“Gridlock contributes to smog and acts as a brake on economic growth. Business as usual is not a plan for the future, especially for a city that is expected to grow by nearly a million people in the next twenty years,” says the letter, written by the heads of the Environmental Defense, Sierra Club and Natural Resource Defense Fund.

“Mayor Bloomberg’s plan is bold, to be sure. But it’s also achievable. It could serve as a model for cities across the country and throughout the world.”

The letter concludes: “The next step is for leaders in the state legislature, city council and the metropolitan region to take the proposed plan and turn it into reality. Before it’s too late.”

Which is sort of an echo of today’s Daily News editorial.

The full letter is after the jump.

An Open Letter To Governor Spitzer and Leaders in the
New York State Senate and Assembly

Leaders from the world’s largest cities – from Berlin to Beijing – recently convened in New York to share strategies for how best to fight global warming. This was more than a feel-good exercise: Cities are responsible for seventy-five percent of the world’s global warming pollution. It is in these growing metropolitan complexes that transportation, construction, land use and pollution issues are most acute and the opportunities for dramatic gains the largest. And no municipality on earth is stepping up more audaciously than New York City.
New York State has helped the city set the stage by adopting low-emission vehicle standards from California and leading its neighbors in a bipartisan nine-state cap on global warming pollution from power plants. Albany also adopted a renewable portfolio standard to promote clean, renewable energy sources and Governor Spitzer recently announced plans to cut statewide energy consumption 15 percent by 2015.
Now, state leaders have an opportunity to advance one of the most aggressive climate protection goals of any U.S. city. On Earth Day, Mayor Bloomberg unveiled an ambitious plan to fight global warming by cutting greenhouse gas pollution 30 percent by 2030. He laid out a practical vision for what he calls “a greener, greater New York.” The blueprint covers some 127 proposals, ranging from making buildings more energy efficient to reducing traffic pollution, building cleaner power plants and converting abandoned industrial sites into parks.
The health and vitality of New York City hinge on a cleaner, safe environment and an advanced, more efficient energy system. The city's childhood hospitalization rates are twice the national average, its aging electricity grid threatens blackouts in the peak summer heat, and riding a bus or a cab through midtown traffic is scarcely faster than walking. Gridlock contributes to smog and acts as a brake on economic growth. Business as usual is not a plan for the future, especially for a city that is expected to grow by nearly a million people in the next twenty years.
New York’s new sustainability plan, dubbed PlaNYC, will achieve its ambitious climate targets through renewed investment in clean energy, improved efficiency and expanded public transit. Revised building codes will bring the country’s greenest building technologies to New York. The city’s fleet of diesel school buses will be replaced or modernized and incentives put in place to get heavy diesel trucks off the road.
Some elements are controversial, particularly the proposal for congestion pricing. But this innovative idea would use tolls to cut traffic at peak times and help finance a new generation of transit. Similar systems are in place in the business districts of London and Singapore, where they’ve reduced traffic and improved air quality.
Mayor Bloomberg’s plan is bold, to be sure. But it’s also achievable. It could serve as a model for cities across the country and throughout the world. In crafting the plan, New York City officials did their homework, meeting with and listening to community members and oceanographers, transportation experts and ecologists, biologists and businessmen. They all realize that global warming is also local warming.
What’s good for the city will be good for the state and for the planet. State legislators need to set aside their differences, roll up their sleeves and find solutions. That’s what environmental and business leaders have done in jointly endorsing the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, the groundbreaking alliance of Fortune 500 companies now pressing for nationwide reduction in heat-trapping emissions. And that's what happened in Kansas City and Springfield, Illinois where local power companies reached agreements with the Sierra Club and other environmental groups to offset carbon emissions from new power plants by investing in energy efficiency and renewable wind power. The problem of global warming is urgent and it must be addressed at all levels.
Plans like the one proposed by New York City show the kind of leadership that the country needs to tackle global warming. The next step is for leaders in the state legislature, city council and the metropolitan region to take the proposed plan and turn it into reality. Before it’s too late.

