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Building a wall that protects but does not divide – this is the task Jamie Torres-Springer faces. Jamie Torres Springer is the Design and Construction Commissioner for the City of New York – a city of around 19 million people. Torres-Springer was responsible for the reconstruction after the devastating hurricane Sandy, which flooded parts of the city at the end of October 2015 and caused billions in damage.
New York is located on the Atlantic coast and is affected by climate change in several ways: According to forecasts by climate scientists and risk researchers, storm events will be more violent in the future and rising sea levels are exposing metropolises on the coast all over the world to new dangers.
The wall in question is intended to make these dangers manageable and minimize damage in the next hurricane: Walls are being built along the FDR Drive in Stuyvesant Cove Park and in East River Park to protect the lower-lying areas in southeast Manhattan from the next storm surge protection.
Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen chose the project as a visit destination during his stay at the UN General Assembly in New York, in order not only to be present at the debates on climate at this General Assembly – the UN headquarters, where the debates take place year revolved around the global climate is within sight – but to get an idea of how the city of New York is preparing for the impending climate catastrophe.
The protective measures are similar to those along the Danube – walls are intended to protect against flooding, and flood protection gates are closed if there is an imminent flood. At the same time, the park is being revitalized in such a way that it remains accessible to the population despite the walls. Even when planting, all sorts of details have to be considered: After the devastating hurricane Sandy, many oak trees that were under water died – in the park strip in front of the flood wall, which would be under water in the event of a flood, only tree species resistant to sea salt are planted planted.
New York City Councilor Jamie Torres Springer is hoping for additional budget funds from the infrastructure package promised by Joe Biden.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which operates the city’s subways and buses, has already been pledged $10 billion in additional funding, exactly the amount that will be made available for the city of New York as a whole by the federal government in Washington, but is currently unclear.
In any case, the need is enormous: not only does the city have to become more resistant to hurricanes, floods and heat waves, but the infrastructure in the USA has been severely neglected in recent decades. Paint is peeling off the bridges, rust is peeking out from underneath, potholes are appearing on the roads. When it rains heavily, the sewage systems are quickly overwhelmed, as was only seen in the past few weeks when torrents poured into subway shafts.
“New York has slipped from the temperate to the subtropical climate zone due to climate change, and the city has to adapt to that,” says New York City Planning Councilor Jamie Torres Springer. After his visit, Federal President Alexander Van der Bellen emphasized that the answers to climate change must be complex: on the one hand, it is about a change of course in politics and business, but at the same time adaptation and precautionary measures have to be taken. Coastal cities like New York face special challenges.
What is an appropriate CO2-Preis?
Van der Bellen’s next stop on the day is the home of Austrian-born climate economist Gernot Wagner, who teaches at New York University.
Born in Amstetten in 1980, Wagner still has close ties to Austria and regularly takes part in the European Forum Alpbach. There is Gugelhupf and coffee, which Wagner fetched from a nearby barista to spare the high-ranking visitor from Vienna American coffee. Books, a chess board, the “New York Times” and the “Financial Times” are on the table. Wagner became known to a broader public with the book “Climate Shock”, which he wrote with his Harvard University colleague Martin Weitzmann, who died in 2019. Wagner’s most recent book “Stadt, Land, Klima” was published in 2021.
Wagner explains how difficult it was to make the apartment near Washington Square Park climate-friendly – even though the city has set itself ambitious climate goals for building renovations: household emissions in the city are to be halved by 2030.
The two professors (Van der Bellen was an economics professor at the University of Vienna for decades) quickly got into technical discussions, the key question in the debate between the two: How do you find an appropriate price for carbon dioxide emissions? Is the market – with CO2-Pricing and emissions trading – the solution now that market failure – namely the failure to price in the external costs of greenhouse gas emissions – bears a fair measure of complicity in climate change? Both agree: Measures to stop climate change are still cheaper than the damage that occurs when CO2-output continues unabated.
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