Can New York fight fascism with climate policy?

It is fitting that NYPA was founded by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1931, as Americans—and people around the world—were struggling for economic survival during the Great Depression and the Nazi Party in Germany was beginning to win elections. The following year, shortly before Hitler came to power, Roosevelt won the US presidential election. He knew how to fight fascism. “Democracy has disappeared in a number of other great countries – not because the people of these countries did not love democracy,” he said in 1938, “but because they were tired of unemployment and insecurity, because they were tired of seeing their children go hungry. , while they sat helplessly in the face of government confusion and government weakness…” In New York, Roosevelt’s legacy lives on, and New York has the opportunity to once again fight fascism by democratizing energy.

Besides the founding of the NYPA, something else that happened in New York during this decade of ideological and global military struggle between democracy and fascism was that the New York City subway system expanded dramatically, and several completely new ones were added during this period. new lines. We have the opportunity to do the same now.

Gov. Kathy Hochul just revived the Manhattan Congestion Toll, a long-delayed and much-controversial scheme to charge motorists entering Manhattan a toll (her new proposal lowers the toll from $15 to $9). This policy has been much more demonized than the BPRA and has been susceptible to populist criticism in a way that the BPRA does not, as it does impose some costs and inconveniences on ordinary people. (The lawsuits by several unions trying to block it certainly underscore that reality.) Republicans are promising to make sure Democrats pay the price for being overwhelmed if that happens, boasting that the policy could give their party a shot at the governor’s office next time. . If average New Yorkers don’t see much benefit from these losses, I wish the Republicans might be right.