Eddie Bautista

How Serious is NY about Its Climate Goals?

/ Peter Bardaglio / Leave a comment

There’s something seriously unnerving about the casual way in which Gov. Hochul has acknowledged that New York will probably not meet its 2030 climate targets. The pathbreaking Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) calls for the state to obtain 70 percent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030.

A joint draft report issued in July by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and the Public Service Commission (PSC) indicated that the 70 percent renewables target will not be achieved before 2033.

State State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins. NY Senate Photo licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Audit Reveals Flaws
A few weeks after this report, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli released a detailed audit criticizing the PSC and NYSERDA for inadequate planning and the use of outdated data. In particular, it said that the PSC had failed to address “all current and emerging issues that could significantly increase electricity demand and lower projected generation.”

Perhaps most disturbing was the audit’s finding that the PSC had overlooked the need to calculate the costs of the transition to renewables or to identify how to cover those costs beyond the tried and true method of dumping them on ratepayers. 

How Committed is the State?
Together these two reports raise major questions about the actual commitment of the state to implementing the 2019 CLCPA. The governor’s reaction to these findings? Oh well, it won’t hurt if we let things slide for a few years. Not surprisingly, state Republican leaders and the business community have taken advantage of the leadership vacuum to attack the climate law and press Hochul to abandon it.

How is it possible for this failure of leadership to take hold during the same summer that global temperatures have been setting new records month after month? In fact, not only was this past July the warmest on record, but it was also the 14th consecutive month of record-high global temperatures. Does anyone see a pattern here?

Cornell professor Robert Howarth, a member of the state’s Climate Action Council, certainly does. The council passed a plan to implement the CLCPA in December 2022, and Howarth is on the front line defending it. “I am appalled at this pushback against the CLCPA by business interests pushing their short-sighted agenda,” Howarth said in an interview with WaterFront. “Climate change is very real. The consequences of climate disruption (floods, droughts, fires, crop failures) are becoming increasing obvious to all.”

Eddie Bautista, executive director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, strongly agrees that stronger leadership is necessary. “In just five short years, we’ve gone from being visionary leaders to not being able to implement our own laws. It’s just insane,” he said recently.

The governor’s reversal on congestion pricing in New York City has environmentalists wondering whether this is part of a larger plan to back away from other elements of the state climate action agenda such as the cap-and-invest plan that would price greenhouse gas emissions. At the very least, it looks likely that the administration will blow past its self-imposed deadline to launch the program in early 2025.

A Simple Step
One step that Hochul could take to restore some degree of confidence in her commitment to climate action would be to sign the Climate Change Superfund Act that is currently sitting on her desk after being passed in June by both the General Assembly and State Senate. This legislation would require oil and gas companies to pay a total of $3 billion a year for 25 years to cover the cost of the climate damage they have inflicted on the state.

The governor has not yet signaled her intention, which leaves a lot of climate activists worried, although some think she might just be waiting until after the election to do so. The pressure on her has been growing throughout the summer and will only continue to increase this fall.

Fossil Free Media, together with the Sunrise Movement, has launched a national billboard campaign in California, New York, Arizona, and Philadelphia, with plans to expand to Florida and Louisiana in September. as part of the effort to build support for the principle that polluters should pay for the mess they have made.

The Make Polluters Pay campaign seeks to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable through legislation, lawsuits, and public pressure. This is exactly the kind of national attention that Hochul wants to avoid, but she better get used to it. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) and Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) just announced their intention to introduce federal Polluter Pays bills in Congress. Things are definitely heating up – stay tuned.

The Rise of the Climate Justice Movement

/ Peter Bardaglio / 1 Comment

As we close out the second decade of the 21st century, the stark reality is that the climate crisis has been getting worse every year. We are just now wrapping up the second warmest year on record and the last five years are the hottest ever recorded. Australia’s two hottest days in history took place one after another in mid-December, and then on Christmas Eve exceptionally warm weather  melted the most ice across Antarctica in a single day than any other day on record: 15 percent. Scientists warned earlier this month that the planet’s oceans are losing oxygen at an unprecedented rate as the temperature rises. I could go on.
Climate Strike in Edinburgh, September 20, 2019. Photo by Magnus Hagdorn licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The worsening climate emergency, however, is not the whole story. As Sharon Zhang notes, “the climate crisis escalated in 2019,” but “so did the climate justice movement.”

Arguably the most important development of the climate movement in the past decade, climate justice provides a radically new framework for organizing. It examines the sources and impact of climate change as well as responses to it, and asks who is affected first and worst in each case. In the words of Eddie Bautista, Executive Director of the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, “Climate change affects everyone, but will not impact everyone equally.”

The recent emergence of the Green New Deal has underscored the central tenet of climate justice, that social equity needs to be at the center of any effort to shrink our greenhouse gas emissions. Calling on the federal government to drive public and private investments and meet climate targets, as Julian Brave NoiseCat writes, the Green New Deal seeks to “create millions of green jobs while modernizing infrastructure and leveling the playing field so that everyone – particularly communities of color, women, and working families – can participate in a new economy.”

The Sunrise Movement, which first appeared in 2018 and came into its own in 2019, has been one of the most effective proponents of the Green New Deal. Made up mostly of young people who came of age during the climate crisis, the Sunrise Movement campaigned across the country for the Green New Deal this past year. Marisa Lansing and Cheyenne Carter, two local Sunrise Movement leaders, explained at their presentation to TCCPI in October that the Sunrise theory of change emphasizes “democratic people power.” As they put it, “We build our people power by talking to people” and “through escalated moral protest.”

The Green New Deal has a long ways to go before becoming established policy, but make no mistake: it has dramatically changed the tone and dynamic of the climate debate and who is participating in it. It has brought a new moral focus to the conversation and infused it with a fresh, vibrant energy that can’t help but give one hope for the future, even in the face of increasingly dire news about the climate.