Frivilous Law?
We can probably file this one under the “huh?” column when it comes to the law, but New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg signed a new law that now makes it illegal for stores to keep their doors open in the summer leaking air conditioning out into the streets. Fines do run in the reletively modest range ($250 for a second offense and $400 for the third), but the law could actually help the city in peak summer months with keeping the power grid in check. WNBC.com has more on the law that is now in effect:
The law was first introduced in the City Council in 2006 but went nowhere. As recently as this Spring, it was seen inside City Hall as a headline grabber with little chance of ever becoming law. But then the increasingly green mayor said he might actually sign such a law and the wheels of lawmaking at the City Council went into high gear.
Advocates pitched it as a small way to assist the region’s electrical grid during peak summer usage — the most persuasive argument: Why should a mega-corporation pump air conditioning into the street when it could trigger a blackout in, say, a working class neighborhood in Queens? When we asked that very question to people on 34th Street in July as they walked past one chilled-air-spilling-door after the next, though, nearly every one of them said they liked the cold air on a hot summer day. Even if it meant the risk of a blackout when they got home.
Do you think it will actually help the power grid in the city? Or is it just a move by the political system to look more environmentally friendly?
