In a recent op-ed published by Empire Report — Advocates Opposing Climate Act Changes Ignoring Reality — Ken Lovett, a communications advisor to Gov. Kathy Hochul, continues the pattern of misleading and incomplete information promoted by her administration to defend her efforts to avoid complying with the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, or CLCPA.

While Lovett and Hochul defend her retreat on the grounds that the world has changed since the CLCPA was passed, they ignore that the biggest change is that global warming and extreme weather are continuing to accelerate, even faster than expected. Former President Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont have repeatedly warned that climate change presents an existential threat to humanity. The Secretary-General of the United Nations has repeatedly warned that the slow climate efforts by governments have opened up the Gates to Hell.

New York's climate policy should be driven by science

Climate action should be a matter of science, not politics and election spin. Even the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, admits that its climate emission reduction goals — faster than the CLCPA — are too slow to avoid catastrophic climate change. To avoid that fate, the IPCC promotes carbon capture, even while admitting that it is not presently feasible. Climate activist Greta Thunberg chided them in her address to the UN for leaving the fate of her generation to the success of a Hail Mary pass.

Converting the state’s energy system from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy certainly poses challenges. The biggest challenge, however, is not technical but political. Meeting timelines requires coordinated planning and strong leadership at the top — both of which have been missing under Hochul.

While President Donald Trump certainly deserves blame for his war against clean renewable energy and his promotion of the fossil fuel industry and their high prices, New York’s failure to meet renewable energy goals stretches back decades, long before Trump. Gov. George Pataki, for instance, set goals in 2002 for renewable energy which the state’s failed to come close to meeting.

The CLPA, adopted in 2019, largely put into statue climate policies that had been official state policy since a 2009 gubernatorial executive order. Two hundred climate and community groups had supported a stronger bill that would have required a much stronger planning process while updating the state’s climate goals, including making them more aligned with the lower heating target developing nations had won in the Paris climate accords. It also had a much faster timeline with short-term benchmarks. To get legislators and the executive to act, you need 2-year goals and benchmarks, not 10-to-30-year milestones.

New York moves as slow as........

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