In September 2020, the federal Commodities Future Trading Commission Market Risk Advisory Committee warned that the climate crisis poses "serious emerging risks" to the U.S. financial system and the overall economy.

Now, Mindy Lubber, the head of a much-respected climate investment group with decades of experience in the corporate and financial realms writes in Forbes, "What the CFTC calls a "systemic risk" I call a nightmare."

What happened? Let's look back.

Nancy Anderson's comment in The New York Times appears in full below.

The Sallan Foundation
New York, September 24, 2020

While cheering this piece as an X-ray of the inner workings of Manhattan development — as it's been practiced for decades — showing vital internal organs like eminent domain, arcane zoning + land use rules + historic preservation, it's backward looking not forward facing in a critical way.

Not a word about building codes that are beginning to demand energy efficiency, nothing about climate resilience which could mean how buildings are able to deal with blackouts or heatwaves. With emerging financial demands + insurance demands for climate risk assessments, this omission is puzzling. Changes here are part of any 21st century urban X-ray.

Finally, nothing about prospects for laws that shape how developers will support resilient infrastructure. Manhattan may be an island, but it's not isolated from our climate crisis, nor is its real estate.

Nancy Anderson's comment in The New York Times appears in full below.

The Sallan Foundation
New York, August 10, 2020

It' my understanding that cars could not park all night long on NYC streets as late as the 1950's. So 24/7 free street parking is not an age-old thing and now, its time is up. The pandemic has mutated the challenges NYC faces + these mutations won't just disappear. They call for creatively + equitably rethinking how we live here, there's no going back to BC time (before COVID). Here's one action agenda What's The Rush

@Anna Cox — Fair point especially on safety, which in the COVID era means reliably healthy. MTA, please replace all those subway car filters with high efficiency MERV 13 filters to better protect riders from the virus

Will cars reconquer NY? A battle for the streets has begun https://t.co/y4FAdU83yY

— Sallan Foundation (@Sallan_Found) August 10, 2020

The panel focused on getting people to use mass transit as a linchpin to restoring NYC economy + explored what real estate owners can do to facilitate the journey from home to office, from screening to elevators + escalators. Equally important, what can the City do to reinvent how its streets are used + end the era that favored autos over all other uses of public space? This is an urgent matter for the City we call home.

Next year we'll likely have a chance to pass landmark federal climate legislation. To seize that moment, we need a very clear set of policy demands for Congress and broad civil society unity for action.

The event features scientists on the top 100 GHG solutions, lawyers drafting policy to match, and organizers securing the votes who will detail a roster of current bills from plastics to carbon to farming.

On July 15, we'll go deep into planning how to create a package of climate bills and a coordinated co-sponsor hunt, with lots of time for open discussion among attendees.

RSVP: Climate Crisis Policy

The limited invitation group featured three students from the Climate and Society Masters program at Columbia University. This EarthInstitute education program focuses on society's impact on climate and climate's impact on society, educating students on how to explain climate science to the public. IEBG members learned some science and students got to practice their communication skills.

For more details about the Climate Café read the write-up. IEBG encourages and informs neighbors of the actions they can take on the personal, building or block level to lessen the consequences of climate change.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead

Nancy Anderson's February 13, 2020 USA TODAY column leads with reasons for hope — continue reading

A letter in response to Elizabeth Kolbert's article placement (January 13, 2020)

Nancy Anderson, Ph.D.
The Sallan Foundation
New York City

Is the New Yorker engaged in subtle editorial irony?

The January 13, 2020 Talk of the Town leads with Elizabeth Kolbert's urgent call to wake up, act immediately and apply the brakes to our climate crisis. Then, Talk of the Town follows with Brent Crane's Let It Snow

Crane deadpans about Magic Snow, a company that produces "interactive snow experiences" in hot places like Malaysia, Brazil and Southern California, presumably for customers with more cash than climate awareness.

If this juxtaposition is deliberate editorial irony, great. But the time for subtlety when it comes to the climate is over.

Re-Use, Reduce, Recycle

The New York Times gives kudos to Sallan in the form of a Times Pick Nancy Anderson's comment on Op-Ed by Tala Schlossberg and Nayeema Raza in The New York Times appears in full below.

