Since the start of this year, I’ve been telling you about the exciting Green New Deal proposed by NY Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. I’ve also been straight with you (and members of Congress) about what I see as one of the resolution’s main failings: that it doesn’t explicitly rule out pipelines and fossil fuel infrastructure in it’s vision.
Now the two ideas have come together right in the backyard of Rep Ocasio-Cortez, and we have a chance to do something about it.
For those of you who haven’t heard: the Williams Pipeline company wants to build a 23 mile long, 26-inch wide pipeline under the lower bay south of Manhattan, and deliver fracked gas from Pennsylvania into Brooklyn, Long Island and other parts of the city. It’s a dangerous, unnecessary plan that will lock New Yorkers into another 20-50 years of dirty fossil fuels, just at the moment scientists tell us we have 12 years to radically transform our energy economy as part of a Green New Deal.
So you’d think that Representatives like Ocasio-Cortez would be lining up to oppose this project, right? Not so fast. The Green New Deal resolution paints a vibrant picture of the future, but it’s silent on the issues of fossil fuels and pipelines. And until a few days ago, not one of our federal elected officials had spoken out against the Williams pipeline.
A few days ago, Congressman Jerry Nadler became the first federal elected official to say he’d oppose the Williams Pipeline as part of a Green New Deal – yay! Nadler, whose district includes neighborhoods hard hit by Superstorm Sandy like Red Hook and Sunset Park, told us “At this point we shouldn’t be building pipelines, because we shouldn’t prolong our use of fossil fuels.”
But when local organizers asked AOC to do the same thing, her staff said she needed to see more tweets first. Really? How many tweets, exactly, does the author of the Green New Deal resolution need to see before she opposes a pipeline in her own back yard?
This isn’t a minor issue to New York fracked gas companies: On Monday fossil fuel giant National Grid presented a plan to build the Williams fracked gas pipeline as part of a plan they said is supposed to cut emissions 80% by 2050. They’re trying to write their dirty pipeline into our vision for a clean and healthy New York!
But New Yorkers know fracked gas pipelines are a non-starter, and we’re proud to partner with the Stop the Williams Pipeline coalition on this petition – including 350 Brooklyn, Food and Water Watch New York, New York Communities for Change, the Rockaway Beach Civic Association, Sane Energy Project, Surfrider Foundation New York, and more than 200 cosponsors. Together these groups have done the research to show that we don’t need the Williams Pipeline, and to discredit the green washing efforts and scare tactics. Even today, our partners in New York are hosting an event on sustainable solutions to heating New York buildings called “Heat Pumps not Pipelines”