After months of closed-door negotiations, the New York State Legislature released a controversial budget bill that guts the state’s landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) at 9:30 pm on Memorial Day. The bill passed the Senate and the Assembly and was signed into law the following day.
Despite tremendous pushback by environmental groups and grassroots activists across the state, in the end Governor Hochul and industry lobbyists got what they wanted: the new law lowers the state’s climate ambition, delays implementation, and drastically changes the greenhouse gas accounting methodology to favor polluting industries.
New York’s climate law had been a model of science-based action, but not anymore. Under the changes, the state will not count CO2 emissions from burning trees and other biomass towards its statewide emissions cap. It’s abandoning its commitment to minimize methane emissions, downplaying the impact of methane by changing from a 20-year accounting timeframe to 100 years. Additionally, the state will no longer count upstream emissions associated with fossil fuel production.
The Governor’s attitude toward the scientific rigor and reality-based greenhouse gas accounting required to effectively address climate change? “No matter what we do, we’re always going to fail because we jacked up the standards so high on ourselves.”
Weaker standards were what industry demanded, and that’s what they got. Hochul and New York’s legislative leaders have failed the test for true climate leadership.
