Now that the construction is for the most part done I think that our initial budget of $175/sq.ft is not sustainable. Of course it is great for the client in [...]]]>

Here is a short video we threw together of the Passive House renovation in Harlem. The video mostly discusses the budgeting of the project.

Now that the construction is for the most part done I think that our initial budget of $175/sq.ft is not sustainable. Of course it is great for the client in the long run. But as a company that practices the triple bottom line  - people, planet, profit - our budget did not  satisfy all three items.

Out of the three I can say without a doubt the planet was benefited by this job. We built a Passive House. We salvaged almost everything to build the house, creating a negative impact on the dump, meaning the house removed more garbage from the dump than it created.

Unfortunately the other two items – people and profit – did not get a fair deal. The workers were not paid enough, the client is not happy and the company did not make enough of a profit. Workers and company need to be taken care of in order for us to continue to make a meaningful impact on the world. Happy clients means more opportunities to build green.

The clients came to us with a very tight budget, $800,000, which is not enough for the scope of the complete gut rehab Passive House. $1,200,000 would have been more realistic.

But being realistic in not what got Eco Brooklyn to where it is now. You don’t start a cutting edge green building company because you are realistic. You start it because you are deeply idealistic and willing to sacrifice everything in the hope that it will make a difference to the world. There are huge risks to this.

So in that spirit we took on the job, our main goal to find a way to build a cutting edge green home on an affordable budget. We accomplished this, so from that point of view it was a great success.

But the clients are not happy and the company was hit hard financially. It may seem odd that the clients are not happy given they gained a $1 million plus house for $800K. We literally saved them hundreds of thousands of dollars all the while helping the environment.

But to achieve that we all had to make sacrifices. The main sacrifice was that as a company we could not afford to hire enough management. The job process was rocky. A green company needs to be even better organized than other companies because we are dealing with new cutting edge technologies with steep learning curves and we salvage materials thus we can’t tightly control the delivery time of materials.

This lack of management meant details were missed and client/contractor interaction was not as common. So even though behind the scenes we felt we were performing miracles to save the client money and add value to their home, the client did not see this.

The client simply felt they were paying what to them felt like a lot of money and we were not delivering as smoothly as they wanted. Because they don’t have a good grasp of what things cost it did not matter how many times we told them they would never be able to get this value elsewhere on their budget.

And when they did look elsewhere for comparison they saw crappy building with nice fixtures – the so called luxury condo that looks like a million dollars for the first couple years and costs a fortune to run. When you compare that to our building that does not look as fancy they felt shortchanged.

Never mind ours costs nothing to run and is built to last a hundred years. Those things are not as sexy as sparkling appliances and brand new moldings.

So we felt we were loosing our battle with the clients. It was very frustrating because we believe deeply that the building we made is decades ahead of any building built in the city today.

Core Values

In hindsight the main conflict was between the company’s and the client’s core values.

The company’s core value is clearly to put the benefit of the planet before anything else, with the understanding that by doing this we are benefiting ourselves as well. And in this case we did it to a fault (we should have done less for the planet and more for ourselves in order to continue strong in the long run).

But going balls out for the environment is both our strength and weakness.

The clients core value was to put their own benefit before anything else. This is not to say they did not care about Eco Brooklyn or the environment. But like most people, at the top of list is their own financial security, their family and their home, and when possible, but only when possible they consider the rest of the world.

I get that. I am a family man.

But I am also a green builder and sometimes things get complicated.

The problem was that we feel looking out for the environment is the best thing we can do for the client in the long run, even if it means less of a perfect construction process in the short run. The client however just wants a home for their family. Getting that done is challenge enough, never mind some idealistic and abstract global thinking.

Because of this we found ourselves at odds. For us if we could help the environment more we would. Even at the expense of short term discomforts and stress imposed by our main mistake – not budgeting for enough management and budgeting too much for the green building items – which arose from our over ambitious attempt to build a home for hundreds of thousands less than normally it would cost.

The client however found this inexcusable. If it is a choice to go some time without water in order to get gray water plumbing installed or skip the gray water and have water for their kids to take a bath they pick the later.

Unfortunately we were doing the building and not them. And we are very hard headed.

