Help New York tackle the climate challenges of the future

Good morning. It’s Thursday. Today we meet the new CEO of the New York Climate Exchange, who describes it as “part think tank, part do-tank.” We’ll also learn more about Ivanka Trump’s day on the witness stand.

A few months ago, the city chose a consortium led by Stony Brook University to create something called the New York Climate Exchange. Officials said the exchange would lead research into climate solutions and training for green jobs.

Now the stock exchange has a CEO: Stephen Hammer, climate advisor at the World Bank. He starts next month.

Hammer told me he expects the exchange — which counts fourteen academic and business organizations and thirty community entities as partners — to function as “part think tank, part do-tank.” It will serve as a “training ground for thought leaders of tomorrow,” he said, but it is also intended to bring a sense of urgency to environmental issues that could help the city confront potential problems like last summer’s Canadian wildfires .

But Hammer told me he hadn’t yet chosen a specific set of issues to focus on. “We have partners,” he said. “What I want to spend the first part of my time on is understanding what these partners are focused on, what they bring to the table, what the challenges are. And then we’ll come up with a game plan.”

His resume includes co-founding and co-director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network, an international consortium of researchers, and serving on an energy policy task force when Michael Bloomberg was mayor advising City Hall on PlaNYC, a long-term project strive for a sustainable ecological future.

But he brings his own experience to his work. “You know, I lived in New York for over 25 years before I went to the bank,” he said, referring to the World Bank in Washington. “One of the things that really struck me this year was that of all the climate impacts that I would have expected a place like New York to ever have to deal with, dealing with smoke from fires 1,500 or 2,000 miles away never compares to my path had been. radar screen.”

When smoke from the wildfires swept through New York — raising the concentration of pollutants in the air to some of the highest levels ever recorded — he was in the Adirondacks. “It was orange skies and smoky conditions,” he said, and a few months later “he was worried about my daughter’s wedding. (The weather cooperated when the time came: “We had a beautiful day,” he said.)

But he said the smoke pointed to “the planning we need to do,” including how health care systems must adapt to the dangers of air pollution, as well as mold conditions in neighborhoods vulnerable to persistent flooding as severe storms become more common.

The city announced the creation of the fair in April, a week after Mayor Eric Adams announced a long-term environmental plan That included calls for buying out residents whose homes are in particularly flood-prone areas, as well as “large clusters of chargers” for electric cars on key transportation corridors across the city.

Hammer will work from a temporary home on Governors Island while a $700 million campus is built there. Officials said in April that it would include two new classrooms and research buildings on three acres of vacant land.

Weather

Expect a mostly cloudy day, with a slight chance of rain, and temperatures reaching the 60s. Clouds will remain in the evening and temperatures will drop into the mid 50s.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until November 10 (Veterans Day – observed).

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She was cool, calm and collected.

Ivanka Trump was the fourth member of her family to testify in the civil fraud case brought by the New York attorney general. My colleagues Jonah E. Bromwich and Ben Protess write that she was questioned for hours about the net worth of her father, Donald Trump — which Attorney General Letitia James says was inflated to get more favorable loan terms from banks.

The last time Ivanka Trump testified about her father — before a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol — was a major embarrassment for the former president. During that appearance, she acknowledged that he lost the 2020 election, prompting him to lash out at her for “checking out” in the final days of his administration.

Her testimony Wednesday was her first appearance in a lawsuit that threatens the future of the family business she once helped guide. She was seen as the heir apparent of that company until she followed her father to the White House after he became president in January 2017.

After he lost the 2020 election, she tried to distance herself from the company — and from her father’s legal troubles, which now include four criminal charges. She also hired her own lawyer, separate from the legal team representing her family in the fraud case. Like her father and brothers, she was initially a defendant in that case, but an appeals court dismissed the case against her.

Unlike her father, who lashed out at James and the judge’s clerk, she was gentle. Her testimony provided a surprisingly undramatic conclusion to the state’s case. She was the latest in a parade of witnesses, 25 in 25 days, called to shed light on the financial statements at the heart of the trial.

Although there was evidence she had directly handled her father’s financial statements, which reported the value of his assets, she said her focus had been elsewhere.

“I would assume he would have personal financial statements,” she said, adding, “Those weren’t things I was aware of.”

She played a role in arranging some of the Trump Organization’s relationships with lenders — most notably Deutsche Bank. At one point, the attorney general’s team asked about a 2011 email in which she told a Trump Organization colleague that favorable terms of a deal would only be possible if they could be backed by an equity guarantee from Donald Trump.

But when questioned about his financial statements, she said little. At one point, she was questioned about a meeting with a government agency evaluating her company’s bid to develop the Old Post Office, a federal building in Washington that would become the Trump International Hotel.

“I don’t remember them discussing the financial statements specifically,” she said. “The entire meeting was mainly about our vision of the project.”

Her brother Eric also denied knowledge of the annual accounts. But while Eric Trump grew irritated with questioning, she remained calm. Every pushback she delivered was delivered with a smile.

METROPOLITAN diary

On the Q

Dear Diary:

I was on the Q train, standing next to a mother and her two children, a patient older brother, perhaps ten or eleven years old, and his boisterous younger sister, who amused herself by hitting him.

“What did I just say?” their mother repeated every time the girl was hit, giving us all a minute’s rest.

Distracted for a few seconds, the girl turned to a tall, handsome stranger a few feet away.

“You look like Spider-Man,” she said, “like the actor who plays Spider-Man.”

He smiled.

“I’ll take it,” he said.

A few minutes later the girl repeated herself.

“You look like Spider-Man!” she said, as if for the first time.

When the train stopped at 72nd Street, the man got off. But just before he disappeared into the crowd, he turned around.

“You look like Wonder Woman,” he called back gently.

– Elinor Lipman

Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send your entries here And read more Metropolitan Diary here.