Alexander Ganias, ‘20

January 2020

Talk to any sane person, and they’ll probably say that climate change and man-made global warming are huge problems, ones that needs to be solved as quickly as possible. That’s the simple part; now ask them how, exactly, that would be accomplished. Suddenly the problem becomes much more complicated. What takes priority, who will be affected more, what will it cost, how many people would be on board with any possible solution? There are so many questions that I personally do not know how to answer. One day however, I saw an advertisement for a meeting in southern Manhattan that would discuss the issue, but specifically about solar panels and the deal with those in NYC. This meeting was hosted by a group called the Sierra Club, and ran by the New York City Student Union. Since I felt very passionately about the topic of climate change (I also knew the people who ran the meeting), I registered for and attended the meeting. 

In this meeting, I learned that the lovely mayor Bill de Blasio of New York City wanted to put solar panels on every building that was deemed ready for said panels. This was in order to approach the goal of New York City being powered entirely by renewable energy (going 100% renewable). They were able to put solar panels on about four or so buildings, before they just stopped. Why? Because the budget for this project didn’t account for the cranes that would put them on the buildings. Seems like a slight oversight that could easily be amended, but nope, de Blasio pulled the plug on the project. In the cartoon, his next option is Plan B; the specific name for this Plan B is HydroQuebec (HQ). HydroQuebec is a public utility, that involves building dams in the Canadian province of Quebec, collecting the electricity produced as a result, and using it to power the province. These dams produce more electricity than the region needs however, so Quebec takes this excess energy and sells it to other parts of North America. These locations include States like Minnesota, Iowa, and others in the midwest and northeast. This brings us back to de Blasio’s desire to make NYC 100% renewable. He reached out to HQ in order to make a purchase plan, and that’s where it starts to get a little dicey.

Remember, HQ sells excess energy to other locations already; the list of locations didn’t include NYC at the time, but it did include Dutchess, Oneida, and St. Lawrence counties of New York State. However, HQ only has so much energy to sell. Quebec saw that a deal with NYC would be financially better for them in the long term, so they agreed to sell them a certain amount of energy on a regular basis. However, this means they will have to sell less energy to the other parts of the US that get their renewable energy from HQ, or just stop selling it to them altogether. New York City will be closer to 100% renewables, but cities like Minneapolis and Des Moines will have to resort to coal and other non-renewable sources of energy. This essentially leads to a net zero gain in renewable energy usage (one goes up, the other goes down). Beneath all of that, the dams have to be built in order to be used, and there’s only so much land and water that the earth can provide, let alone Quebec. The construction of these dams are causing several problems for the First Nations in the Nunavik region of northern Quebec, like contaminating their drinking water, and removing them from their land. The only ones who seem to benefit from this plan are the pockets of HydroQuebec board members, and Mayor de Blasio, because he will technically get NYC to reach 100% renewable energy. In spite of this, the mayor rushed in to this deal with the promise of achieving an entirely renewable energy-powered NYC by 2030, without thinking of the repercussions that would become of it. On the bright side, the deal has not been made official, and there is still time to prevent that from happening; being a part of this deal will not erase the issues pertaining to the native peoples, but refusing to participate in it could make it known that NYC doesn’t condone that type of oppression (because we allegedly don’t, right?). Additionally, the regions that already get energy from HQ, won’t get that striped from them. New York City has the capability to get their renewable energy from other sources; these other regions may not have that capability, and therefore need that HQ energy. For NYC, it also might’ve been easier to reuse the obviously limited number of cranes available, but that’s not my place.

The meeting was very informative, and I ended up attending future meetings. They’re run by NYC students, and it is mostly attended by NYC students, with a couple of adults that represent the Sierra Club. I learned about the aforementioned situation regarding Mayor de Blasio and HydroQuebec, but I also learned methods of convincing people to take action against the specific sects of the climate change issue (like application of solar panels), as opposed to the issue as a whole. They had introduced to me the idea of everyone having a stake in the fight for renewable energy; why does this matter to certain people, which people would hold bigger stakes due to different living conditions, et cetera. One of the bigger parts of each meeting was discussing how to get people to develop their own stake, and to figure out why it’s important for them to fight for renewable energy. 

One of the convincing methods was to write an article in a newspaper (which is what I’m doing), describing the situation (I have). My message is this: the meetings, while informative, are sparsely attended. A grand total of 9 different students have attended (5 from BHSECM alone), from three different schools; BHSECM, Beacon, and the NYC iSchool. The majority of the attendees live in either Manhattan or Brooklyn (with one exception); it’s safe to say that there was a limited selection of backgrounds, and therefore a limited selection of stakes. Despite this, it’s amazing the amount of things we can get done with so few people, imagine what it would be like if we had more, from a wider variety of backgrounds. The number of ideas, and the progress that could be made would be astounding. But I don’t want to coerce you to come to these meetings, that’s up to you. If you believe you have a stake in this fight against climate change, and the fight for renewable energy, come to one of these meetings. I recommend you try and spread the word to friends in other schools, that way we can have voices from several school districts, as opposed to just a few.