We picked to do the gray water, which delayed the job and meant the clients went without water for longer. Inexcusable in their eyes. Simply bad management. In our eyes it was a small sacrifice for something that will benefit the planet for many years to come…..which in turn benefits them.

It wasn’t like we expected the client to sacrifice alone. Eco Brooklyn always sacrificed first. If we found a way to satisfy the client and the environment at the cost of our profit then we made sure we did that first. Our priorities were planet, client then us.

Maybe we are wrong. Maybe that priority serves nobody. But I have this idea that we are connected and the ecology is in a lot worse shape than we are. Since we are ecology that needs to be dealt with first……?

But when the client is spending their hard earned money and the feel like the second fiddle, good will goes out the window fast and they stopped caring for us.

Towards the end of the job when we realized our ecological zeal had put our finances in tight stretches we got no mercy from the clients. In their memory was the lack of water and they made sure to withhold money accordingly. Water is just an example our of many conflicts of core values that arose.

What have I learned from this?

I can’t expect others to sacrifice for my cause. Next time I will only take on clients who can afford $1,200,000 and be done with it. They will get the job they were promised and I will be able to build houses that harm the environment a lot less.

This means that many people will be priced out and not benefit from Eco Brooklyn’s amazing green building.

But I have learned the hard way that when things get tight people hunker down and look out for themselves. It is about survival and humans can be the most brutal creatures on earth when they feel their own is being threatened.

I can’t put myself in that position of dealing with clients like that. Nor can I put the clients in that position. The clients of this house are scared. They feel we managed the job recklessly and this puts them at risk.

When they came to us they entrusted us as professionals to guide them in the building of a green home. They had no idea how much emphasis we put on green and at some point they wondered if we even cared about their home.

So in the future we won’t try the affordable green building thing because we can’t trust the client will be as willing as we are to build green. Instead we will charge. That way it won’t be a choice between having water on time or having a gray water system. We will have a budget to do both on time.

The clients of our current house had a tough time of it. I think with time they will forget the discomforts of the building process. As that fades they will see the value of the house. They might even be grateful towards us. But I doubt it.

Would I do it again? Yes. I think the struggle was worth the gain. It is an amazing house.

It is the first time in the history of building that a Passive House was built with such a high percentage of salvaged materials. It is revolutionary. And we did it not on some plot of land in Oregon but in one of the most expensive places to build on earth. For the price of a crap “luxury condo”!

But like all revolutions it was painful. And I am hurting more than anyone. I made sure I put my money where my mouth was. The clients probably will never understand that. But that is ok. I care about the house that we brought into existence.

When we are all dead that house will still be a wonderful home for families. That is a great gift. It is the least I can do for the planet and my fellow humans.

Here is the video that prompted this post.

That’s why we listened when  Justin Hall-Tipping told us that in the future, all energy could be sustainable, green, and free.

Justin Hall-Tipping, CEO of Nanoholdings, gives a TED talk about the energy applications of carbon nanomaterials.  It’s worth a watch, [...]]]>

Being a green builder is a constant search for more ecological ways of doing things.

That’s why we listened when  Justin Hall-Tipping told us that in the future, all energy could be sustainable, green, and free.

Justin Hall-Tipping, CEO of Nanoholdings, gives a TED talk about the energy applications of carbon nanomaterials.  It’s worth a watch, if you have ten minutes.

A few key points:

• Carbon nanotubes are 100 times more conductive than copper wire.
• Transparent sheets of carbon nanomaterials, when paired with a polymer, can be applied to windows (or any surface, really) and convert light into energy.
• Collected energy can be fed into systems of batteries that store it for later–or be turned back into light and beamed to the next house over.

Widespread applications of this model has mind-boggling implications: free sustainable energy, for everyone, for as long as the sun shines.

The downside is that we couldn’t harness the collaborative powers of the network until the model goes mainstream.  And why would the model go mainstream, when just about every house in a developed nation is already hooked up to a grid and paying into the existing system?  We have the technology to do this.  We also have the technology to make hovercars.  We could be zooming everywhere, but we wouldn’t, because we already have roads and cars that get the job done.  The prohibitive cost and arguably unnecessary risk of replacing entire infrastructures holds us back.

