Climate change in New York City

Adaptation

In 2009, New York City launched a task force to advise on preparing city infrastructure for flooding, water shortages, and higher temperatures. The New York City water supply system was built to meet the city's water needs. The NYC Mayor's Office of Climate Policy and Programs is investing $20 billion to adapt the city's neighborhoods to climate change threats such as flooding, extreme heat, and sea level rise.

The Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency initiative aims to address flooding and climate-related threats to the Financial District and surrounding neighborhoods. The Financial District and Seaport Climate Resilience Master Plan focuses on making the waterfront more resilient to severe coastal storms and flooding due to rising sea levels by creating a multilevel waterfront on Lower Manhattan's shoreline.

In 2019, the city allocated $615 million for a 5.1 mile East Shore Seawall - a combined seawall and walkway on Staten Island - officially called the Staten Island Multi-Use Elevated Promenade.

NYC has employed two strategies to be able to adapt to climate change. The first strategy is to reduce GHG (greenhouse gas) emissions, second is to help the econemy, neighborhoods, and the public trasnportation adapt towards climate change. Since 2005 the GHG emissions have been lowered by 19% and is planned to be lowered to 30% by 2030. Its plan is to have GHG emissions lowered by 80% as soon as 2050. This was done due to improving utility operations and replacing coal and oil with natural gases for the generation of electricity.

Influences on New York City climate change

The Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act of 1986 is intended to protect citizens against industrial toxic pollution. This information is available in order to keep track of increasing toxin releases and identify high toxic-releasing companies. Once these records are publicly released, individuals have the freedom to respond to that information however they please. If a shareholder of a specific facility is discouraged by the facility's amount of toxin releases, that person may choose to remove themselves as a shareholder. This is why is it important to minimize underreporting or overreporting of toxic emissions. Although this information is available to the public, New York seems to continue to struggle with keeping carbon emissions low. According to the NYC Mayor's Office of Sustainability, New York City generates 14 million tons of waste and recyclables annually at a cost of $300 million for residential waste alone.

Scorecard has documented that the risk of cancer from New York County hazardous air pollutants in each category was almost always the same for each side of the spectrum (kids below poverty and kids above poverty, for example). The information also shows that the lower-income and minority groups emit a greater percentage of toxins and pollutants than others. Toxic disposal and storage facilities (TDSF) are built in low-income areas with lower-valued homes because those residing there are less likely to have the purchasing and political power to fight against it, unlike those living in high-income communities. This means that they will not have the means to make a change against this, so TSDF's are often built in low-income communities with lower-valued houses. Even so, the 2010 New York State Hazardous Waste Facility Siting Plan states that the number of commercial TSD facilities in New York have declined over time with 30 commercial TSD facilities in 1988 and 13 commercial TSD facilities in 2008. This is a positive and negative accomplishment, because there are fewer TSDF's in general, but there are increased usage and pollution emission levels at the few TSDF's that are available.

The 2010 New York State Hazardous Waste Facility Siting Plan also presents important information when evaluating the TSDF's in each county. Chapter 1 of the siting plan states that ten-day transfer stations, generators that store for less than 90 days, facilities or locations for collecting household hazardous wastes, facilities for collecting non-manifested waste such as universal waste, sanitary landfills, and trucks are not included as TSD facilities in the detailed analyses included in the plan. This shows that not all hazardous waste facilities are taken into consideration when examining the eligibility of a county for building more facilities. Omitting such facilities from the analyses presents inaccurate calculations and assumptions. Those facilities still emit pollution and wastes, regardless of the size of facility or time-length of the waste transfer.

Someone who lives in a single-family houses emits more toxic chemicals into the environment than someone who lives in multifamily buildings, since detached houses use more energy. Many people rely on public transit in New York City because it is cheaper and easier than using a car. This intense use of the public transit system decreases those people's carbon emissions. The Scorecard analysis states that New York experiences only 45% of days with good air quality in a year and 1% of days with unhealthful air quality. Because of this, New York ranked among the 10% dirtiest/worst of all counties in the United States in 2003.

In regards to air quality management, the Mayor's Office of Sustainability states that “the City has implemented a policy to reduce, replace, retrofit and refuel City vehicles. In 2014, the City reduced its fleet by at least 5 percent and expanded the use of biodiesel. Additionally, 400 vehicles were upgraded through the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) and other funding sources, and Diesel Particulate Filters (DPFs) were installed on 685 buses in 2014”.

Minority neighborhoods struggling with climate change

In recent years, climate change has not only affected New York City's environment but it has begun affecting its occupants as well. Minority groups living in areas such as the South Bronx and Brooklyn have faced severe repercussions due to climate change. Specifically, these minority groups face industrial pollution, congestion, areas with little to no trees, extreme heat, and flooding.

The occupants of the South Bronx face extreme heat due to the rise of climate change. It has affected citizens especially those diagnosed with asthma. With the majority of the Bronx population being Black or Hispanic living below the poverty level about 6% of them develop asthma. They faced serious risks especially during this recent summer. According to data, about 86% of those who died from extreme heat had a chronic illness and in areas not only in the Bronx, each year the extreme heat is said to cause about 370 deaths.

Areas in Brooklyn, specifically Red Hook, deal with a lack of trees and industrial pollution. The loss of over 300 trees has caused a lack of breathable air and air filtration. It is said that several warehouses are being built in Red Hook, Brooklyn. One of them is going to be larger than a million square feet. This would bring more than 1,300 trucks to the neighborhood in addition to the 1,000 trucks that are already there. This would cause an increase in air pollution, harming the well being of its residents.

Extreme Events

Certain effects of climate change in New York City threaten the city as dangerous storms and events are soon to come. Increasing air, and Great Lake temperatures can create conditions that favor the formation of stronger storms such as hurricanes, tropical storms, lake effect storms, and nor'easters. New York State is projected to have a higher frequency of late-summer, short-term droughts. Droughts can impact agricultural output and lead to reduce water availability, diminish water quality, and wildfires due to dry conditions. Other extreme events such as wildfires can produce particulate air pollution that can travel to other locations and pose a hazard to human health, as seen during June 2023 when smoke from the Canadian wildfires reached NY.

In media

New York 2140 is a 2017 climate fiction novel set in New York City by American science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson. The 1973 science fiction movie Soylent Green, starring Charlton Heston, takes place in a climate-ravaged New York City in a now-alternate 2022. New York is depicted as over capacity with 40,000,000 citizens in cramped, sweltering conditions day and night, while the few wealthy residence live with air conditioning and spacious apartments. The effects of climate change are omnipresent throughout the film as characters are almost always drenched in sweat. The long term effects of climate change are crucial to the film’s gradual revelation that the miracle food of Soylent Green, which had been claimed by the Soylent Corporation to be made of phytoplankton, is instead made out of human remains, as runaway global warming has begun to kill off the remnants of life in the ocean.