Save our Shoreline: Gounardes, residents to rally for Climate and Community Investment Act
On Sunday, March 20, New York State Senator Andrew Gounardes, the Bay Ridge Environmental Group (BREG), and southern Brooklyn community members will rally in support of the Climate and Community Investment Act (CCIA). The CCIA, which Senator Gounardes co-sponsors in the New York State Senate, would create and sustain over 150,000 new jobs in the green energy sector, as well as require polluters to pay for the carbon they emit. Revenues from this carbon tax would be used to provide a rebate on green electricity bills for the lowest-earning 60% of New Yorkers, saving millions of households thousands of dollars each year.
Included in the CCIA are earmarked funds to strengthen southern Brooklyn’s protection against storms worsened by climate change, after hundreds of southern Brooklynites lost homes — and some even lost lives – in Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
According to this map, a sea level rise of four feet would put much of the Brooklyn Navy Yard underwater, as well as parts of Sunset Park’s Industry City. At that level, nearly all the streets on Coney Island and Brighton Beach would be submerged. If seas were to rise six feet, Coney Island and Brighton Beach would be mostly submerged. It would mean about 10,000 buildings could be underwater.
Brooklyn Boro
View MoreNew York City’s most populous borough, Brooklyn, is home to nearly 2.6 million residents. If Brooklyn were an independent city it would be the fourth largest city in the United States. While Brooklyn has become the epitome of ‘cool and hip’ in recent years, for those that were born here, raised families here and improved communities over the years, Brooklyn has never been ‘uncool’.