NYC Mayor on Climate Crisis: ‘Desperation is Inspiration’

“Desperation is inspiration,” New York City Mayor Eric Adams said today as he convened multiple sustainability events running parallel to the United Nations General Assembly.  

At the Concordia Summit, a gathering of cross-sector social impact professionals, the mayor of the nation’s largest city alluded to his own diabetes diagnosis as he urged action on climate, immigration and social inequity. 

“My body looked fine but was breaking down internally. I was too busy taking selfies. I should have taken internal selfies,” Adams told a standing room crowd at a Sheraton New York Times Square hotel ballroom. “It is, to me, the analogy of our globe. Our planet is our body.”

Adams, who said he overcame diabetes by adopting a plant-based diet and losing 30 pounds, took a bow for introducing a vegetarian menu to city-owned hospitals, and to public schools on Mondays and Fridays. 

The first-term Democrat used the Concordia address to take aim at stable, affluent nations for failing to fight harder to slow global warming, referencing smoke from Canadian wildfires and mass migration from weather- and war-ravaged nations as symptoms being felt in New York. 

“Walls, boundaries and geographic lines are not going to curtail the crises,” he said.

In addition to the Concordia Summit and the U.N. General Assembly, New York is host this week to the Clinton Global Initiative, Sustainable Development Goals Leaders Summit, numerous Climate Week events and the Global Citizen Festival. TriplePundit and its parent company, 3BL, will be there and bring the relevant news to you across our channels.