With state climate policy stalled, the city can lead by strengthening its workforce and supporting green businesses that deliver both environmental and economic benefits.
This year’s New York Climate Week convenes as climate policy faces mounting headwinds, even on our home turf. Panicked by an affordability crisis, state leaders have sidelined the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) — one of the nation’s most ambitious climate laws — under the false pretense of protecting consumer wallets.
But in a state where per-capita carbon emissions are roughly a third of the national average, smart climate policy is smart affordability policy. Reliable mass transit slashes emissions while freeing more than half of New Yorkers from the crushing cost of car ownership. Dense, energy-efficient housing expands the residential supply while driving down rent and power bills. Solar and battery installations lower monthly utility costs over time. Even street trees and public parks double as natural infrastructure — absorbing heat and stormwater— while providing free recreational space that replaces private yards.
The very features that make New York green are what make it affordable. We don’t need a new philosophy; we need these systems to work better. That requires fixing two fundamental operational bottlenecks: how we staff city government and how we support the private businesses doing the ground-level work.
First, we must strengthen the municipal workforce. The city’s critical climate initiatives rely heavily on public employees and contracted private firms. Delivering on these commitments demands the operational excellence Mayor Mamdani championed on the campaign trail. Yet with nearly 20,000 agency vacancies, an impending wave of retirements, and an opaque hiring process, we are hamstringing the very workforce required to execute this vision.
City Hall has an unprecedented opportunity to leverage its workforce development ecosystem — public schools, universities, nonprofits, and training partners — to build the pipeline it needs.
A “full-cycle” model of workforce development would link education, training, hiring, and career growth directly to the jobs the city needs to fill, supporting New Yorkers across the full career trajectory. That could mean career exploration through tours for younger high school students of railyards, waste treatment plants, municipal offices, and power stations; career preparation through internships and work-based learning at key city agencies; career access through targeted civil service reform, including more frequent exams, clearer trainee pathways, and transparent timelines for a defined set of climate-critical titles, without touching civil service protections; career launch through apprenticeships that begin near the end of high school and carry CUNY credit; and career advancement by working with businesses, unions, and industry associations to ensure career growth on the job.
City agencies must leverage their operational footprint to ensure that bus operators, landscapers, mechanics, building engineers, accountants, and trade workers are educated, trained, and hired right here in New York.
If this model can untangle the city’s notoriously sluggish hiring bureaucracy, it can serve as a proven template for private sector workforce integration. City government should act as the proving ground for the exact workforce practices we ask private employers to adopt.
Second, we must rethink how the city supports green businesses. The private enterprises maintaining streetscapes, developing housing, installing solar, managing green spaces, and clearing infrastructure need a stable environment to grow and hire locally.
Many of these green economy firms are small-to-mid-sized operations embedded in local neighborhoods. They are often led by overworked founders who double as operators, field workers, and HR managers. Their capacity to attend government webinars, navigate bureaucratic red tape, or staff job fairs is severely limited.
To design programs that businesses actually use, city agencies need a direct presence across the five boroughs. Adopting a “community organizing” mindset will allow agencies to meet business owners where they are, identify real operational friction points, and tailor municipal resources to solve actual problems.
In doing so, the city can bridge the divide between workforce development and business services—two systems that currently operate in silos. Matching qualified talent with real-time hiring needs is itself a critical business service, and it should be managed like one.
By using our city to serve our city, we can deliver effective governance, meaningful climate action, and true affordability simultaneously. Climate solutions and cost-of-living relief are not mutually exclusive—in New York, they are one and the same.