We're already chortling at New York's woes, but we'll be howling with delighted glee in a few more years

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The people and the politicians they’ve elected have already banned fracking and have closed or are shutting down the nuclear power plants that provides 33% of the state’s energy, (most of the rest comes from natural gas, also on the chopping block) but they’re just warming up, so to speak.

The Climate Leadership and Climate Protection Act that then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo got passed in 2019 requires New York to cut economy-wide greenhouse-gas emissions (from 1990 levels) by 40% by 2030 and 100% by 2040. 

Worse, it gives unelected state bureaucrats massive power to cripple fossil-fuel companies and ram through pricy alternative-energy projects over any and all opposition — which allows massive amounts of pay-to-play favoritism.

Worst, the green advocates who favor the CLCP plan estimate the taxpayer cost of implementing it to be north of $300 billion, which guarantees that it will cost even more — or would, if it weren’t inevitably going to eventually fall victim to reality. 

Consider: The plan centers on a mandate on ConEd and other utilities that 70% of all power come from renewables by 2030, and 100% by 2040. The 2030 goal alone is impossible, since it requires roughly tripling the amount of electricity generated by renewables — which means vast increases in wind and solar power, since 80% of the state’s current renewable power is hydropower, which reached its maximum decades ago.

That is, the plan pretends that sources that now account for less than 6% of the state’s electricity will somehow produce much more than half of it within eight years. 

Not. Going. To. Happen.

But New York is going to try, forcing local communities to accept vast wind and solar farms and sending electric bills soaring to pay for it all, including billions for new transmission lines to carry power into the city. 

Hochul, of course, prefers to talk about fuzzy-sounding stuff like her new plan to make high-rises in New York carbon-neutral within the next 15 years. The claim is that more than 70% of the city’s carbon emissions now comes from buildings, though that’s mainly because 1) the city has no manufacturing left, and 2) most of its power is generated outside the five boroughs. 

And forcing expensive retrofitting to turn old buildings “green” is all too likely to just force them to close, especially since commercial real-estate faces a dire shortage of demand thanks to the rise of work-from-home in the wake of the pandemic.

But wait, there’s more! Under the Botoxed Witch’s plan, there will be:

  • No natural gas connections in newly constructed buildings after next year.

  • No new gas service to existing buildings, also starting 2024.

  • No sales of gasoline-powered landscaping equipment (lawnmowers, chain saws, wood chippers etc.) by 2027.

  • No new natural gas appliances for home heating, cooking, water heating or clothes drying after 2029.

  • A complete ban on gasoline-automobile sales by 2035.

Meanwhile, Hochul (like Cuomo before her) has already vetoed carbon-energy projects and pipelines on the theory that giving New York other options would imperil the great green dream.

All this, when the state accounts for roughly 0.4% of global carbon emissions, while the countries that spew the most (China and India) won’t even pretend to do more than start reducing their own emissions sometime after 2030. This is vast pain for trivial gain.But New York is going to try, forcing local communities to accept vast wind and solar farms and sending electric bills soaring to pay for it all, including billions for new transmission lines to carry power into the city. 

If — and it’s a big if — we can fend off a federal shutdown of the fossil fuel infrastructure, and let states decide for themselves between poverty and prosperity, we might see a vast acceleration of the movement from Blue to Red states. The former will be feudal, where the very poor, unemployed serfs will shiver in their state-subsidized, freezing homes while their masters enjoy their penthouses on their occasional fly-ins from Monte Carlo and Martha’s Vineyard, and “energy states” will host the country’s manufacturing and agriculture industries, and a thriving middle-class. Six years ago, I was discussing politics with an Iowa state trooper, and the rise of the woke. “Fuck ‘em”, he said, “they can do what they want to with their states, we grow the food.” Soon, they may have everything except Quinoa bars and poke bowls.