Anything California can do, New York can do worser

Governor’s task force on renewable energy

NY’s Governor proposes ban on oil and gas heat for all new construction by 2027.

As the centerpiece of a multipronged initiative to combat climate change, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed on Wednesday a first-of-its-kind statewide ban on natural gas hookups in all new buildings.

“New construction in the state will be zero-emission by 2027, and we will build climate-friendly electric homes and promote electric cars, trucks and buses,” Hochul said in her annual State of the State speech.

In a policy outline released Wednesday ahead of her State of the State address, Hochul’s office laid out her plan to curb on-site greenhouse gas emissions. In effect, the plan means that new buildings could have neither oil or gas burners for heat or hot water, nor gas stoves. The plan would also require energy analyses of every new building’s energy usage, known as “benchmarking.” Hochul’s climate change agenda also sets a goal of 2 million electrified homes by 2030.

The governor’s proposal comes on the heels of New York City becoming the largest locality in the United States to ban gas hookups in new buildings last month. New York City also already has an energy benchmarking law on the books, which was passed in 2016.

Hochul does not explain where this all-green electricity is to come from, since it doesn’t exist. So, not surprisingly, she doesn’t mention that the electricity that will be required to heat homes (and power all those battery cars that are coming) will be generated out of state, and thus out of sight, by fossil-fueled power plants.

This deliberate obtuseness is all according to plan, of course. Here’s more from the same article:

A study by the think tank RMI found that by 2040, the ban on new gas hookups in New York City will reduce the emissions that cause global warming by the equivalent of taking 450,000 cars off the road. Out of New York state’s population of 19.45 million, 11 million residents live outside New York City, so expanding the policy to the rest of the state would presumably produce similar or even greater benefits.

That “study” is as silent as Hochul on the subject of where the power to replace natural gas comes from, but then, it has to be, or its claim that a natural gas ban is “the equivalent of taking 450,000 cars off the road” would be exposed as the specious bullshit that it is.

Here’s what’s really going on, and it’s the same argument that’s been used with increasing frequency by all the greenies as they’ve blocked investments in fossil fuel infrastructure and exploration for the replenishment of reserves:

“Growing the demand for natural gas is exactly what the world does not need right now,” New York state Sen. Brian Kavanagh, who has sponsored legislation to phase out the use of natural gas in residential and commercial buildings, told the publication Stateline on Thursday. “If you build buildings that rely on fossil fuels, you are baking in very long-term needs."

So, you kill off fossil fuels. and that, in turn, will force the conversion to an economy structured around a still-hypothetical “green” energy source. Sure, there’ll be a few decades of disruption, poverty, and starvation, and what substitute energy source does finally appear will be 10X more expensive than what we have now, thus guaranteeing that the newly-created poor will stay poor, but, let’s be honest here, who really cares about poor people? As long as we’re not one of them.