Name: NYC Mayoral Front-Runner, Embracing Climate Activists' Demands, Vows To Ban Fossil Fuels
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NYC Mayoral Front-Runner, Embracing Climate Activists' Demands, Vows To Ban Fossil Fuels

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×U.S. EditionPart of HuffPost Politics. ©2022 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved.×Scott Stringer, an early front-runner for New York City mayor, pledged to completely phase out fossil fuels, drive private utility companies out of the nation’s largest metropolis, and “electrify everything” in a near total embrace of climate activists’ demands ahead of this year’s election. The Stringer laid out Sunday would transform the five boroughs, glazing the rooftops with solar panels and battery units, prioritizing bike lanes and pedestrian walkways over highways, and providing new programs to make electricity cheaper and green jobs more plentiful for the city’s squeezed working class. Advertisement“The time for pie-in-the-sky platitudes is over,” he said in a Zoom press conference. “The time for incrementalism has passed.”He promised to block all new fossil fuel infrastructure, including a controversial pipeline currently under construction in Brooklyn, and vowed to ban all gas hookups in newly built and renovated construction. He called the city’s network of roughly a dozen gas- and oil-burning power plants “relics of the past, and that’s where I’ll put them,” and promised a fleet of electric buses and subway improvements. He said he’d implement a standing proposal to shutter the infamous prison on Rikers Island and convert the facility to a solar farm and target aid to communities that suffered the worst excesses of both polluters and policing. “Emissions are up since 2017, we’re still putting pipelines in the ground, and air emissions have led to more COVID deaths in the Bronx than anywhere in the country,” Stringer said. “To move forward, we must turn the page on decades of environmental racism. We gotta say it, it’s true. The buck stops with me. No more excuses.” AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“The time for incrementalism has passed.”- Scott StringerStringer told HuffPost he envisioned a “reset with Albany” after nearly a decade of bickering and intransigence between de Blasio and Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D), and he said the young progressive lawmakers elected to the state Assembly and Senate would provide a pathway for advocating his agenda.“We can no longer play checkers when everyone like the governor is playing chess,” Stringer said. “We have to sell this plan the way we never have before.”Advertisement“This is a good day for the Green New Deal movement,” said Daniel Aldana Cohen, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist who tracking the evolution of New York City climate policy in the journal Environmental Politics in September.He said Stringer “should consider giving more emphasis to express bus lanes, the only part of the public transit system that the city controls directly.”Costa Constantinides, the Queens councilman behind the city’s major 2019 climate bill, said he is now serving as Stringer’s climate adviser.AdvertisementSee GallerySuggest a correctionNewsletter Sign UpHuffPost's top politics stories, straight to your inbox.Successfully Subscribed!Realness delivered to your inbox

×U.S. EditionPart of HuffPost Politics. ©2022 BuzzFeed, Inc. All rights reserved.×Scott Stringer, an early front-runner for New York City mayor, pledged to completely phase out fossil fuels, drive private utility companies out of the nation’s largest metropolis, and “electrify everything” in a near total embrace of climate activists’ demands ahead of this year’s election. The Stringer laid out Sunday would transform the five boroughs, glazing the rooftops with solar panels and battery units, prioritizing bike lanes and pedestrian walkways over highways, and providing new programs to make...

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AlexCKaufman

Alexander C. Kaufman

At HuffPost, we put people first. We believe that real life is news, and news is personal.

NYC Mayoral Front-Runner, Embracing Climate Activists' Demands, Vows To Ban Fossil Fuels

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