By David Wojick
After warning of the Climate Act’s unlivable costs, Governor Hochul has now proposed specific legislative actions to begin to back away from them. I consider this a potential victory, but it remains to be seen what the legislature actually does.
At least the big green wheel is in spin. That is progress in itself. The show is on in New York State.
Hochul’s proposals are carefully crafted to do the job with a minimum of political fuss. The basic law is unchanged, but the target dates are slipped well into the political future.
Moreover, the changes are made as a small part of the annual big budget bill, not as a separate legislative action. This minimizes the nasty public debate that would accompany a stand-alone amendment to the Climate Act.
There are two simple changes that must be made plus a not so simple one that would be very useful.
The first simple change is that the near-term targets are shifted from 2030 to 2040, which is well over the political horizon. The 2030 target is impossible, but 2040 is still open to fact-free speculation, which is all that politics requires.
The second simple change is the crucial one that the first change makes room for. The draconian regulatory requirement is slipped until 2030.
Unlike other states’ toothless climate laws, the New York law has a provision calling for regulations that “ensure” compliance with the Act’s impossible targets. It was these required regulations that caused the present turmoil.
The regs were required by around 2024 but were never put out because the cost was politically prohibitive. Several green groups sued and, last year, the judge ruled correctly that the law is the law, so the Hochul administration cannot decline to issue the nutty rules.
The judge gave New York a few months to change the Climate Act to eliminate the regulation requirement. This was appealed, giving the legislature more time, which is where we are today. The Act is clear, so the appeal is unlikely to succeed. The regulatory clock is ticking.
Pushing the regulations into the future solves the problem for now which is all that matters politically. This is the heart of Hochul’s proposal.
The third proposed change is actually hilarious, because almost no one will understand it, so it will be fun to watch them try. It is truly arcane climate science. The issue is how to calculate the global warming potential of methane. Only people who are deeply into alarmist science will understand this issue. I used to, but it has been years, so I no longer understand it in technical detail.
The gist is that the IPCC and most states that care about methane emissions use a 100-year timeframe while the Climate Act uses 25 years. This shorter time apparently pumps up the adverse impact of methane emissions. I have been told that it does so, to the point that if New York switched their methane accounting to 100 years, they would be close to meeting the 2030 target.
In her proposal, Hochul merely mentions an issue with 25 versus 100 years, without saying what those numbers refer to. I imagine readers scratching their heads over this, wondering if perhaps it is about target dates or something.
The methane science itself is well beyond most people’s comprehension, especially New York legislators. The confusion could be very entertaining.
Politics is the art of compromise, and this 3-part proposal fits that bill. Hochul has walked the fine line between alarmism and reality with grace and skill.
How this works out now remains to be seen. If the budget bill tactic works, it could happen pretty quickly. Hochul has taken the political high ground of “affordability,” and a lot of Democrat legislators are massing on that rhetorical hill as well. It just might work.
I consider this push to back off the Climate Act to be a victory for skepticism. That the Act is extremely not affordable is the central message. I even have a research report on its impossibility here.
Stay tuned to CFACT to see how this drama plays out.
Mostly a mental health issue…
Yep
Braindead idiots wearing useless masks is all I see.
Yes but I am analyzing activity within the NYS alarmist chain of command so must be a bit more discerning, while setting aside the absurdity described in my linked report.
Thanks for this update.
“Politics is the art of compromise, and this 3-part proposal fits that bill. Hochul has walked the fine line between alarmism and reality with grace and skill.”
That was very charitable of you. Now let’s vote her out, kindly and gently of course.
About “affordability” I expect the usual suspects (e.g. NYSERDA) to keep pushing wind + solar + batteries on the claim that it will drive down costs. It won’t of course. Just the opposite. But I predict they will make that claim.
About methane, the tactic of changing the time basis may work to address the political situation for now, but the correct position is to disregard it entirely. My closest neighbors are of bovine persuasion, so I am against any suggestion that their digestion causes “climate” harm.
Are those old pictures?
She’s wearing a covid era mask.
Now, my wife is in chemo treatment now so wears one in public since her own immune system has been compromised.
So, is Hochel wearing a mask because she has cancer or because she’s been a cancer for NY?
(I was going to end that with a 😎 but, with my wife’s situation, I refrained.)
A cashier at the local grocery wears a COVID-era home-made cloth mask every time I see her.
“The issue is how to calculate the global warming potential of methane.”
The same way they calculate the warming potential of CO2, hocus pocus.
Warmer without GHE/GHG water vapor/30% albedo not colder.
GHE balance graphics don’t plus violate GAAP and LoT 1 & 2. (TFK_bams09 and ubiquitous clones)
Kinetic heat transfer processes of contiguous atmospheric molecules render a BB surface and “extra” GHE energy impossible.
Yes but reality is not the issue here. There is the NY way and the IPCC way. Angles dancing on a pin.
“the warming potential of CO2″
There are many instances whereby CO2 can cause warming AND cooling with the subsequent hand-wringing and hair-tearing histrionics for both situations.
