Councilman Donovan Richards wants the city to turn out the lights.
In legislation that will be introduced today, Richards will seek to limit the number of lights kept on in commercial buildings at night. The bill has a series of exceptions for security reasons, seasonal displays and occupancy.
But Richards, chairman of the Council's environmental protection committee, said the millions of lights kept on in the city that never sleeps are wasting energy and exacerbating a global emissions crisis.
"The primary focus of the Lights Out Bill is energy conservation," Richards said in an email to Capital. "With a focus on unnecessary lighting, particularly in non-residential, retail and other similarly used buildings, this is an integral part of the effort to reduce carbon emissions city-wide."
That effort—an 80 percent reduction in city emissions by 2050—will require deep cuts in the city's buildings emissions, which account for up to 80 percent of New York's carbon profile.
11 comments:
So how about shutting off the lights on the bridges?
"But but but" Jimmy Van Bramer says, "they need the exciting NYC views so they don't look at the brownfields the live on."
When Paris was liberated from the Nazis, the lights went on again.
Maybe NYC should turn off its lights.
We have a totalitarian government here, in case nobody noticed.
When...make that, if....we get liberated, then we can turn on the lights again.
Like that alone will reduce our carbon footprint.
Puhleeze, stop pulling my schvantz!
One of the only decent Jamaica elected officials, him and Senator James Sanders and Senator Avella, but Avella covers a small portion of Jamaica.
A darker NY would be a safer NY
It would be a Crime Bill that favored the Criminals.
Paris has been turning their lights off at night for a number of years now. The savings for NYC would be tremendous. Additionally, it helps migrating birds, keeping them from becoming disoriented by the bright lights.
I think it's a great idea.
Thanks to billionaire's row aka the new swiss bank accounts, those 100 story apartment towers lights won't even be on. Actually, a lot of current residential buildings are already obliging since certain greedy individuals are using them for tax shelters or pied-a-tierre's, so they are dark 90 per cent of the time during the year.
Fuck the migrating birds. NYC will quickly find a way to waste the money saved by the blackout.
If your bird concern is sincere, fight to close the waste transfer station in College Point which is right across from La Guardia. More birds have been sucked into jet engines than disoriented by lights.
Years ago (I'm 67) when I worked in Manhattan (Westvaco Building, 299 Park Avenue), the company I worked for had three floors in the building (20-22).
At night, it was common practice (common sense?) to turn off all the lights in the office areas. Only the Data Center (which was 24x7x365) remained lit.
I don't recall if each tenant in the building was responsible for their own electrical usage or not....
Why do we need a bill or legislation when it's just common sense to do so. Don't we as homeowners turn off the lights in rooms we don't use, or at night before going to bed.
Why is it so hard to do simple things?
@Johnny: I have no idea, but ever since I was a child, I've noticed that most commercial and industrial buildings leave all their lights on overnight for no apparent reason.
You'd think the electricity savings alone would be cause enough to shut most of them off at night.
Post a Comment