The MTA will observe Earth Day (April 22nd) by stocking MetroCard vending machines with five million limited-edition green MetroCards. The cards aren’t “green” in the eco-friendly sense – they’re still not made from recycled material – they’re just, you know, green colored. So they’ve got that going for them. Oh, and some environmental factoids will be printed on the back. Governor David Paterson joined MTA officials at Grand Central Terminal yesterday morning for a......

At this point, it's hard to tell whether Ed Begley, Jr. is more famous for his decades of acting or his decades of environmentalism. Sure, he's logged over 200 appearances on stage, film and television, including his Emmy-winning breakout role on St. Elsewhere and his priceless turn on Arrested Development. But his funniest performance is arguably his self-effacing cameo as a hardcore green activist in the classic 1999 Simpsons episode "Homer to the Max", in......

Explaining why global warming needs to be stopped in an urgent way, Mayor Bloomberg said, "Terrorists kill people. Weapons of mass destruction have the potential to kill an enormous amount of people. [But] global warming in the long term has the potential to kill everybody...This really is just as lethal. It's just the results are something we will face long term." The Mayor was addressing reporters after speaking at the United Nation's conference on climate......

Design by João Sequeira, with Ana Figueiredo, Marta Moreira, and Pedro Ferreira, of Lisbon, Portugal Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City Office of Emergency Management have announced 10 winners in the contest to design temporary housing for the thousands of New Yorkers who might be displaced in the event of a catastrophe, like a direct hit from a Category 3 hurricane. The 117 submissions from 30 countries had to create quickly assembled housing for......

The last sentence uttered before all hell breaks loose is, “Forget about the rest of the world and hold onto the ones you care about.” Though probably unintentional, those words of brotherly advice – spoken to a lovesick young yuppie named Rob – perfectly sum up the prevalent attitude in fin de siècle New York: the world’s spinning into a cataclysm of total war and catastrophic climate change, but fuck it; let’s party and......

A tipster sends over what they describe as "a really rad clip of downtown Manhattan totally flooded, under what looks like 25 feet of water." We think it's more scary than it is rad...scarier than a fictional monster attacking New York. The real fear of what could be our future is shown below in what's part of Six Degrees Could Change the World which "explores the potential impacts of global warming degree-by-degree—through six degrees over......

Mayor Bloomberg continued his whirlwind tour through Asia yesterday with a stop in Bali, Indonesia to talk to United Nations officials about the global effects of climate change. This is after a foray to China, that brought to mind Ed Koch's Beijing inspiration for bike paths in NYC to The New York Times' Clyde Haberman. Like NYC, Bali was the victim of a devastating terrorist attack that killed and injured hundreds of people. True......

Mayor Bloomberg will be speaking at a United Nations conference in Indonesia, but he made a stop in Beijing first. He said to the audience at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, "Some people believe that by mid-century, as [much] as 75 percent of China's population may be city dwellers. Even an occasional visitor to China, like me, is struck by this rapid urbanization. It is one of the largest internal migrations by people in......

Mayor Michael Bloomberg was in Seattle yesterday to give a keynote at the United States Conference of Mayors. The Mayor, aka Mr. "I'm not running for president in 2008" Bloomberg, discussed NYC's efforts to be more sustainable and how governments need to invest and innovate to encourage energy efficiency. And one of the innovations would be to introduce pollution pricing. He said: we have to stop ignoring the laws of economics. As long as......

Former vice president Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize today. The Nobel committee said the shared award is "for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures that are needed to counteract such change." The award is worth $1.5 million and will be split equally between the two winners. According to......

The MTA announced today that it has formed a Sustainability Commission to create a "sustainability master plan" by Earth Day of next year. MTA Executive Director Elliot Sander said, "The MTA’s public transportation network makes the entire New York region sustainable, but in the era of climate change we have a responsibility to go even further. The commission will build on the exciting green initiatives we’ve already completed to make sustainability a permanent part of......

Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: A perp search at Roma Road and St. George in Staten Island, an overturned car at 2nd Avenue and 36th Street in Manhattan and a shark DOA in the Rockaways. The FDNY responded to an apartment fire and found a 4-year-old child who apparently witnessed her mother's boyfriend kill her mother then himself this morning. Why won't the city fix a sinkhole in a Staten Island street? Because the......

EVENT: "Home Buying for Hipsters" would like to help out all of you "creative non-traditional wage earners" during your quest to own a home. Buying property is an art, after all, so creatives may even have a head start! They "aim to specifically address your concerns and break down the process into steps you can understand." Their classes are free and open to everyone ("hipsters, non-hipsters, art stars, rock stars, designers, freelancers, sculptors, poets, part-time......

Reading about the The Yes Men's activist exploits is kind of like reading about live action forum trolling. Their acts of identity correction, where they make outrageous, hilarious, and satirical claims while posing as spokespeople for companies such as ExxonMobil and Haliburton, have been covered by news agencies around the world and have helped expose the ludicrous behavior of corporations to the general public. Gothamist talked with Andy Bichlbaum, one of the leading members of......

Yesterday, Albany lawmakers failed to decide on the proposed congestion pricing program for New York City, missing the deadline for NYC to qualify for $537 million in federal funding. Congestion pricing revenue, as well as federal funding to enact the plan, would go towards mass transit and road improvements. The Assembly was meeting in Manhattan, while the State Senate was meeting in Albany; theDaily News explains, "no deal could possibly get passed" without both......

