A ticking climate clock
Aglobal environmental clock is ticking, and so is a legal one that requires New York to get moving on ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that are heating up the planet. As Arctic ice diminishes, shorelines erode, storms and droughts intensify and wildfires worsen, the situation could hardly be more urgent.
The state Legislature’s response? Yawn.
One of the must-pass bills this session, the Climate and Community Investment Act, failed to move, setting the state back who knows how long in terms of doing something about climate change.
That’s somewhat surprising, given the hoopla the Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo made over the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, which set big goals for the state to reduce carbon emissions. The act called for the state to draw 70 percent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030, achieve zeroemission electricity by 2040, and cut
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greenhouse gas emissions by 85 percent from their 1990 levels by 2050.
The Climate and Community Investment Act is an initial attempt to attain those goals by putting a tax on fossil fuel pollution. It would increase the price of various forms of energy to more realistically reflect the harm they do to the environment and health. It would raise an estimated $15 billion that could be used to help support initiatives such as weatherization, cleaner home heating and cooling systems, and electric cars. A third of the money would go to low- and moderateincome people to help them cover higher energy prices or, preferably, shift from fossil-fuel based energy to renewables.
The CCIA, however, seems to have fallen victim to a disinformation campaign that reduced an admittedly complex proposal to one bogeyword: tax.
In reality, low- and moderate-income people would be buffered from cost increases for gasoline, natural gas, heating oil and other fossil fuels, or the energy they produce. The price hikes and rebates would help level the playing field for what tends to be higherpriced alternative energy. That could encourage people to switch energy systems and suppliers, which in turn could spark more alternative-energy development and bring prices down.
But it’s a challenge to explain all that, especially when fossil fuel interests and their allies — who for years denied global warming and then scoffed at the idea that human activity could affect the climate — are ever ready with an easily digestible anti-tax soundbite.
We understand the political consideration here — legislative elections are next year, and especially in competitive districts Democrats who now control the Assembly and Senate worry about having to defend what would undoubtedly be cast as a tax hike.
But that pressure will never really go away in a Legislature whose members have to run every two years. Power is of no real value if you don’t use it for good while you have it.
And, frankly, the political calendar isn’t the timetable that New Yorkers — and the rest of humanity — will be worrying about if governments don’t take concrete steps to wean civilization off fossil fuels soon. It’s the relentless countdown to the day, not far off, where no one will be able to fix this.
Come back, lawmakers, and get this done.