Time for state to move forward on NY HEAT Act

Nerdwallet’s Spencer Tierney’s article “Investigate how your finances will weather climate change,” Feb. 19, underlines an inescapable reality: Climate disruption is coming for our wallets no matter where we live.

Six years ago, the Environmental Protection Agency told New Yorkers in a “What climate change means for New York” pamphlet that “in the coming decades, changing the climate is likely to increase coastal and inland flooding, disrupt farming and winter recreation, and increase some risks to human health.”

Last year, the state Department of Financial Services was among the first state regulators to require insurers and banks to disclose the risks they face from extreme weather events and consider those same threats when making business decisions.

The question is When will our legislators show a similar awareness of the dangers of climate disruption by enacting the laws necessary to confront it?

Gov. Kathy Hochul must support — and Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-cousins must include in their onehouse budgets — the NY HEAT Act.

This bill, supported by the New York chapter of the American Institute of Architects, eliminates subsidies for new gas hookups and ensures no household pays more than 6 percent of its income for energy.

New home buyers should be able to practice the same good business sense required of large financial institutions. Should they invest in a new home that will have to be retrofitted to go allelectric in a few years? Right now, heat pumps are more efficient than gas furnaces. Homes with heat pumps would allow homeowners to see savings as soon as they move in.