Good morning. It’s Friday. Today we’ll find out why former Vice President Al Gore still sees a moral argument about the dangers of a warming planet. We’ll also get details on the city ‘s plan to remake part of Park Avenue.
It has been 20 years since the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” came out, and former Vice President Al Gore — who wrote and narrated it — continues to make a moral argument about the dangers of a warming planet. Today he will take it to a church. “The moral case is the central case,” he said in a conversation that served as a prelude to an event in which he is a headliner — an event called “The Immorality of Inaction: Voicing Truth on Climate.” It will take place at Riverside Church, whose neo-Gothic structure in Morningside Heights, as it happens, was mainly financed by John D. Rockefeller Jr., the son of the founder of Standard Oil. Others who are scheduled to appear include Bishop William Barber II, a civil-rights leader and an ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ denomination, and Alexis Abramson, the dean of Columbia University’s Climate School. For Gore, whose almost single-minded focus on climate change galvanized followers on the left and critics on the right, there’s a family connection: His daughter Karenna Gore is the founder and executive director of the Center for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary, which organized the event with the Center for Sustainable Urban Development at the Climate School. The session comes at a fraught moment: Next week is Climate Week NYC. This week the Trump administration announced that the United States would no longer limit greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. “There have been dark times when the advocates felt despair,” Gore said after mentioning “previous moral challenges” like the fight to abolish slavery in the 19th century and the civil rights struggle and the women’s movement in the 20th. “But they kept going. Nelson Mandela said it’s always impossible until it’s done.” Then he struck what sounded like a note of optimism: 2026 “is likely to be looked back on as the tipping point year,” he said. The war in Iran has changed the economics of energy, he said, by driving up oil prices amid continuing uncertainty about shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. In May, solar power generated more electricity than coal in the United States, a first. Trump has been “able to slow things down,” Gore said, but he added that he expected courts to strike down the emission rule changes. “Like King Canute of old, he does not have the power to stop the tides,” he said, “and he has only limited power to stop the world’s rush to clean energy.” He noted that Thailand announced earlier in the week that it was increasing its share of renewable energy amid a supply crunch for liquefied natural gas. (Like much of Southeast Asia, Thailand relies on imports for the gas; Iranian strikes hobbled the infrastructure in Qatar, a leading supplier, in the spring.) In Africa, he said, thousands of solar panels are being installed every day, and in Pakistan, he said, “the common bride’s dowry is three pounds and an inverter.” Karenna Gore said that optimism would not be her predominant emotion until emissions were “actually going down more decisively.” When she hears that there is more energy from renewable sources, “I feel, ‘Oh, great,’” she said. “But all energy use is going up, so there’s this massive new voracious demand for energy. If more is renewable, great, but if it’s also raising demand for fossil fuels, that’s a problem.” (In fact, the Energy Information Administration — which had expected oil output in the U.S. to contract next year — revised its estimate in June, forecasting that U.S. oil production not only would be somewhat higher but also would exceed 14 million barrels a day for the first time.) The session at Riverside Church is not the only item on Karenna Gore’s calendar. She is involved with the Women’s Water Walk, a 108-mile trek that will begin tomorrow and follow the route of the Constitution Pipeline in upstate New York. She will take part in a ceremony at the theological seminary, at 121st Street and Broadway, and will walk from there to the Hudson River. She will join the walk upstate later in the month. She is a longtime opponent of the pipeline project, which was designed to transport gas from northeast Pennsylvania toward Albany. New York effectively blocked it in 2019. But an Oklahoma-based pipeline company revived plans for that project and a second pipeline several months ago. WEATHER Look for sunny skies with a high near 81. Tonight will be partly cloudy with a low around 63. ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING In effect until Monday (Yom Kippur). QUOTE OF THE DAY “I wasn’t even making a pitch.” — Roberta Pereira, the executive director of the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, on how she landed a $60 million donation from an anonymous donor. The money will go toward digitizing, preserving and cataloging the library’s archive of 15 million items. The latest New York news
We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times. A new plan for part of Park Avenue
It is home to 66,000 tulip bulbs in the spring and just over 100 fir trees that shimmer for the holidays in the winter. It made cameo appearances in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s,” “The French Connection” and “Men in Black 3.” And, difficult though it is to picture, Park Avenue was once home to a piano factory and a brewery, too. Now the city plans to take something away from Park Avenue: a lane of traffic in each direction along 11 blocks, from 46th Street to 57th Street. The city is reimagining Park Avenue as a “greener, safer and more people-centered corridor,” according to a statement from City Hall. In addition to removing the traffic lanes, the plan would convert an additional southbound lane into a two-way protected bike lane. An earlier design, released when Eric Adams was mayor, did not call for transforming a traffic lane into the bike path. The project will also include places where people can sit and relax. The work is expected to take five years to complete. Beautifying the strip is a result of a larger and grittier project underground. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which controls the Metro-North Railroad that runs beneath Park Avenue on the way to and from Grand Central Terminal, is rebuilding the 100-year-old Grand Central Train Shed, a billion-dollar project that will involve digging up the traffic medians. Ben Furnas, the executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a safe-streets advocacy group that supports the aboveground redesign, called the revamp “a major step forward.” Earlier proposals might not have created enough space for both pedestrians and cyclists, he said, but turning a southbound traffic lane over to cyclists will mean “ample space for both.” Others said the design should have done more to reduce traffic. And Janet Schroeder, a co-founder of the NYC E-Vehicle Safety Alliance, called it a “nightmare,” saying that it would make congestion worse and make the median more dangerous. “That’s going to be fun for people to sit around and eat lunch, with e-bikes flying by?” she said. METROPOLITAN DIARY Clam chowder
Dear Diary: It was lunchtime circa 1982 on upper Broadway. I stopped into a Chock full o’Nuts to get a bite to eat. Perusing the menu, I saw they had clam chowder. I asked the server whether it was Manhattan- or New England-style. “I think it’s from the Bronx,” he replied. I ordered a bowl of chicken noodle. — Todd Mathews Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Tell us your New York story here and read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B. Davaughnia Wilson and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com. |
