business – R&R – Reachout and Rebuild

Is the East End ‘Open for Business’ as Usual?

David Posnett — Tue, 12 May 2020 13:57:01 +0000

Gurney’s Inn, long an iconic resort on Long Island’s eastern tip at Montauk (June 5, 2013) Credit: Doug Kuntz

Some East End resorts are planning to open soon. Contrary to some assertions that misinterpret Governor Cuomo’s Executive Orders, resorts are NOT ‘essential businesses’.

Governor Cuomo’s economic recovery policy defines ‘essential infrastructure’ accommodation. This is distinct from seasonal resorts. Please see the following PDF link from the governor’s Empire State Development office, which explains in greater detail what the executive order means in terms of ‘essential business’ and gives guidelines about how essential businesses must operate: https://esd.ny.gov/sites/default/files/ESD_EssentialEmployerFAQ_033120.pdf

Item #6 of the document defines an essential business:

“6. An Essential Business is any business providing products or services that are required to maintain the health, welfare, and safety of the citizens of New York State.” That could include accommodations that provide housing to healthcare workers, COVID-positive individuals who are quarantined, and other vital services.

Our East End resorts are not contributing to the “health, welfare and safety” of New Yorkers. In fact, our local resorts, while critical to our local economy, actually put a substantial burden on our local healthcare systems, even without the added stress of a pandemic, and clearly (and logically) fall squarely within the governor’s phased reopening approach. Hotels and restaurants are in Phase 3 of his plan.

According to Suffolk County’s website (5/10/2020) we are not yet even ready to start Phase 1, as we fulfill only 4 out of 7 reopening requirements.

https://dashboards.suffolkcountyny.gov/app/main#dashboards/5eb5950d3ab83817803ffe49?h=false&t=false&l=false&r=true&volatile=true

Here is some more information from Governor Cuomo:

On 4/28, Governor Cuomo was asked whether Saratoga Race Course could reopen. He referred to it as “an attractive nuisance” and stated that it would bring people into the region, hampering local COVID-19 mitigation efforts. According to CBS Channel 2, ‘The governor explained the concept of “attractive nuisance,” saying regions cannot begin opening up businesses that draw hundreds of people from other areas.’ A video of his statements appear in CBS’s link: https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2020/04/28/coronavirus-covid-19-new-york-state-reopening-andrew-cuomo/

In order to open our resort economy in a responsible manner, what sorts of health and safety plans will be required to be implemented (following federal, state, county & town protocols) to protect staff, guests, first responders, and the community at large? Who has input in developing and vetting local plans? Will proposed and adopted plans be made public? Some considerations should include the following:

When resorts do open, how will management know if a guest is positive? What sort of guest screening will the resort employ? Will temperatures be taken upon check-in, at the very least?(What happens if a guest tests positive at a resort? Will they be quarantined at that resort?)
Frequently, seasonal resort staff live in dormitory-style housing (either on- or off-site) with multiple employees per bedroom, with no opportunity to isolate. Will staff be tested regularly? What happens when an employee tests positive? How and where will they be quarantined in that instance? Will there be a ‘duty to report’ for employees and employers?

Local resorts should not be allowed to reopen before a plan is in place that includes testing, contact tracing, and quarantine, especially for businesses that attract large numbers of people from outside our area, be they, guests or employees.

Good policy is driven by good data, and here we face another challenge. The way that COVID cases are reported out by our local hospital, for instance, uses a person’s permanent address as a reporting data point. If a resort guest or employee is hospitalized, it is not shown as a Montauk, or East Hampton statistic, but rather is added to the tally of whatever state and municipality is listed on the patient’s i.d. This makes it difficult to quantify the burden that is placed on local healthcare resources.

We cannot value our economic interests above the safety of our community. I know that our town officials are well-aware of the dedication of our local volunteer first responders. I don’t know if they are aware that a large number of those volunteers are high-risk for COVID disease; often, the most active members of our ambulance corps, for instance, are retirees. To put this group – and the rest of our community – at added risk due to a precipitous opening of our seasonal businesses would be unfortunate.

Jessica James (Montauk)

Oil Giant Takes Climate Change Seriously

David Posnett — Fri, 08 Mar 2019 22:24:19 +0000

This is hilarious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=34&v=D1BOWxFMT5Q

And this is serious:

BY STEVEN MUFSON, The Washington Post, March 5th

The chief economist of one of the world’s biggest oil companies is urging other companies to take climate change seriously — and sooner rather than later.

If not, it might be bad for business.

That’s the warning from BP’s Spencer Dale, who made the rounds in Washington last week explaining the business case for finding a solution for the warming planet.

“All the climate arguments are real, urgent and important,” Dale said in an interview with The Washington Post.

Despite working for one of the world’s biggest producers of fossil fuels, Dale said the longer the world waits to address rising emissions, the more “draconian” the changes in the global economy will have to be.

“How do I run a business, how do I make a business plan if I know that the path I’m on is unstable?” Dale asked.

For a multinational energy firm operating in dozens of countries, that could mean having to scrap assets, Dale said.

The provocative economist spent more than a decade working for the Bank of England before joining the oil giant. At the end of February, Dale led the publication of BP’s annual energy outlook, which is widely anticipated among energy industry followers.

At the center of the report’s most likely scenario for the future is the tension between the pressing need to slash carbon emissions and the growing demand for energy as the global population grows and seeks better livelihoods.

The best way to deal with that, Dale said, is to boost the energy efficiency of buildings and other systems.

Still, in all of BP’s scenarios, oil would still be widely used in 2040. The amount could vary from 80 million barrels a day to 130 million barrels a day — a huge gap. Yet even the low-end scenario would require trillions of dollars of investment just in petroleum over the next 20 years.

Indeed, history shows how hard it has been for societies to move from one form of power production to another, Dale said. Previous energy transitions have taken about four or five decades, he said.

It took almost 45 years, for example, for oil to go from 1 percent of world energy in the late 1800s to 10 percent. It took natural gas more than half a century to catch on.

Renewables will penetrate the global energy system faster than any fuel in history, Dale said, going from 1 percent to 10 percent in just 15 years.

But BP’s analysis suggests that is not fast enough to stem the growth of climate-warming emissions. Even though new renewable energy will satisfy about half of the new energy demand, carbon dioxide emissions are likely to increase by about 10 percent instead of falling sharply as needed to stem climate change.

Overall, global energy demand probably will grow by around a third by 2040, slower than the previous 20 years but still enough to make it difficult to lower greenhouse gas emissions as needed.

Around 80 percent of that increase in demand will come from the developing world, yet a substantial proportion — two-thirds — of the world’s population will still consume low amounts of energy 21 years from now.

BP has said it wants the federal government to take action, having endorsed a $40-a-ton nationwide tax. But that doesn’t mean the company always supports carbon taxes in practice. BP spent more than any other company last year to defeat a carbon-fee ballot initiative in the state of Washington that the company said was “poorly designed.” The proposal ultimately fell short with voters in November.