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Global Warming and 'The Day After Tomorrow'


Image from the sci-fi flick, "The Day After Tomorrow"

The local forecast calls for a monster tidal wave to crash into Manhattan, then temperatures to plummet, and by late afternoon, the entire Northeast to be frozen beneath a freshly spawned glacier.

That is the scenario in director Roland Emmerich's $125 million disaster flick, "The Day After Tomorrow," which opens this week. The culprit is global warming. In the movie, the polar ice caps are melting, which sends fresh water pouring into the Atlantic. This overwhelms the ocean currents that normally warm the northern latitudes, triggering worldwide catastrophe.

New Yorkers need not fear that global warming will set off such a sudden and spectacular natural disaster in real life, but "The Day After Tomorrow" has already inspired some to fear what they would consider a political disaster. NASA officials reportedly ordered their scientists not to answer questions about the film (though subsequently changed their minds after some bad press), while a spokesman for the Bush campaign told the New York Post -- perhaps more hopefully than factually -- "People know what they're watching is entertainment, and not grounded in basic scientific fact." Corporate lobbyists have been hinting that the film and the hoopla surrounding it is a conspiracy to pass the global warming pollution bill due up soon in the Senate.

Whether they like it or not, though, there are some kernels of truth behind the sci-fi storyline of "The Day After Tomorrow". Global warming really is a threat to New York. The question is, what kind of a threat?

In reality, experts don't know all the details yet -- global warming is one of the most complex scientific challenges we've ever known -- but we're quite confident about the basic facts.

We know for certain that global warming is happening now, and that it is happening faster than natural variation can explain. Since 1990, the Earth has experienced the ten hottest years on record. Satellite images show that the North Pole ice cap has shrunk by 20 percent since 1979. Spring is arriving earlier throughout the world.

Researchers at Columbia University's Earth Institute, NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan, and others recently completed a comprehensive assessment of the stakes in New York if global warming pollution is not curtailed. They conclude that the effects will be widespread across the region.

HEAT WAVE

Average temperatures in the Metro region have already increased by 2 degrees Fahrenheit over the 20th century. They're likely to rise as much as 6.5 degrees more by the middle of this century. As a result New York summers will go from occasionally muggy to persistently torrid. As many as 60 days a year, the National Weather Service Heat Index -- that's temperature combined with humidity to measure the discomfort -- will exceed 90 degrees Fahrenheit.

HEALTH RISKS

That means significant health risks, particularly to vulnerable populations that are not prepared for them. For example, last summer more than 20,000 people died in Europe due to an unprecedented heat wave. New York has more air conditioners than Paris, but there are many poor and elderly in this city without them.

Health effects of heat and humidity are exacerbated by smog, which itself is elevated by higher temperatures. If all that isn't bad enough, higher carbon dioxide concentrations directly promote the growth of ragweed and other opportunistic plants that produce allergenic pollen.

The combination of heat, humidity, smog, and pollen, is the perfect incubator for asthma attacks, already a leading health threat in the city.

FLOODING

Rising seas will accompany higher temperatures as water expands (like mercury in a thermometer) and glaciers melt. During the lifetime of a child born today mean sea level will likely increase by as much as 3½ feet.

That may not sound like a lot, but it spells costly trouble for low-lying parts of the city, such as Coney Island and Southern Manhattan. Areas that currently flood once a century could see flooding every 20 years, or, according to researchers, even as little as once every four years.

Vital transportation links including many subways, all three airports and the Holland tunnel, are also vulnerable.

WHAT CAUSES GLOBAL WARMING - AND HOW TO STOP IT

The National Academy of Sciences and most other scientists say the cause of global warming is pollution, and the two major sources of that pollution are automobiles and coal-burning power plants. The pollution collects in the atmosphere and acts like a blanket, trapping the sun's heat.

This is a problem that has a solution -- reducing polution by focusing on alternative energy such as wind and solar power, improving the technology of our vehicles, and requiring specific emission standards.

