Don’t Think: Panic and Pay Up?

Sea levels are surging around the city, screams the state Department of Environmental Conservation in a new study, by up to 13 inches in the 2030s, maybe nearly 10 feet by 2100! Please panic — and don’t ask questions.

Hmm: The 2022 technical assessment from NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and a host of other Biden agencies predicts a national rise of 10-12 inches by 2050, which strongly suggests DEC is overestimating.

And common sense should kick in: 2030 is just six years off; do you believe DEC’s suggestion that sea levels in the lower Hudson will rise a foot by then?

One more time: Climate change is real; human activity contributes to it. But what to do about it is far from obvious — and local “net-zero carbon emissions by 2050” plans, like New York’s, are not the way to go.

Because such plans would devastate our economy without doing much about climate change — not when China is building new coal plants on a mass scale.

The DEC says it’s just offering a report as required by law. Funny: Lots of state agencies are supposed to issue reports — but fail, as the Empire Center’s Ken Girardin points out in a damning new report on the state’s Climate Action Plan.

The state Energy Planning Board, for one, is supposed to report on the reliability of New York’s electric grid every four years; it hasn’t since 2012 — even as green policies have undermined the grid’s resiliency.

Oh, and then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo in 2017 ordered the DEC and another agency to find “the most rapid, cost-effective, and responsible pathway to reach 100% renewable energy statewide”: They spent over $800,000 on a study — which never got released, though Cuomo rammed the Climate Action Plan into law in 2019.

Could it be these various studies don’t tell the Democrats what they want to hear?

No, better to throw out nightmare scenarios and start wars on gas stoves and existing AC and refrigeration systems. Oh, and let’s raise taxes for another green boondoggle.