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New York politics have featured Green New Deals for more than a decade. Howie Hawkins, the 2018 Green Party gubernatorial nominee, ran under the banner of confronting climate change and the damage done to disadvantaged communities by fossil fuels in one legislative go. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have their own respective plans. Add Ulster County Executive Pat Ryan to the list.
The upstate Democrat recently unveiled his own 21st Century homage to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt s signature initiatives against the Great Depression. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions, increasing energy efficiency in buildings and spurring economic activity based in the transition to renewable energy all have a place in the plans that Ryan unveiled earlier this month. What makes his plan unique is how it might show how county governments might tackle climate change.
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In the late 19th century, Newburgh in the Hudson Valley represented the bleeding edge of industrial technology. Streams powering wool, gunpowder, flour and saw mills emptied into the Hudson River, where steamships carried industrial cargo. Thomas Edison in 1884 selected Newburgh to host one of the world’s first central power stations, making it the second electrified municipality in the United States after lower Manhattan.
A century later, Newburgh’s economic leadership had stalled, as manufacturers relocated and the river lost shipping traffic to trucking. The city of 28,000 now has the highest poverty rate downstate, and Newburgh’s mostly Latino and Black population struggles with high crime, water safety crises and rates of asthma more than twice the statewide average.