Fwd: [CACN] McKibben: Hochul - the last five years was largely wasted
Jason West
Begin forwarded message:
From: 'Michael Richardson' via Capital Area Climate Network <capital-area-c...@googlegroups.com>
Date: April 9, 2026 at 2:45:25 PM EDT
To: CACN <capital-area-c...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: [CACN] McKibben: Hochul - the last five years was largely wasted
Reply-To: Michael Richardson <oxhe...@icloud.com>
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Bill McKibben ~April 9, 2026
Link to blog here.
…look at what’s happening in the other big blue state, New York. There the governor, Kathy Hochul, is cruising to re-election, and she’s saying the right things. "Am I the staunchest environmentalist and fighter of climate change in New York's history? Yes," she asked and answered recently. But in fact she’s busily trying to slow down and sidetrack the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), the seven-year-old statute that attempts to move the Empire State off fossil fuels.
The precise arguments in this fight have grown…abstruse. For example, the governor is insisting that the global warming impact of methane be measured over a hundred year period, not the twenty year period that the state law mandates. This has turned into a debate between the aforementioned Hausfather (pro) and the aforementioned Howart and Jacobson (con). You can read their arguments for yourself, but I think Howarth and Jacobson get the better of the exchange, basically because we could break the back of the climate system in the years ahead, making much longer range planning moot. As Howarth and Jacobson put it,
Global warming over the coming few decades may cross thresholds which could accelerate the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. Currently, roughly half of anthropogenic CO2 emissions are taken up by the oceans and terrestrial biosphere. This may well change in the future, due to a variety of climate feedbacks. For instance, warming in the arctic and drying in the Amazon may well reduce carbon storage in these systems. And warming of the oceans and climate-induced slowing of ocean circulation may reduce carbon storage in the oceans. The precautionary principle suggests taking all actions necessary to reduce warming as quickly as possible, and that calls for rapidly reducing methane emissions.
But if this reads as complex to you, imagine how it reads to your average hardpressed state assemblyman from somewhere in Oneida County. That’s why the debate has been turned into a shorthand about, what else, “affordability.” Basically, Hochul’s argument is that the state law makes New York abandon fracked gas too quickly, and hence people’s bills will go up, and so she wants to space out the transition. In climate terms this is a mistake, but it’s also probably a mistake about affordability. Even the state’s utility system operator concluded in a January report that the real reason for high New York energy prices was the volatile and rising cost of natural gas. If Hochul has her way New Yorkers are going to stay tied to the price of that fracked gas even as events like the war in Iran are making it doubly clear that’s going to be an economic anchor, and even as the looming El Niño seems likely to hit New York with the kind of super-expensive disasters that led to the climate law in the first place.
The real problem here, I think, is that Hochul didn’t prioritize action on energy and climate. She came to office accidentally in 2021 (Andrew Cuomo, sexual harasser), and it’s not actually clear what she’s prioritized beyond staying in that office. Instead of moving aggressively to, say, roll out heat pumps across the state, she’s played small ball too often. It’s not that the current situation is uncomplicated—here’s a good fair-to-all-sides account from Emily Pontecorvo at HeatMap. But the current dilemma is rooted in the fact that the last five years was largely wasted. Hochul sounds perpetually like the student who didn’t get the homework done. “We need more time,” she said last month, arguing for pushing back timetables by a decade.
Delay has often seemed like Hochul’s modus operandi. As Brian PJ Cronin reported recently
Last summer, a state analysis found that New York is three years behind its 2030 goal and six years behind its 2040 goal. Smaller, less-publicized climate targets in the law have fared no better. An online tracking tool created by Columbia University lists actions that have missed deadlines, from the collection and disposal of mercury thermostats to the capture of methane from landfills to energy audits of larger buildings.
In fairness to Hochul, sometimes it seems like delay is the leitmotif of the entire New York State government. Here’s Mark Dunlea, veteran Albany activist
Another example of slow action is the issue of the state power plant which powers the Capitol and State Plaza. For more than a century, the plant has polluted Sheridan Hollow, a low-income community of color, by burning coal, oil, trash, and now gas. Since 2017, climate and community groups have been calling to shut down the plant and use geothermal instead. The state finally did a study, which took two plus years to complete and then proposed a 15-to-20-year timeline. Meanwhile, the State of Michigan took 18 months – from study to completion – to convert its state Capitol to geothermal while also building a new floor.
But Hochul is definitely a big part of all this. On grounds of affordability, she delayed New York City’s landmark congestion pricing law for a year, finally yielding to immense public pressure just in time before Trump’s inauguration would have doomed it. And what do you know—it’s been, as its proponents long promised, a boon to the city’s economy, not to mention its air, not to mention its traffic safety. Again—that instinct towards delay comes because she’s not, in her heart of hearts, a climate and energy champion.
In those situations, the other option that advocates have to force action is to challenge a politician from the left electorally. It seemed like that might be starting to happen last year, when Hochul’s lieutenant governor Antonio Delgado broke with her and mounted a primary campaign, based in part on her inaction on energy and climate. But when Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York, he needed help from Albany to have any hope of carrying out some of his plans, and so he endorsed Hochul (who had belatedly endorsed him), and that undercut Delgado who dropped out of the race. Got all that? One can’t blame Mamdani—he did what he had to do in service of his agenda, and one hopes he bargained effectively and will get what he needs from Hochul. But again it’s a reminder of how much easier all this is when you have a governor who deeply cares about the issues at hand.
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