I’m skeptical about the climate act

Call me skeptical but I doubt that state will have the carry through to implement the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act‘s ambitious goals.

• New York will have to cut its total greenhouse-gas emissions (from 1990 levels) by 85% by 2050.
• The remaining 15% will have to be offset by reforestation, restoring wetlands, carbon capturing or other green projects.
• 70% of the state’s electricity will have to be produced by renewable sources like wind or hydro by 2030.

The last goal is probably the most absurd, as 2030 is basically ten years away, and we are currently only at 26% renewable energy, mostly coming from large scale hydro. Maybe if you count the state’s legacy nuclear power you can get closer to 50% but the biggest nuclear plants in the state – Indian Point are on their ways to being retired and replaced largely with large natural gas plants already largely built and expected to operate for generations to come.

The truth is that climate change goals are made to be broken, and quite possibly they are the least consequential part of the new law. More important may be the mandatory rules requiring government agencies to weigh climate impacts before moving forward on new projects. While such rules are not self enforcing, they provide citizens the ability to force government to at least consider climate impacts when approving new projects and consider lower carbon options going forward.

I’m certainly hopeful that we can meet these goals but hope is different than action. But they will motivate some change and some action – like the recycling goals of thirty years ago – and maybe lead to better public policy outcomes. Even if the ambitious goals aren’t reached maybe they’ll lead us to producing somewhat less carbon, just like the once ambitious and now almost entirely forgotten about recycling goals.