THE SENATE BILL AND STATE ACTION

The U.S. Senate is expected to vote this spring on a bill that would for the first time make such standards the law, rather than relying as we have on voluntary measures. The bill, called the Climate Stewardship Act, came within seven votes of passing last fall, when it was introduced by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman. This time around, it could hit the Senate floor as early as June.

Meanwhile, New York's Governor George Pataki is part of a growing trend toward state action. A year ago he called on eight neighboring states to create a regional solution, at least promising to take a leadership role to cut power plant emissions, and to invest in cleaner, more efficient energy technology.

"The Day After Tomorrow" is an extreme scenario, one that no climate scientist is predicting. But the real-life consequences of global warming are bad enough -- and it's time for us to do something about them.

Daniel Lashof is a climate scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council

Resources:
Global Warming Ignites Tempers, Even In A Movie, NY Times
The Climate Stewardship Act of 2003, by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman
Global Warming Page of the Environmental Defense Network
Two Articles On Global Warming by James Hanson of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Article 1) (Article 2)
7 Crazy Things That Are Going To Happen As Sea Levels Rise

Dreaming Of A Jets Stadium (And Junkyard Cleanup) In Queens


Few corners of the city exemplify the political inertia that can delay environmental remediation as well as Willets Point.

Nestled in between Shea Stadium, Flushing Meadow Corona Parks, and the Flushing River, this 16 block enclave of pock-marked streets, auto body shops and junkyards known locally as the Iron Triangle has long been a magnet for trash and a generator of toxic runoff for decades. One need only pass overhead on the Flushing-bound 7 train to witness the resulting blight: Wind and rain patterns have pushed the trash and oil so deep into the Flushing River watershed it's hard to tell where the human devastation stops and the natural ecosystem begins.

Though an obvious target for cleanup, Willets Point has to date defied all attempts to do so. The reasons generally boil down to economics: To get the land, the city would have to pay to relocate existing businesses. Throw in remediation costs and whatever legal fees might accrue in the process and it isn't too surprising that most redevelopment plans have rarely made it past the planning stage.

For David Oats, former editor of the Queens Tribune and current chairman of the Queens Olympic Committee, a group dedicated to reshaping Flushing Meadows Corona Park into an Olympics-worthy venue, it's hard not to memory the spirit of Robert Moses when discussing the stubborn parcel. It was here, after all, that Moses, political architect of Flushing Meadows, the Cross Bronx Expressway and dozens of other public works projects, met one of his most humbling defeats. As president of the 1964 World's Fair, Moses sought to condemn local properties and integrate Willets Point into an expanded Flushing Meadows park complex. To defend their interests, junkyard owners hired a young Queens attorney named Mario Cuomo. For both men, it was a turning point. Cuomo won the case and went on to the governor's office. Moses lost and went into grudging retirement.

"To his dying day, Moses was frustrated that there were still junkyards in Willets Point," says Oats, who remembers running into an elderly Robert Moses. "In the last conversation I had with him, I mentioned Willets Point at one point and his first question was 'Are those damn junkyards finally gone?'"

Undaunted, Oats and the Queens Olympic Committee have taken up the Moses-worthy challenge of redeveloping Willets Point. In doing so, they've hitched a ride on a national wave of municipal stadium projects not to mention the growing political resistance to the mayor's own West Side Jets stadium plan. Billing a Jets stadium in Willets Point as the ultimate kill-two-birds-with-one-stone bargain, Oats sees a chance to pull off what Moses never could: an Olympics-worthy park complex stretching from La Guardia Airport in the north to the Jamaica Railyards in the south while cleaning up the Flushing River in the process.

"This site eliminates every problem we've got," he says. "You can reclaim the air, clean up the trash, combine water quality, and build a stadium with better access to major transportation resources."

Oats punctuates the pitch with a flourish: "It's even got the globe sitting there."

That "globe" would be the Unisphere, a relic of the 1964 World's Fair and a symbolic reminder of the world-hosting ambitions that built Flushing Meadows in the first place. With the city angling to play host to the 2012 Olympics, Oats and other community leaders see Queens as a natural launching point.

