It looks like the New York City mayor really is coming for your hamburgers, as least those provided in government institutions.
As part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s “Green New Deal,” New York City will “lead[ ] by example on climate change by ending City purchases of unnecessary single-use plastic foodware and phasing out the purchase of processed meat, cutting beef purchasing in half, committing to a carbon neutral City fleet by 2040, pursuing expanding mandatory organics collection citywide, and undertaking comprehensive projects to mitigate climate risk, including Lower Manhattan Coastal Resiliency.”
VegNews – a vegan magazine – reported that this would mean phasing out “the amount of meat served within city-controlled agencies such as hospitals, schools, and correctional facilities.”
In a tweet on Monday celebrating Earth Day, de Blasio said: “we face a moment of crisis. There’s no plan coming from Washington to save our planet — we have to do it ourselves.”
Of course, that means other people and not himself. While appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” de Blasio said part of his Green New Deal for the city involved reducing emissions from skyscrapers.
“The biggest source of emissions in New York City is buildings,” De Blasio said, according to the Daily Caller. “We are putting clear, strong mandates. The first of any city on the earth to say to building owners, ‘clean up your act, retrofit, clean up.’ If you don’t, there’s serious fines, $1 million or more for the biggest buildings. This mandate is going to guarantee we reduce emissions.”
He added: “We are going to ban the glass and steel skyscrapers which are inefficient.”
New York City mayors sure like to ban things.
“Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough then asked de Blasio about reducing his own carbon footprint, since the mayor takes his motorcade across town every day to attend a gym far from his home.
De Blasio defended this action by saying he wanted to use a gym near his old neighborhood to keep him “connected” to his roots, and that imposing restrictions on everyone else on the city would offset his own actions.
“The plans we put forward we are acting on will reduce emissions 30% in all of New York City by 2030. That’s where we make huge change,” de Blasio said. “To the question wherever I go in New York City, whether I take a subway, go nearby or farther away, I have a security detail that follows me in their cars either way.”
De Blasio decided to implement a Green New Deal for New York City even though a version that made headlines earlier this year, supported by freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of Queens, failed spectacularly in the U.S. senate. Not one Democrat voted for the deal, instead claiming the vote was a sham. They failed to explain how voting on their own radical proposal was a sham.