To: Mayor Bill de Blasio, of New York City

From: David Diop

Date: September 8, 2018

Subject: Increased implementation of green roofs across New York City

 

This memo is meant to inform the office of the Mayor of a proposal to increase the usage of green roof systems across the city. This will serve to further deter the rising effects of climate change.

Summary                                                                                                                                   

Like major cities across the world, New York City faces the problem of climate change. One method of mitigating this issue is with green roofs. Currently, there is a tax incentive for people to construct them, but it’s not enough. I propose a new program to facilitate the construction of green roofs across the city at a massive scale.

Discussion                                                                                                                                     

As we’re all aware, climate change is a growing problem for the world and especially for this city. As is common across the planet, the production of excess greenhouse gases by human activities leads to a buildup that traps the sun’s heat, causing the global warming effect that has been observed for many years. This effect is even worse in large cities like our own, where not only are there even more emissions to absorb heat, but there’s also a significant amount of concrete, asphalt and other dark colored substances to absorb even more heat. This leads to a phenomenon known as the urban heat island effect, in which a city’s average temperatures tends to be significantly higher than its surrounding area.

This effect is quite observable here in New York City, where the past several years have seen many of our hottest days on record. At this rate, the temperature will continue to increase to even more undesirable levels. Thus, in an effort to mitigate this issue, I propose that we engage in a more widespread use of Green roofs around the city. Green roofs are roofs of buildings that are covered with vegetation. This vegetation serves to act as a buffer between the solar rays and the building materials to reduce heat absorption. Your predecessor Mayor Bloomberg attempted to make use of this innovation, by offering tax incentives for their construction, back in 2010. However, this effort was not enough. This time I recommend the city fund the construction of green roofs on a much larger percentage of our city’s rooftops. We have a few options for gaining the necessary funds. We could, for example, utilize higher taxes to acquire them. Or we could form a partnership with a private company, a method that we’ve used to fund initiatives in the past.

If this new Green roof program proves successful, it will not only help lower our city’s average temperature back to more stable levels, but may perhaps inspire more cities across the U.S. to implement similar programs. With enough cites engaged in similar actions, alongside the many other environmental initiatives in existence, perhaps even climate change as a whole could be more effectively deterred one day.

Recommendation                                                                                                                   

Thank you for taking the time to review this message. I would like to discuss this proposal further in person. We still need to consult researchers about the most effective plant species to use and the minimum percentage of buildings needed to produce a significant effect. There’s also the matter of finalizing a plan to finance such a project. When you are free to hold a meeting, please contact me at ddiop000@citymail.cuny.edu and I will arrange the meeting.