The plan is a long shot, of course. The mayor's office, which has invested heavy political capital into the proposed $1.4 billion West Side stadium project ($2.8 billion if you factor in expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and extension of the No. 7 subway line) has already dismissed the Queens stadium plan as unworkable. Still, in the two years since Oats first started ferrying newspaper reporters out to Willets Point in an attempt to drum up media interest, other community leaders have jumped onboard. According to the West Queens Gazette, members of Community Board 3 endorsed plans for a Willets Point stadium in February. Last month, Congressman Anthony Weiner (D-Queens/Brooklyn) threw his own support behind the Oats plan. Weiner dismissed the west side stadium with its proposed $600 million taxpayer subsidy as "staggeringly expensive" and suggested Willets Point as a "better, cheaper, more transparent alternative."

"It just makes sense," says Queens attorney Corey Bearak, a participant in past studies designed to assess the feasibility of a Queens-based NFL stadium. "I have not visited a stadium or a stadium site anywhere in the country where you have an interstate coupled with a major limited access highway (Northern Blvd.) coupled with subway and light rail (Long Island Railroad). Throw in the opportunity for ferry access, it's a unique situation."

Not all Queens leaders have bought off on the plan, of course. Councilmember Hiram Monserrate from Corona finds it hard to justify any proposal that would replace a thriving, albeit ugly economic district, with a taxpayer-subsidized home for a team that abandoned the borough only 21 years ago.

"I have concerns," Monserrate says. "Are we merely insuring profits for corporations that are already doing well on their own? Secondly, are we providing a place for displaced businesses? The last thing we need to be doing is replacing good, sustainable jobs with entry level positions selling peanuts at football games. "

From an environmental perspective, Paul Graziano, a Green Party challenger for the District 20 council seat in 2001, is leery of any deal that would link stadium construction with environmental cleanup. Environmental advocates need only visit East Rutherford New Jersey to get a glimpse of how poorly a three stadium complex can blend in with a local, aquatic ecosystem. What's more, should the stadium plan fall through, Queens activists will have lost yet another step to their counterparts in the Bronx and Staten Island, places where sustained community pressure is finally yielding a turnaround for distressed waterways such as the Bronx River and Fresh Kills.

"It shouldn't take the Olympics to clean up things," says Graziano.

Such sentiments may be true in principle, says Oats, but as recent history has shown, especially in geographically divided Queens, an attention-getting solution and a deadline to match are quite often the "only way" to break through political gridlock.

"If you don't have a big plan, you're going to get mired in the minutiae," says Oats. "Moses learned that early on. When the 1939 Worlds Fair came along, he saw a chance to get rid of the (Flushing) dump and suddenly heaven and earth moved. Then the war came and he couldn't finish his park off, so he waited for the next chance. When the idea for the second Worlds Fair came around, he became the president and built the park."

Oats, a Moses admirer, hesitates to compare himself to the man whose earth-moving ambitions once sank in the morass of Willets Point. Still, even for those with a fraction of the Moses political will, the current Olympics bid is emerging as the latest "once in a lifetime opportunity" to clean up a piece of the borough and have the rest of the world help pick up the tab.

"Willets Point has gone through so many cleanup attempts and for some quirky reason or another, they've all failed," he says. "I don't want my grandchildren dealing with this problem because we couldn't get it done when we had the chance."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recycling's Next Chapter


The Department of Sanitation has resumed both glass recycling and once-a-week collection of residential recyclable material, thus ending the latest, and most harrowing, chapter in New York City's 20 year-old recycling saga.

Once a week, residents are now expected to put their non-paper recyclables -- metal, plastic, and glass -- in blue curbside containers, and their paper recyclables -- junk mail, bundled newspaper and cardboard -- in green containers. Residents who don't have blue or green containers can use clear plastic bags or can order stickers, free, by calling 311 or visiting the city's Web site.

That glass is now being recycled once again is, some say, little more than a symbolic victory. Sure, it is an improvement over simply sending empty bottles to the landfill. But the Department of Sanitation trucks currently collect all different kinds of glass together, regardless of color, and this reduces the resale value often to the point of worthlessness.

