Too much green?

May

You might call it Earth Day burnout.

A keynote speech by NY Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s top environmental deputy drew fewer than 50 people as part of a two-day Yonkers Conference focusing on how the city can get greener. Read my colleague Ernie Garcia’s story previewing the event.

One of my long-time sources in Yonkers who has gotten her hands dirty for years trying to improve the environment said there have been so many of these “green” conferences lately that it may have hurt Yonkers’ attendance.

Cuomo’s environmental deputy – Katherine “Kit” Kennedy (no relation to JFK’s family) had plenty to say about how much her boss and the state is doing to protect our water, air and other resources. None of it was new or earth-shattering. More just a listing of the various legal battles the state is waging to keep federal agencies like the EPA from relaxing standards.

Cuomo is fighting to close Indian Point when its license expires in 2013, but Kennedy had little to offer as an alternative when one questioner in the audience – Stanley Fishbein – asked how we would get electricity if the nuclear plant closed. She cited a National Academy of Sciences 2006 study that said the energy Indian Point makes could be replaced, though it would be a challenge. But as Fishbein noted later, little has been done to come up with another source of energy to replace the nuclear plant, which could lose the right to produce half its power in 2013.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 2nd, 2008 at 4:37 pm by Greg Clary.
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2 Responses to “Too much green?”

Artisan33 May 5th, 2008 at 6:45 am
I’m glad you noticed that Mr. Cuomo’s anti-Indian Point “campaign” is just his own personal vendetta. No administration stands behind him on this. No bill has been passed by the state assembly, no official policy has been written, and the heads of DEC and other agencies were not consulted. Many see him taking this position as an open grab for the same 8000 votes that put Rep. John Hall over the top. The antinuke mailing list(s), as held by just a few groups, adds up to about 8000 names. In a tight Democratic primary, 8000 is more than enough to ensure victory.

If you look at yesterdy’s event as Cuomo’s first primary stump speech, 50 people ain’t so bad.

Besides, the biggest engine of green in our area, is the clean silent Indian Point, powering our lives with not a single molecule of smoke, soot, or CO2.

If Andy wants to be Green, he better turn pro-nuke.
Artisan33 May 5th, 2008 at 10:19 am
Giving it some thought, I have to wonder why Cuomo seems so lost in space.

It’s hard to sit in one’s mansion, aloof from the populace, and then try to figure out what they give a hoot about.

Having been raised in the expectation of being NY governor one day, this distancing process gets even more isolating, by virtue of family expectations being the target, the goal, and the motivation for every public act.(not public need).

Since the people don’t really care if you become governor, you have to search around, for some group to lead, or some issue to proclaim, to substitute for not being one of the people, knowing their needs by living them, and constructing a viable program to improve their lives, in ways that matter to them.

So we get PR gaffes.

We get lapses of judgement.

We get Elitist designer issues, straight out of Huffington Post, shoved down the throats of a populace, who if asked, would ask for some very different and specific things.

They would ask, 73% to 27%, to not be bothered with the Indian Point as holocaust scenario any longer.

They would ask for repaired roads, lower house taxes, and school tax relief for elder citizens. They would ask for some answer, any answer to the immigration dilemma, and they would ask that local jobs be preserved. They would ask for stability, cohesiveness, and just plain ethics in state government.

They would ask for (even beg for) an end to the use of demagogery and hysteria in voting campaigns, remembering the last great “Ethical Leap Forward” proposed by the late Mr. Spitzer, in his holier than thou stealing of the state house, and what an embarrassing lie it turned out to be.

They might even ask Mr. Cuomo to maybe poll the state, and get issues from below , where the problems are, instead of cherry picking designer issues from pages of the political fashion magazines, for all of us to “live up to” ( ala Spitzer ?).

But no, he didn’t do that. He just sent Kit Kennedy out to “Huffington them” about wispy green fantasies, and they stayed away in droves. Spitzer, Cuomo, Paterson. The non-existent New York State administration.

I guess its better than Huey Long.( or Pol Pot)

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