Consumption is already ingrained in our lifestyle to the degree that stepping away from it would take a massive amount of willpower.  Ec0 Br00klyn’s Zero Building method minimizes consumption by using 100% salvaged materials in our projects.  We install green roofs, solar panels, and water recycling systems that help homeowners wean themselves off the official lines.  We help one determined homeowner at a time move beyond consumption, toward a future of free energy.

It’s not easy.  Pushing against “normal” ways of doing things is a daily struggle against our own habits and those of the structures around us, but we can’t NOT fight it, so we forge on.

Justin Hall-Tipping’s research and ideas are very inspiring. We are keeping a keen eye on his developments since it would be a huge leap forward for green building.

Green builders understand this naturally. We build homes that may last hundreds of years, protecting families for many generations. Each nail, each brick is a respectful nod to our ancestors who taught us the wisdom of sustainable [...]]]>

The Native American concept that all our actions today will effect seven generations to come is profound.

Green builders understand this naturally. We build homes that may last hundreds of years, protecting families for many generations. Each nail, each brick is a respectful nod to our ancestors who taught us the wisdom of sustainable building and a gift to our children who will inherit whatever we build, for good or for bad.

Here is a beautiful song to wish upon our children and our children’s children. We build for them.

May god bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you

May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every run
May you stay, forever young

May you stay forever young

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you

May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
And may you stay forever young

Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift

May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
And may you stay forever young

Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

BOB DYLAN – FOREVER YOUNG LYRICS

Here’s to every immigrant worker in the world. Did you ever think that countries were created to create cheap immigrant workers?

Here at Eco Brooklyn we love immigrant workers. Not because they are cheap labor. Eco Brooklyn pays based on talent alone, not nationality, race or sex. And if you have a family [...]]]>

Here’s to every immigrant worker in the world. Did you ever think that countries were created to create cheap immigrant workers?

Here at Eco Brooklyn we love immigrant workers. Not because they are cheap labor. Eco Brooklyn pays based on talent alone, not nationality, race or sex. And if you have a family to support we might even pay more, regardless of whether that family is in Brooklyn or Guatemala.

We welcome people who come to America and send their profits elsewhere. Heck, America has been doing that to other countries for ages. We are happy to balance the playing field however small the contribution.

For us immigrants bring great traditional green building skills to New York. and we eat that shit up.

Clay walls, earthen floors, brick work, stone work, wood work and countless other skills are all old world techniques that people have been doing for thousands of years.  These are valuable skills to a green contractor in New York. These techniques are sustainable earth based skills not dependent on high embodied energy but rather on base elements like earth, clay, stone and water.

Here’s to you Jesus!

The world probably won’t end with a bang, but might just crumble beneath the accumulated consequences of our actions.

Meanwhile, American politicians’ opinions of science, especially climate science, are at an alarming low.  Sometimes TV makes me wonder if [...]]]>

First 2000, and now 2012: Years in which people think the world might possibly end.

The world probably won’t end with a bang, but might just crumble beneath the accumulated consequences of our actions.

Meanwhile, American politicians’ opinions of science, especially climate science, are at an alarming low.  Sometimes TV makes me wonder if there are people who think a 2012 apocalypse is more plausible than global warming.

Watching GOP candidates in debate is a bittersweet experience.  On one hand, the stupid things they occasionally blurt out invariably wind up on YouTube for my amusement.

You-becky-becky becky-becky-stan-stan, anyone?

On the other hand, these guys have a fair shot at becoming arguably the most powerful person in the world.   That’s where the bitter comes in.  They speak in a  sober, defiantly ignorant voice, with the seeming expectation that what they don’t know doesn’t matter.

Sometimes it does matter (a combination of egregious dumbness and sexual sketchiness shamed Cain off the stage) but what scares me is when it doesn’t.

Take Rick Santorum, for example.  Here’s a short excerpt and transcript from a Q&A session he did in New Hampshire last week.

Someone asked how he integrated recent findings of climate change into his policies.  He waved away the whole issue by using scientists, icebergs, and tail-wagging dogs in a meandering metaphor to demonstrate why climate science is not worth considering.

And when he was done talking, people clapped!  Kind of half-heartedly, but still! That stopped The only thing more frightening than ignorance is ignorance with power.

Basically, he argued that there are so many factors so we can’t know for sure what’s causing any changes.  Nevermind that just about anybody with a lick of sense agrees that we’re making a lot of CO2, which gets stuck in the atmosphere.

