantly white progressive climate activists in aggressive, relentless campaigns that demand big results. We’re constantly organizing and putting together events – at a much higher volume than other organizations.

In 2018, we grew from one to two staffers devoted full-time to climate/inequality campaigns. As a result, we delivered even more work in 2018 than in 2017: NYCC was either the main organizer or the co-organizer of over 50 events and protests, which included nearly 500 NYCC members in attendance.

Many of these were small, rapid-response protests, but we also led the organizing on two much larger events, including a 1,500 person march and rally in Albany (photo above) and a nearly 3,000 person march in Lower Manhattan. NYCC is helping unite diverse communities for these high-impact events.

Our climate/inequality work is going better and faster than our wildest expectations!

Of course, we’re not going to slow down. In 2019, we plan to drive home these wins by passing Intro 1253 and look forward to NYC’s pension fund beginning to divest by starting to dump about $5 billion in oil and gas holdings. We will also fire up our efforts for more big victories that make a meaningful difference in the fight against climate change and inequality!

Keep reading to check out our plans for 2019.

Sincerely,

Patrick Houston

Pete Sikora