Why should methane be treated any differently? The ‘science’ of the effect of greenhouse gases should apply to all greenhouse gases.
Global warming potential is a biased construct based on laboratory measured molecular level differences of longwave radiation for different gases. Things are different in the atmosphere! In reality methane should not be counted differently.
I’m guessing that this tactic will work. US politics just love kicking problem cans down the road, especially when it involves vast amounts of money, in addition to that already quandered so far. The general public on the whole doesn’t belive the NWO nonsense, that’s their biggest problem. Besides the US is going to need everything it can beg, steal, or borrow for its wars abroad.
It may not work. Almost half the Democrat Senators wrote a confused response letter saying the Act is fine they just need more renewables. If they do not change the law the backstop is likely to be Court ordered draconian regs that will get a lot of angry attention from the public. I might prefer that.
I have been hoping they will have to comply with the law, no matter what the fall-out is. That is the only way the issue will really get the attention of the public. Maybe a long blackout in NYC too.
Rationing gasoline and home heat (in winter) are my favorites, as described in my report.
Well done, David Wojick.
By logic and experience, you and some keen colleagues have demonstrated that a dangerous NY plan has huge economic problems, an achievement for which many others are trying. Your substance is getting heard above the noise from keyboard warriors.
I hope in time that you can distil the elements of your success as an aid to the many others of us who are trying to get corrective actions heard. Others like me have trouble understanding why so many unworkable proposals about Climate Change and Net Zero are even launched in the first place because they are all based on an unworkable premise, that Mankind and Greenhouse gases are linked and are problematic. The link with a small alleged global temperature rise has never been proven. Geoff S
As with every green scare going back at least to acid rain in the 80s it is all done with plausible sounding qualitative scientific speculation. In this case the speculation is enshrined in huge black box computer models, making it untouchable.
Scares actually appeal to a lot of people, so it is not that hard to understand. But as someone once said, every social movement ultimately expires from an excess of its own principles. I think trying to stop us using fire meets that test. The alarmist movement is fragmenting.
‘As with every green scare going back at least to acid rain in the 80s it is all done with plausible sounding qualitative scientific speculation.’
David, you might like this article:
https://mises.org/mises-wire/acid-rain-scare-and-science-industrial-complex
Energy and transportation are far too important to be left in the hands of politicians, everybody knows that. Government should be forbidden from having anything but the smallest part to play in either of them.
Alas not everybody. A lot of people think government is the solution to every public problem. This tends to be a defining feature of Democrats.
And NYC is talking about passing a “Dark Skies Act” that will require unnecessary lighting to be turned off between the hours of 11PM and 5AM.
Apparently you can’t see the Milky Way at night from Times Square, so they are giving the criminals a better environment for their crimes.
The truth is somewhere in there – the grid can’t handle much of a load after the sun sets and the winds calm.
The only way you’d be able to see the Milky Way from Times Square is if there were a total state blackout, oh wait…
Reality is taking over where propaganda failed.
laugh all you want, but at least they had the prescience to shut down indian point! diablo canyon next!
Diablo canyon had it’s operation extended already. No technical reason it won’t stay operational until EOL.
The real reason that so-called “renewables” are unaffordable is that they consume more energy to construct, operate, and dispose of than they will ever produce. You take $0.16 per kwh Chinese electricity plus coal and fossil fuels to build wind and solar systems which are heavily subsidized and are guaranteed $0.90 per kwh payment. It is governmental price arbitrage. It makes money, not net energy.
Renewables are the new perpetuum mobile?
The political crisis playing out in NY is past the point of fiddling with target dates and whether methane is relevant or not to anything.
The legal position is simple the legislation is passed that says NY will go Net Zero fossil fuel. The costs have been side lined by the Climate Zealots and by the administration that passed these impossible to achieve laws.
The only way out is to repeal the laws and state clearly the previous understanding and legislation was wrong technically and economically. That will remove the endless legal challenges from the climate alarmists, but it does mean NY legislators have to come clean and be honest with the electorate.
That honesty will make them enemies of the so called greens who are using climate as a tool to destroy capitalism which is their focus and main aim.
The time to be upfront with the people and to call out the destroyers of society i.e. the climate alarmists for what they are is upon us.
Bravo – my feeliong exactly.
The word ‘Net’ implies a calculation. Hochul’s 3-point plan indicates legislators want to write the formulas. They will achieve Net Zero whether or not they achieve Net Zero.
Still zero indication of any change in the Nut Zero insanity in Wokeachusetts and there probably never will be until the state’s economy collapses and everyone moves to the Sunbelt.
They started arriving in the sun belt long ago. They have been busy ‘updating’ its politics.
”…still open to fact-free speculation, which is all that politics requires.” Brilliant! I can’t wait to say this myself.
“fact free speculation, which is all that politics requires.”
That is the most finely crafted turn of phrase that I’ve read in quite a while.
Thanks! I enjoyed it too when it came to me. Where thoughts come from is still a great mystery.