Nevermind that nobody knows the perfect method for, oh, say, oil mining, but they rough through it anyway because the result is valuable.  Not knowing something doesn’t mean that we should give up; it means we should devote more resources toward finding the answer.  Santorum using ambiguity as a reason to disregard the question only draws attention to how his party has utterly failed at giving climate science the support it needs.

Around Christmas, a short piece showed up in the New York Times about how climate science is stagnating, despite 2011 being one of the most extreme weather years on record.

In May of 2011, 100% of Texas was abnormally dry.  48% was officially in exceptional drought conditions–that’s even more extreme than “extreme drought.”

At the other extreme, New Jersey had an extreme winter: 50.7 inches (more than four feet) fell in my hometown of New Brunswick.  I’ve lived there for 15 years but can count the white Christmases we’ve had on one hand.

These are quick and dirty examples of extreme weather conditions with immediate effects at home.  Objective truths about global warming will emerge as trends in data analysis performed by climate scientists, and I’d like these truths to emerge before they show up as three feet of snow on my car every other week.

It’s true that there are hundreds of factors that contribute to climate change, but it’s stubbornly naive to claim as Santorum does that CO2, as a byproduct of industrial processes, is not the primary actor.  It’s true that climate science and efforts to change energy use in major industries can incur significant costs, but so can bad weather.  The final cost of this year’s weather extremes is still being tallied, but will likely surpass $50 million.  That’s in comparison to a typical year that costs the U.S. $3 or $4 billion.

Making sense of these changing weather patterns will require scientists to analyze large amounts of data, integrating trends over years and millions of square miles.  They need personnel, and concerted support from the Federal government, not half-assed pooh-poohing from a man who could well become President.

The GOP in general sets a bad example by blocking efforts to organize and increase funding for climate research initiatives.  Republicans overwhelmingly deny the general consensus on global warming,  disparaging it instead as a “propaganda attempt” by the Obama administration.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the Department of Energy still finance climate research, but many scientists find that there’s not enough to go around.

This research also has valuable practical applications.  Our company, for example, depends on climate data to calculate things like insulation thickness, heating and cooling loads, and gutter sizes.  We’re a green contractor, so energy efficiency is more crucial to our calculations, but every building depends on this information being accurate.  The more efficient our homes, the more money clients save.

Global change affects everyone, not just Americans, so hopefully other governments will have more sense than Congress and fund this crucial research.   Passive houses, for example, have greater momentum in Europe than in the U.S., so more resources are available to passive builders and passive houses are cheaper to build.

And what does all this have to do with Eco Brooklyn, beyond normal climate calculations?  As green contractors, we obviously take the local environment of each home into consideration when designing a plan for energy efficiency.  Compare that with, say, a large non-green building company like Toll Brothers, who may build the same exact house in Texas as in Nebraska.

Now that the environment is hitting higher record temperatures and precipitation levels than ever, Eco Brooklyn is venturing into what we call “Survival Building.”

We’ve started taking examples from extreme climates and integrating them into New York’s brownstones, in order to prepare them against heat waves, snap freezes, and flash floods.  We take inspiration from the “Earthship” and “Passive House” movements, which focus on installing tight insulation and maximizing solar gain to reduce heating and cooling needs.  These homes remain naturally cool in the summer and warm in the winter.  We put up a blog post recently that explains these concepts in detail.

Our our buildings consider rainwater runoff seriously.  We build green roofs, dry wells, rain gardens, and other water harvesting systems to reduce flooding.

We use clay walls in our houses that work like adobe walls in Pueblo architecture.  If they can endure the New Mexico heat, they can handle New York heat waves, with the benefit of retaining heat in winter.  Our passive houses are sealed tight against energy loss, but the envelope also protects against extreme wind or rain.

Eco Brooklyn’s brownstones are green fortresses.

So even if we see the beginnings of a climate apocalypse in 2012, we’ll be ready, and if Santorum gets elected, at least we’ll be insulated against his hot air.

The Rockaway Beach Branch Committee is petitioning the New York City Council to turn an abandoned 3.5 mile stretch of the old Rockaway Beach Branch railroad into a green [...]]]>

Check out this petition on change.org.  We think their proposal to turn an abandoned tract of land into green space will benefit many New Yorkers.