Fred Krupp, President, Environmental Defense
Carl Pope, Executive Director, Sierra Club
Frances Beinecke, President, Natural Resources Defense Council

Yosemite National Park in California

San Francisco Chronicle</a
National Park History
- Riva Froymovich

Suddenly, Mr. Bush has decided that "soft money" ought to be banned, a pronouncement so laudable and unexpected that perhaps no one will remember how his father's backers first invented "soft money" in 1988. Does anyone still remember "Team 100" and the "Eagles," two of the exclusive soft-money clubs set up to fund the Bush-Quayle campaign? Members of Team 100 enjoyed special favors and unusual access after giving $100,000 or more to the Republican National Committee.

Senator John McCain described his rival's press release on soft money as "a major change on his part." Not so, according to the Bush campaign, which had already issued a statement claiming: "Governor Bush has consistently opposed all corporate and union soft-money contributions to political parties." That claim may or may not be literally true of "Governor" Bush, but certainly isn't true of citizen George W. Bush. According to every biography of the Texas Governor (except his own campaign memoir), he was instrumental in his father's enormously successful soft-money fund raising in both the 1988 and 1992 campaigns.

That was then, and this is now. It seems fair to ask what would be the results of his newly touted "reforms." Are they really designed to clean up a foul system that closely resembles legalized bribery, or are they merely self-serving measures intended to deflect criticism of his own fund-raising practices? Let's examine the proposals offered on his campaign Web site.

How would he deal with the Washington lobbyists who have so generously financed his current campaign? "To ensure that lawmakers serve the public interest," he suggests a prohibition on contributions to members of Congress from Federally registered lobbyists "while Congress is in session."

That might eliminate the unwholesome spectacle of legislators leaving the Capitol to attend fund-raising parties right after voting, but it also leaves a rather large loophole. Lobbyists would still be free to donate whenever Congress adjourns-and to make pledges of donations at any time they please. The K Street gang might be inconvenienced by this scheme, but certainly not curbed in any significant way.

Mr. Bush also revives the old "paycheck protection" bill that has long been a favorite of Congressional Republicans. This plan would legally prohibit unions from using members' money, without each worker's specific permission, to support political candidates. It sounds highly principled, except that Mr. Bush insists on no such prohibition regarding corporate political action committees, such as forcing them to consult every shareholder before management decides to make political donations, or ceasing to coerce executives into making such contributions. So-called paycheck protection is actually an unfair scheme to cripple labor while empowering business, which is why it has been used by the Republican leadership as a "killer amendment" to hinder passage of otherwise sound reform legislation.

Mr. Bush also proposes to "preserve the right of individuals and groups-from the Christian Coalition to the Sierra Club-to run issue ads." Reasonable people may disagree, on First Amendment grounds, with the original McCain-Feingold bill's restrictions on issue-advocacy advertising. But quite understandably, Mr. Bush doesn't mention the most notorious issue ad ever produced by a supposedly independent group: the racially polarizing "Willie Horton" ad of 1988, which was so helpful to his father's campaign. (Voters should anticipate an updated version of this tactic from an "independent committee" next October, with ads that use frightening Buddhist nuns or Chinese generals instead of an African-American criminal.)

Entirely omitted from Mr. Bush's reform package is any means to curb "bundling," the practice through which his hundreds of lobbyist friends-known as the "Pioneers"-amassed his $70 million war chest during the past year or so. Restricted to individual contributions of $1,000, each of the Pioneers has nevertheless managed to raise at least $100,000 from various trade groups, corporate executives and so on.

Americans who still hope to reduce the undemocratic influence of money ought to consider a plan that Mr. Bush doesn't even pretend to favor: public financing of political campaigns, with strict limits on spending and free television time for qualified contenders. Such radical change is probably the only reform that can make a real difference-which must be why Mr. Bush so vehemently opposes it.