It's High Noon for congestion pricing in New York City.
If by week's end the City Council and State Legislature haven't enacted a fee to drive into Manhattan's central business district, the city will forfeit a substantial federal mass-transit grant and congestion pricing will probably be a dead issue for the remainder of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's second and final term.
Coincidentally, this month also brings a deadline of sorts for the Cape Wind project off Cape Cod. The federal Minerals Management Service is accepting comments on its Draft Environmental Impact Statement on Cape Wind through April 21.
What do a wind farm for Nantucket Sound and congestion pricing for Manhattan have in common, and why are both so significant for the environmental cause?
Both would directly reduce the burning of fossil fuel -- in oil-fired generating plants and gasoline-burning tailpipes, respectively -- thus cutting greenhouse gas emissions. And both have been on the table for a good half-dozen years, if not more, which shows you just how hard it is to take away entitlements cherished by powerful minorities. The entitlements in question are a kind of unpurchased, appropriated ownership of the Nantucket Sound "viewshed" enjoyed by wealthy Cape Cod landowners and an equally groundless right to drive for free enjoyed primarily by relatively well-off New York commuters.
Both proposals demand of citizens that they make connections which are not obvious yet are quite real: that windmills keep fossil fuels elsewhere in the ground, and that congestion pricing is the only sure way for drivers to compensate for the harms they inflict on the city.
At the dawn of the Cape Wind controversy, in 2002, M.I.T. Professor William Shutkin wrote:
The story of the Cape Wind proposal is not about wind turbines, or fisheries, or pristine seascapes. It is about the capacity of environmentalists -- of citizens -- to match their public positions with the private choices necessary to move toward a more environmentally and economically sustainable way of life.
Cape Wind objectors are, more often than not, people whose private choices don't match their public positions -- who tout their environmental credentials and proclaim their support for windmills, "just not here." Their language finds an uncanny echo in the carping against congestion pricing, like this in a letter yesterday to my local weekly:
Although congestion pricing on a macro level is a forward-thinking plan that addresses 75 years of wrongheaded social planning that favors the automobile at the expense of communities and the environment, congestion pricing [as now proposed] will do virtually nothing to improve the lives of downtown residents.
The writer recites a litany of non-problems -- e.g., the plan won't cut train delays, when in fact the congestion pricing revenues will bond billions of investment in new subway cars and other system upgrades to facilitate more frequent service. But underneath these counter-factualisms, his emotional tenor is redolent of Cape Wind opponents who wail that while the windmills would supply three-fourths of the Cape and Islands' annual power, they "wouldn't stop coal mining" altogether, which makes them inadequate.
My downtown neighbor did at least concede that "The tipping point for me [against the congestion pricing proposal] is the removal of the 18% parking tax exemption that will cost Manhattan families $1,000 per year." Indeed. To assuage demands by "outer-borough" legislators for a more even distribution of monetary pain, the plan's backers recently agreed to zero out a decades-old sales tax exemption on Manhattan residents' garage fees.
There you have it. What "tipped" my neighbor into opposing what he concedes is a constructive policy is the loss of his own entitlement -- a public subsidy to garage his automobile.
My neighbor is not a fiend. He's a respected community activist. But his tortured, self-serving sophistries show how hard it can be "to match [our] public positions with the private choices necessary to move toward a more environmentally and economically sustainable way of life," as Prof. Shutkin urged.
As I read the tea leaves, the Cape Wind proposal appears likely to succeed, whereas the congestion pricing proposal is in trouble. Mayor Bloomberg last week obtained the support of the new governor, David Paterson, and reportedly is ready to cut major deals to win votes, but insiders say that the necessary majorities may be too hard to assemble. What may doom the pricing proposal is not that outer-borough opposition was too strong, but that natural allies like Manhattan legislators didn't give it full-throated support -- partly, alas, because of people like my environmentalist neighbor who nevertheless likes his subsidized parking.
A defeat for congestion pricing in New York would be a blow to the environmental movement and the campaign against global warming. It would tell the world that when it really counts, this city of eight million -- and, by extension, the nation it symbolizes -- just can't transcend narrow interests and act together for the common good.
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lorna salzman Posted 3:21 am
31 Mar 2008
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ed abbey Posted 5:27 am
31 Mar 2008
Also, once again, Komanoff plays the "Nantucket Sound "viewshed" enjoyed by wealthy Cape Cod landowners" card. Ha! There are countless working-class opponents of Cape Wind, people whose livelihoods will be destroyed or endangered by the project: navigators, fishing families, fliers; as well as middle and low-income folks who value Nantucket Sounds beauty as it is.
As for "appropriated ownership", THAT is exactly what Cape Wind is trying todo with the public space that is Horseshoe Shoals. Cape Wind is all about privatization of the Commons. They profit, we get stuck with the liabilities.
Cape Wind: the right project in the WRONG place!
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Charles Komanoff Posted 7:21 am
31 Mar 2008
Which four-letter word do you mis-understand more? I'd say it's a toss-up between pimp and grid.
Cape Wind electricity added to the grid will cause a 1-for-1 reduction in the use of fossil-fuel generators elsewhere on the grid. It's basic physics. Conservation of electrons. Ask any electrical engineer. Ask the ISO's that run the grids. Adding wind power has the same effect as turning off lights. (Or do you believe the grid likewise doesn't reduce fossil-fuel burning in response to drops in demand?)
Re your other four-letter word: I've not received (nor asked for) a penny for the articles and briefs I've written for Cape Wind over the years.
Livelihoods destroyed by the windmills? Whose, exactly, except for jobs digging up and cleaning up (barely) from fossil fuels? As for valuing the beauty of Nantucket Sound, I value it no less than you do. I cast my lot with Thoreau: "What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"
You sign as "Ed Abbey." Don't make me laugh.
Charles
http://www.komanoff.net
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spaceshaper Posted 9:50 pm
31 Mar 2008
The true meaning of life is to plant trees, under whose shade you do not expect to sit.
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Lois Recycle Posted 8:41 pm
02 Apr 2008
As for "appropriated ownership", THAT is exactly what Cape Wind is trying todo with the public space that is Horseshoe Shoals. Cape Wind is all about privatization of the Commons. They profit, we get stuck with the liabilities.
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I say that if you want to talk about appropriated ownership, let's talk about how cars have appropriated ownership of the public commons, how public streets that used to be used for walkers and bicyclists and horse-drawn vehicles and cars are now used almost exclusively by cars, that in this country alone kill tens of thousands and injure a million more EVERY YEAR. Let's talk about how coal burning has appropriated the use of my lungs for its pollution. Let's talk about how nuclear power has appropriated my genes and the genes of future generations for its damage, and how it has appropriated the air and water of the whole world for its routine radioactive releases. Let's talk about how carbon emissions have appropriated the future of thousands of species, and possibly those of humans, too. Let's talk about the fact that all freshwater fish in the northeast contains mercury, a result of burning coal for power, and the fact that I did not choose to have mercury as an ingredient in all the fish I eat. Let's talk about all the autistic children being born, and the fact that autistism has been linked to exposure to heavy metals, such as mercury in the fish you eat, the mercury that gets spread around when the coal that contains it is burned.
At a time when the cancer rate in this country is approaching 40%, when the rate of children born with neurological problems is increasing, when the earth has a fever, when most people drink water laced with pharmaceuticals and toxins, when we are drowning in our poisons, I cannot understand resistance to those choices which can lead to a better future.
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