The Rockaway Beach Branch Committee is petitioning the New York City Council to turn an abandoned 3.5 mile stretch of the old Rockaway Beach Branch railroad into a green space.

Rail service ended 60 years ago, and the city and MTA have indicated that they have no intention of reactivating the rail line due to financial and logistical concerns.  The land has sat there as a dumping ground, a waste of a large unused tract of land in an area populated by hundreds of thousands.

The proposed green space connects nearby communities, recreational areas, and public transportation lines.   The project echoes the recently completed High Line park in Manhattan, which recycled old railroad into an urban park.  In addition to cultural benefits, urban parks have economic perks: turning the unused space into a green gathering place has stimulated real estate development along the 1-mile strip.

The High Line’s southern end in 2005, before renovation.

Completed central portion of the High Line in 2010

In addition to greening New York through construction, Eco Brooklyn also does ecological gardening. We use native plants and local resources like stones, tree trunks and rain water to recreate natural native landscapes. We are a big fan of the Manhattan High Line as a successful example of using an abandoned space to increase community and nature with native plants.

Sign the petition, and help recycle wasted space into a green zone today!

What the land looks like now.  Read and sign the petition here.

Image courtesy of LIRR Rockaway Beach Branch Virtual Tour.

Earthship building is best for non-urban parts of the [...]]]>

The two best building systems I know of right now are the Earthship and Passive House methods. Right now Eco Brooklyn is lucky enough to be involved in two jobs that involve both systems, one a NY earthship and the other a NY Passive House.

Earthship building is best for non-urban parts of the world. The footprint of the Earthship makes it prohibitive for city buildings. And as the name implies, Earthships don’t work for buildings more than two stories high. An Earthship relies on the temperature of the earth and thus needs to be nestled in the earth to work.

An Earthship building Eco Brooklyn is currently involved in on the Lower East Side of Manhattan

Passive House building is a good choice for city buildings. Here in NY there are many Passive House jobs going on and I predict that Passive House will become the standard for city, multy level buildings.

The one flaw with Passive House is that even if the whole world built by Passive House standards we would still have wars over resources. This is because Passive House is all about energy efficiency but does not focus on reducing embodied energy in the construction phase. The reasoning is that over the life of the building a Passive House saves so much energy that the initial consumption of high embodied energy – insulation, windows etc – is justified.

I don’t think we have that luxury. That is why our Passive House house in Manhattan is built with almost 100% salvaged materials.

For me salvaged materials is the answer, especially in the city. In the countryside, a place conducive to Earthship building, there is very little salvaged materials available. Lucky for the Earthship, you basically only need vehicle tires as a salvaged material. The second most needed material for an Earthship is, duh, earth, which is plentiful on our planet. After that you need some wood, some cement, some glass and some plumbing and electric materials.

These are things you can salvage but they are not needed in abundance so even buying them new isn’t going to burden the planet hugely.

In the city you have a whole different story. The city is full of very valuable trash. Here in NY I know for a fact that you can build a luxury condo with the trash that is thrown away from the job sites of other, uh, luxury condos. I know because that is what we did for our Manhattan Passive House three family building.

NY may be the elite of valuable trash, but every city is full of good garbage. Right now it is legal to throw that garbage away and it shouldn’t be. The NY DOB should have a team of people inspecting peoples’ dumpsters. If it has old wood, insulation, bricks, cinder block, and windows the contractor should be fined a hefty sum.

Why are contractors paying good money to throw away good materials?

The reason is simple economics. It costs less to throw it away and buy it when you need it than store it until you need it. This is a capitalistic flaw not a moral one.

The solution for cities across the globe is a top down program that subsidizes the extraction and storage of valuable materials instead of throwing them out. It would work very much like current city recycling programs work. When a contractor needs materials they would have the choice to go to a storage area and buy salvaged materials. The material is there, the demand is there. The only thing lacking is a restructuring of how things are done.

Here at Eco Brooklyn, being a NY green contractor, we don’t do that many Earthships despite our deep respect for the system and for Jonah and Michael Reynolds the founders of Earthship building.

But we do Passive Houses. We solve the problem of Passive House high embodied energy by salvaging as much as physically possible. To do this we have a storage area where we put the wood, insulation and other items needed to build NY brownstone.

