The Greenwashing-est Night

The New York League of Conservation Voters is hosting a Spring Gala tonight, May 20, 2013, honoring New York's Mayor Michael Bloomberg for being environmentally friendly. While Bloomberg has some green policies, there is a big non-green blot on his record. Bloomberg's push for NYC buildings to convert from #4 or #6 oil to fracked natural gas and the attendant plethora of gas pipelines (built while waiting for permission to be built) including Spectra's on the Gansevoort Peninsula, all touted as Eco-friendly while actually bad for the environment and potentially very dangerous.

If the oil conversion were truly a sustainable plan, various forms of renewable energy would have been forwarded as replacement options as opposed to the extreme push for gas. The methane in natural gas is at least 25 times more potent a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide.

     http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/01/02/1388021/bridge-to-nowhere-noaa-confirms-high-methane-leakage-rate-up-to-9-from-gas-fields-gutting-climate-benefit/

Lack of black smoke billowing from chimneys doesn't mean the climate change danger is gone. Natural gas is a fossil fuel and fracked natural gas from the Marcellus Shale contains radioactive radon. 

The proposed network of pipelines pose a threat to the people and property in New York City as well as the area covered in transporting the gas. A quick Google search will reveal the history of accidents with gas pipelines; imagine an explosion in building dense NYC. Consider also that gas boilers have only one possible supplier, Con Edison, which anticipates ever greater profits under the gas push. Interesting point is that natural gas demand has actually decreased in the last decade, but gas industry push for Liquified Natural Gas Terminals to store and export gas have increase dramatically.
     http://www.eia.gov/naturalgas/weekly/

Please make note that several of the patrons of the NYLCV fund raiser are organizations involved in pushing for High Volume Horizontal Fracking in New York State. The gas industry and its friends greenwash their product with millions of dollars spent nationwide advertising the clean niceness of gas with no factual or scientific backup for the green claims.

Fossil fuels are exacerbating climate change and erratic weather patterns. Extraction of fossil fuels from the Earth is a tortuous, polluting process that contaminates our water, air and land and causes health problems and even death for people and animals. There are better answers to our energy needs than fossil fuel use. Please see the benefits of renewable energy sources here.

      http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/our-energy-choices/renewable-energy/public-benefits-of-renewable.html

The misleading perception that NYLCV's policies are environmentally friendly is manipulative because its "Eco-partners" include fossil fuel companies and companies linked to it. NYLCV should divest of these partners
Please find a list of sponsors for the Gala here

      http://nylcv.org/2013_Gala_Sponsors

and the NYLCV partners here

      http://www.nylcvef.org/ecopartners

Please contact NYLCV and tell them to return funds accepted from fossil fuel companies and to separate from such partners in the future.

The way to a green tomorrow is total investment in renewable energy now. It is possible. Please research the fossil fuel hype; natural gas is not a "bridge" to renewable energy but a crutch for fossil fuel continuation. Here you can check out Stamford University's studies to convert NYS and even the world to renewable energy within 2 to 4 decades.

     http://www.stanford.edu/group/efmh/jacobson/Articles/I/NewYorkWWSEnPolicy.pdf

     http://news.stanford.edu/news/2011/january/jacobson-world-energy-012611.html

Renewable and sustainable energy is the only path to the future.