Congestion Pricing remains a hot topic in the power corridors of New York City and State politics with a looming Monday deadline on Federal aid to help finance the start-up costs. As usual, a hard fought issue campaign in New York comes down to the Governor (Spitzer-D), the Speaker of the State Assembly (Silver-D) and the President of the State Senate (Bruno-R).

In New York, this is known as the three men in a room situation. It means that at this point it really doesn't matter what each individual legislators think because the leader of each branch of the legislature knows that they can swing enough votes to make whatever compromises they want happen. I spoke to two of these frustrated legislators yesterday and today that it's pretty much out of their hands and they will see what the final legislation is probably within an hour before they are forced to vote on it. Such is the poor state of our great democracy here in New York.

It stands up well as a good synopsis of how congestion pricing will improve NYC's sustainability. Bloomberg is on a roll lately as he unveils his environmental initiatives and explains how in reducing oil consumption and greenhouse gases we can also improve quality of life for millions of people in NYC. It shows how reducing oil consumption and greenhouse gases can be win-win instead of a sacrifice.

Below is a guest post by Dan Miner, organizer of the Peak Oil NYC group about a new report he wrote for NYC Sierra Club and Beyond Oil NYC.

As Oil Drum readers know, getting our communities to even acknowledge the reality of fuel depletion, let alone prepare for it, is a huge communications challenge. The Sierra Club NYC Group Energy Report offers an indirect approach that can be applied in any municipality, at any level of energy literacy.

While climate change awareness has increased dramatically this year, it is still widely believed that the climate impacts of our oil addiction lie far in the future, preventing a public consensus of urgency. Without that, the bold political action we need today is impossible. The stated primary goal of the report is to deal with potentially imminent national energy security risks at local levels, while also using those conventionally accepted issues to speed up the schedule for climate change response.

I've now had time to sift through more of Mayor Bloomberg's sustainability plan. I highly recommend the speech reading through the whole report if you get a chance or you can focus on a few of the different sections on Land, Water, Transportation, Energy and Air. I could probably spend a post or two on each of these in the future.

The Good
Everything in the plan itself is pretty much all good stuff for creating a more environmentally friendly and sustainable city. Most of these are administrative no-brainers, it's just a matter of changing the way procurement is done by the city and how incentives are arranged for individuals and businesses to do the right thing. There is too much to digest completely here, but the important part is that this Mayor has committed to sustainability as a major part of his agenda for the rest of his administration:

I make this promise to you: I will not spend my last 984 days in office pretending that all is fine and leaving these challenges to the next mayor, who may well pass them off to his or her successor. And we – the residents of a city that is a beacon to the world – will not abdicate our responsibility to that world. That’s not leadership. Leadership is about recognizing challenges and seizing opportunities. And we are going to seize this opportunity – to lead the way forward and create the first environmentally sustainable 21st century city.

What's the bad and ugly? The Bad is all the stuff that somehow got left out of the plan. And the Ugly is the risk that major pieces of this may get bogged down in getting approval at different levels of government before the next Mayor takes over.