A Passive House job Eco Brooklyn is building in Manhattan

When the job comes we pull whatever we need from the storage area. The way we make it work financially, since storage is not cheap, is we get the stuff from dumpsters or at half price from other contractros looking to get rid of overstock.

When you factor in labor to collect and clean up the salvaged materials we may not be getting the stuff any cheaper than what you pay at the store, but for us that is good enough. Same price, zero embodied energy, zero mountains clear cut, zero rivers polluted. Sounds like a great deal to us.

That is the problem with current building. They all build on credit. The hidden costs of badly paid workers and ecological destruction across the globe is not factored in when you buy a 2×4 at the hardware store. Our future generations will pay for that dearly.

The goal of Eco Brooklyn is to build with cash, symbolically speaking. When we salvage a 2×4 from a dumpster no tree was cut down for us using it, no worker was badly paid, no ecology across the planet was destroyed. So what if it costs us a little more than a new piece of wood when you factor in labor and storage. Hell, if we factored in all the hidden costs that 2×4 should cost ten times what it does. If our labor to collect and repair the salvaged 2×4 costs the same as a new one we feel we have gotten the deal of a lifetime.

We ar Eco Brooklyn feel that for NY building a combination of 100% salvaged materials and Passive House techniques is by far the best way to build.

Unfortunately most contractors can not build this way because they do no have the infrastructure of salvage that Eco Brooklyn has. We have a team of guys devoted to dumpster diving and a network of contractors who know to call us if they have valuable garbage to give away.

But hopefully this will change as the city gets more hip to the importance of salvaging the valuable NY construction garbage. Contractors don’t feel good about throwing away 100 year old hard wood beams, but what can they do? They are not educated to the importance of saving it and they don’t have the storage.

This is where the city can help. With time hopefully they will.

For now Eco Brooklyn continues in what we call guerrilla construction – dumpster diving and contractor connection – a grass roots solution to a deep seated need.

But Bloomberg could have been a lot worse. His plan NYC is an acceptable plan, the bare minimum [...]]]>

I have tolerated Mayor Bloomberg because he has done some good things for New York’s ecology. He isn’t the mayor of Copenhagen, Denmark. Now that is a city worth looking at in terms of ecology and social planning.

But Bloomberg could have been a lot worse. His plan NYC is an acceptable plan, the bare minimum any city should be doing.

But I stopped trusting Bloomberg when he used his power to extend his term. That was a Machiavellian and arrogant move that showed he thinks he knows better than the people who elected him.

So it comes as no surprise that he does not understand the importance of Occupy Wall Street. The movement isn’t a group of freaks living homeless in a park. The movement stands for something profound, it is a voice of the people.

Unfortunately Bloomberg, for all his intelligence, is a man of the 1%.

I mean this not only financially but morally. Bloomberg is one of those people who is always on the side of the law because he makes the law. With a phone call he can get a judge to sign, whether that be extending his term or squelching the voice of Occupy Wall Street.

A leader needs to make tough choices and sometimes minorities will not be happy. But I believe Occupy Wall Street is the first real voice of the majority in a long time. Just like you support things like the arts, community events, sports events and all other things that make a city vibrant, you also support things that give the citizens a voice.

This has a direct impact on the ecology of the city. As a New York green contractor I understand that the largest ecosystem here is the human one. If we are not healthy as a community then there is no chance in hell we will make room for the health of plants and animals.

By taking a stance against the Occupy Wall Street movement Bloomberg is not respecting the natural ecology of the city. Things change, things grow. And right now Occupy Wall Street has grown into being. You don’t cut something like this down. You let it grow. It is an organic development of the city that I believe will make our ecology better.

Bloomberg is full of benevolence as long as things are growing in the direction he wants. But now things are not going his way and he is showing his true colors. Being mayor is not about staying in control. It is about listening to the people and doing their will, even if you don’t personally believe in it.

I’m surprised Bloomberg’s serious conflict of interest has taken this long to surface. How can a media mogul also be the mayor of the media capital of the world. The financial ties between the two posts are irrevocably in conflict.

Occupy Wall Street and Bloomberg’s Dynasty have some serious differences and they are coming to a head. He has to be Mayor first or resign. The ecology of the city depends on it.

Check out this clip. Pure genius.