The Sallan Foundation
New York, Dec. 9

I helped write NYC's recycling law in 1988, so this 2019 story about "the great recycling con" stings. Might have stung even more if facts were public about the actual amounts of the metal, glass + paper put out in good recycling faith get turned into new products. I can't find any NYC reporting about what ultimately happens to all that stuff.

Even worse was the December 8, 2019 NYT story, The Price of Recycling Old Laptops: Toxic Fumes in Thailand's Lungs, about the toxic price of what passes for the recycling of our discarded electronics

Read NYT CLIMATE column by Christopher Flavelle and John Schwartz, As Climate Risk Grows, Cities Test a Tough Strategy: Saying 'No' to Developers

Nancy Anderson's comment on CLIMATE column by Christopher Flavelle and John Schwartz in The New York Times appears in full below.

The Sallan Foundation
New York, Nov. 19

Excellent article, captures the reality that there are smart, forward facing actions being taken to protect people from climate harm + from business-as-usual developers.

Next, please report on the enablers of climate-stupid development, the lenders + the insurers that developers must have on tap to build where they never should be building.

Read Michael Kimmelman Critic's Notebook, Why Can't New York City Build More Gems Like This Queens Library?

Nancy Anderson's comment on Kimmelman's column in The New York Times appears in full below.

The Sallan Foundation
I always read M. Kimmelman's essays. Much to learn. But the last paragraph of this column, "New York deserves an engaged and mindful government that grasps the virtues of good design and what it can do for communities" isn't built on a foundation that includes a 21 century good design consideration of the presence or absence of library features which are both climate resilient + climate friendly.

Given NYC has sited a $40 million tax payer-funded public amenity right on the edge of the East River, Mr. Kimmelman's omission does us a disservice.

Over the summer at both Cooper Hewitt and the Cube Design Museum in Kerkrade, Netherlands, "Nature — Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial" explores Design's ability to address critical issues surrounding nature, climate and the environment. Compelled by a sense of urgency, the exhibition themes explore seven strategies that designers are using to collaborate with nature — to understand, remediate, simulate, salvage, nurture, augment and facilitate.

On view May 10–Jan. 20, 2020, the Design Triennial will be presented at both Cooper Hewitt and Cube, allowing audiences in both the U.S. and Europe to experience the works simultaneously.

None of this work would be possible without the restaurant shell-collection program and the education of the next generation of environmental stewards — as of 2019, the Billion Oyster Project includes programming in more than 80 middle and high schools.

Meanwhile, let's take a dive into Sallan's back pages and see where things stood as the 2013 Mayoral hopefuls — nine declared candidates had the chance to convince New York voters they were the one at an Earth Day Sustainability Forum.

Jumping forward a few years the soft ecological initiatives reported on in Anderson's Torchlight Column Industrial Strength Sustainability started to take shape.

Ensuring Urban Resilience, Come Hell Or High Water ℃limate Week 2016 panel organized to examine how NYC and Hoboken are working to effectively and efficiently adapt to the consequences of climate change and build resilience. Kate Orff presented Living Breakwaters — a method of restoring oyster reefs and re-engineering the Tottenville shoreline of Raritan Bay to respond to climate change, which at that time was an upcoming project from her landscape architecture firm SCAPE. Orff received a MacArthur Fellowship less than a year later.

Stefanos Chen's New York Times Real Estate Section column, New York City's Evolving Skyline, puts forward 2019 as the year that New York City tops out with 16 buildings over 500 feet slated to come on line — unprecedented.

Nancy Anderson's comment on Chen's column in The New York Times appears in full below.

The Sallan Foundation
New York 3h ago
Cheers to the owners of the Empire State Building, erected 1931, for investing to upgrade it to a green, energy efficient class A building post-2005.

Given the climate-flooding vulnerability of Manhattan, NYT should make it a habit to report the facts on the relative energy efficiency of new construction. The carbon footprint of all this "evolving skyline" will impact us all for decades to come.

Citation:

Chen, Stefanos. "New York City's Evolving Skyline." The New York Times, The New York Times, 5 June 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/realestate/new-york-citys-evolving-skyline.html.