New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced Monday that he would be imposing a ban on "inefficient" glass and steel skyscrapers in the city, arguing that buildings are the biggest contributor to the Big Apple's carbon footprint.

The progressive Democrat threatened building owners with fines of "$1 million or more" for noncompliance, in a scheme that's been referred to as "pure stupidity."

What are the details?



De Blasio made the media rounds on Earth Day, touting his city's "audacious" Green New Deal modeled off the federal flop pushed by freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.).

As part of his initiative, the mayor vowed to crack down on developers and building owners, whom he accused of "putting up monuments to themselves," Spectrum News reported.

"The biggest source of emissions in New York City is buildings," de Blasio explained, speaking on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." "We're putting clear, strong mandates — the first of any major city on the earth — to say to building owners, 'You gotta clean up your act. You gotta retrofit, you gotta save energy. If you don't do it by 2030, there will be serious fines as high as $1 million or more for the biggest buildings, and this mandate is going to guarantee that we reduce emissions.'

"We're going to ban the classic glass and steel skyscrapers which are incredibly inefficient," the mayor continued. "If someone wants to build one of those things they can take a whole lot of steps to make it energy efficient, but we're not going to allow what we used to see in the past."

Anything else?

De Blasio didn't lay out specifics for how the new building codes would look, but promised his plan as a whole would reduce New York City's carbon emissions by 30 percent and create tens of thousands of jobs over the next decade.

Columnist Steve Cuozzo wrote in the New York Post that "de Blasio's 'green' skyscraper idea is pure stupidity," noting "the five boroughs already suffer from the most expensive construction costs in the world."