As recently discussed here and there, a group of scientists have tried to predict how more frequent flooding--induced by global climate change--could affect New York City. An interesting facet of this conceptual floodmap from the Union of Concerned Scientists is the way it uncannily traces the boundaries of 400 years' worth of landfill on both East and West sides of lower Manhattan. In the 1600s, the East River lapped the edge of Pearl Street,......

Via the CityRoom, this is a map from the Union of Concerned Scientists that depicts what would happen to the city if we don't confront climate change. From page 2 of the report on New York (PDF):Coastal flooding. Rising sea levels caused by global warming are projected to increase the frequency and severity of damaging storm surges and flooding. Under the higher-emissions scenario what is now considered a once-in-a-century coastal flood in New York......

Since the only truly green event is the one that doesn't happen, Live Earth is certainly being met with some criticism - but either way it's going to cast some green over the world tomorrow. If you aren't heading over to the "New York" event yourself, NBC Universal will be bringing the concert to the world with a three-hour primetime special Saturday night on NBC, 18 hours of live coverage on Bravo, seven hours on......

Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg presented PlaNYC: A Greener, Greater New York, his administration's thinking about what the city needs to do by the year 2030 in order meet sustainability goals. The plan involves 127 initiatives under the areas of Brownfield Remediation, Housing, Open Space, Transportation, Energy, the Water Network, Water Quality, Air Quality and Climate Change, but the big topic was congestion pricing. After much speculation, Mayor Bloomberg even acknowledged that congestion pricing was the......

For the second year, Mayor Bloomberg has unveiled the New York City Card, which serves as a list of the qualities he is looking for in any politicians, be they Republicans or Democrats. And therefore, those with the money to put behind politicians can use the card to see if the politician's interests line up with what the city needs. Bloomberg said, "The City Card is not about conservative or liberal, Republican or Democrat -......

The New York City Open Accessible Space Information System Cooperative, aka NYC OASIS, has updated its map to include the latest property data, as well as coastal storm impact zones (above). This map joins climate change rallies and drenching Nor'easters as an indication of where city can get really soggy. The city also has a Hurricane Zone Finder. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report saying the city will flood, what with......

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger muscled into town to promote the Golden state's environmental policies, and he made a strange metaphor in the process. amNew York reported that he compared "'tree-hugging' stigma of environmentalism to the reputation for weirdness that once beset bodybuilders": "The gym used to be thought of as a dungeon for weirdoes and fanatics, but that has changed. Now it's changing for environmentalists." The Sun says it was a joke, but that's pretty......

This Saturday a sea of people wearing all blue will flood the streets of lower Manhattan. This will happen because Sea of People have organized a rally partly in the form of human installation. Thousands of participants dressed in blue will stretch through the streets and become a visual for the projected 10-foot waterlines that may redefine lower Manhattan under the ten-foot sea level rise scenario. If you would like to be a part of......

Sigh. The fog has taken a bite out of what would have been a pleasant spring day. Instead of sunny and 65 it is foggy and 48. With any luck the fog and clouds should be gone soon. The sun should be out by mid-afternoon, which doesn't leave much time for warming. Highs today might reach 60. Tomorrow should be warmer –at least until the showers arrive in the late-afternoon. Enjoy the warm weather tomorrow......

Let us start by saying Gothamist loves Staten Island Chuck. But our unconditional love for New York's largest commuting rodent hasn't fogged our assessment of Chuck's forecasting ability. We realize this is the first time Chuck #6 has made a forecast, but it is as wrong as the last couple of forecasts the late Chuck #5 made. It pains us to contradict Chuck. There will be no early spring this year. Do you like......

It is often said that baseball is a game of inches. There are many times during a game when an inch or two difference in the location of the ball would change a strike to a ball, a swing and a miss to a hit, a double to a home run, a catch from a error. On a much larger scale we can think of meteorology as a game of miles. The last two snow......

+ Architecture Research Office's climate change-influenced entry is a finalist for the History Channel's "City of the Future" design contest (right). Flooded pockets of Manhattan are called "Inundation Zones." + 250 Bowery, designed by FLAnk, has a "haunting, post-industrial vibe." The exterior's made of corten. + The battle over Washington Square Park's redesign continues. At issue: Was Department of Parks & Recreation Commissioner Adrian Benepe's verbal promise to make the fountain plaza no less than......

The New Yorker Festival is two weeks away, but there are still tickets available to some of the events:Friday, October 6: Fiction Night Monica Ali and Aleksandar Hemon 7 p.m. Ailey Citigroup Theatre 405 West 55th Street Antonya Nelson and Thomas McGuane 7 p.m. Anthology Film Archives 32 Second Avenue Andrea Lee and T. Coraghessan Boyle 9:30 p.m. Cedar Lake Dance Studios 547 West 26th Street A NewYorker Dance Party, hosted by Sasha Frere-Jones, with......

The decided lack of rain yesterday made for two consecutive blown precipitation forecasts. A hundredth of an inch fell in Central Park, which was not exactly what we had in mind. Ah, well, Gothamist will give it another go today. Today's forecast is easy: Cooler, a few clouds this afternoon, but the air below those clouds is so dry there won't be any rain. Tonight: Clear and cool, low in the lower 50s. Tomorrow is......

Curse you stationary front! Because of your unpredictable behavior, which makes your name a misnomer, Gothamist has had to revise our last two weather posts to catch up with changing conditions. You are a vacillating front not a stationary front! You moved south through town on Friday, took a weekend in Rehoboth Beach, headed north through the city last night before reversing direction late this morning. Staying to our south means the rainy weather will......