It really would be interesting to find out what moral calculus goes into Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s environmental decisions. It must go something like “I’m a big city mayor, working hard to draw down emissions on a municipal scale. Therefore, it is 100 percent justifiable that in my personal life, I fly regularly to the Bahamas and use A/C units intended for a whole apartment to keep my SUV a comfortable temperature.”
Because that’s what he had his staff do this week: take a standard room air conditioner and try sticking it into the window of an SUV. The New York Post reports:
If the strange plan gets a green light, the units would be plugged into electrical outlets and cause less pollution than running the vehicles’ own A/Cs on an idling engine.
The mayor’s two Chevy Suburbans have been on cooling restriction since July 2009, when reporters spotted them all around town idling with the A/Cs on for several minutes at a time.
Bloomberg quickly apologized for the gaffe and ordered his security detail to obey the city’s three-minute idling restriction.
Bloomberg’s spokesman argued that this plan would emit less greenhouse gas than cooling down the SUV using only the engine. We have an alternative idea: Suck it up, like the rest of us. Or buy these shirts.