This explains why Hugo Neu Schnitzer East, the Jersey City recycler that offered to pay the city for its metal and plastic last year, has drastically revised its bid. The city now pays Hugo Neu $51 per ton to process all non-paper recyclables. This is still about 50 percent less than what it would cost to dump the material in a landfill, but, coupled with the added labor costs for weekly routes, recycling has decisively shifted to an expense rather than a revenue source.

However, not everybody sees the victory as just symbolic. Some say it is a strategic victory, helping build the momentum for recycling.

"I am a firm believer that the more that we recycle the better it is not only for the environment but also for the city's economy," argues Staten Island councilmember Michael McMahon, chairman of the council's Solid Waste Committee.

Such arguments have gained added weight in recent weeks thanks to the Independent Budget Office's recent report analyzing the Department of Sanitation's budgetary math. Yes, the report concludes, recycling costs more than ordinary garbage collection, $47 million more in fiscal year 2002, but only as long as the amount of recyclables collected remains less than the amount of ordinary garbage collected.

The reason: hidden overhead costs. When department budgetmakers divide general and administrative costs, they do so by routes, not tonnage. Because recycling routes yield less weight on average -- 6.3 tons vs. 10.3 tons for ordinary garbage routes in 2002 -- recycling carries a disproportionate share of overhead burden when the numbers are reassessed on a cost-per-ton basis.

"It's the relative inefficiency of (recycling) collection that makes it more expensive," summarizes Preston Niblack of the Independent Budget Office. "Right now the comparison is swamped by the collection inefficiencies associated with recycling pickup."

In other words, says Niblack, shifting glass from the waste bin to the recycling bin is more than a symbolic gesture. Increase the amount of recyclables and you increase the average weight, and overall efficiency, of each recycling route. If the weight of recyclables became equal to the weight of ordinary garbage, you could conceivably eliminate the disparity in costs.

Kitchen Compost?

Given this analysis, is there another quick way to increase recycling tonnages beyond glass? McMahon sees kitchen compost as an obvious next step. "It adds a lot of weight, and it's environmentally the easiest thing to recycle," he says.

Virali Gokaldas, policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, agrees, noting that, because of space concerns, New Yorkers tend to throw out more food waste as a proportion of their daily trash -- 15 percent, while the national average is nine percent

"Food is one of the greatest untapped opportunities for cost savings," Gokaldas says "Composting is the next step if the city wants to save money on its trash bill."

So far, the Department of Sanitation's attempts to integrate kitchen waste into the recycling stream have yet to move past the pilot project stage. Without a robust aftermarket or a Hugo Neu-style benefactor willing to take bagged items directly out of the trucks, compost remains a long term prospect at best.

"At this point we are not looking to add other recyclables," says Kathy Dawkins, a Department of Sanitation spokesperson.

Education

Niblack sees education as the best way to bulk up city recycling bins. Though long chided by local critics, the Department of Sanitation's Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Recycling had been earning praise for its educational programs prior to the 2002 plastic and glass suspension. To prepare residents for the resumption of glass and once-a-week service, the bureau orchestrated a series of Sunday newspaper inserts and a direct mail campaign aimed at four million households. All in all, it expects to spend close to $4 million within the next few months.

"That's a pretty good starting point, but the jury's still out," says McMahon. "I'd like to see more public service commercials. I'd like to see more advertising, especially in less traditional media, Web sites."

Robert Lange, president of the Bureau of Waste Prevention, Reuse and Reycling, didn't respond to calls for comment, but Dawkins said the Department of Sanitation is "committed to making recycling work" and has spread its $4 million advertising budget across a variety of media, including radio and television, as well as direct telemarketing.

McMahon, meanwhile, says he would like proof that Mayor Michael Bloomberg himself is a member the "strategic victory" camp as well. In a joint statement with Sanitation Commissioner John Doherty last month, Bloomberg described the current recycling program as both more "cost effective and environmentally-friendly" than the one it has now replaced.

"I call upon the mayor to continue using his bully pulpit to call for recycling like he does for 311," says McMahon, citing the increasing popularity of the city's telephone information program. "We have to get the message out: Eight million people can't just landfill this stuff anymore."


For links to sites concerned with Garbage in New York, check out Gotham Gazette Suggests.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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