Americans say they're willing to pay "no more than $10 month" to fight global warming*, yet they're already paying thousands because of regulatory costs; here’s another $4,000
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Brace for THOUSANDS more in energy costs — unless Albany fixes NY’s insane climate law
NY Post Editorial:
Critics, including us, have been warning that New Yorkers’ energy costs are about to soar even higher, thanks to the state’s insane 2019 climate law.
Now, a state agency itself is confirming those warnings — and has even put a price tag on the pain: a whopping $4,100 a year extra per household by 2031.
That’s just for electricity, reports the New York State Energy Research and Development Agency; the bill for gas for home heating, as well as gasoline costs, are also set to shoot up. At the pump a gallon of gas is expected to go up an eye-watering $2.23.
Plus, businesses’ utility costs could rise 46%, and truck-delivery expenses over 60% — sending consumer prices through the roof.
Gov. Kathy Hochul seems to have recognized at least the political danger: As she runs for reelection on a promise of affordability, voters won’t find the extra hit particularly “affordable.”
So she appears set to push for changes or delays to the law — at least until after she’s safely reelected.
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Sometimes rule changes are needed to “fit the times,” argues Hochul Budget Director Blake Washington, as if “the times” have dramatically changed unpredictably since the law was passed.
Truth is, opponents have been flagging its astronomical (and pointless) costs for years.
Last year, even the left-leaning Progressive Policy Institute called it an “undeniable” failure that’s only succeeded in “driving up costs for families, constraining reliable supply” and imperiling “the political viability of the state’s climate agenda.”
The Climate Act was first championed by ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo before Hochul doubled down on slashing gas emissions by 40% by 2030 with the goal of achieving 100% zero-carbon-emission electricity by 2040.
Yet fantasizing about an alternate reality didn’t bring it about: “There is a lack of market capacity to deliver the volume of renewable energy” for EVs, heat pumps, etc., to meet the requirements called for under the climate law, notes NYSERDA’s bombshell memo.
Hochul has already quietly pushed her new energy tax — the “cap and invest” program for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — past this fall’s election.
She’s also paused the state’s all-electric building mandate. And she’s sought new modular nuclear-power plants upstate.
Yet she’ll need the Legislature’s backing even just to delay the law’s mandates, and Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins, for one, is already on record opposing any effort to mess with them.
Unless Albany lawmakers get on board and head off the additional costs, voters would be justified in showing them the door come November.
They’d be justified, but they won’t; just like much of the rest of the country, they reelect the very people who are doing this, and then complain about inflation.
* From ten years ago, but still valid, as other, more recent polls show:
Americans willing to pay to fight climate change (but only a little)
CBS News September 15, 2016 / 4:29 PM EDT / AP
WASHINGTON Most Americans are willing to pay a little more each month to fight global warming - but only a tiny bit, according to a new poll. Still, environmental policy experts hail that as a hopeful sign.
Seventy-one percent want the federal government to do something about global warming, including 6 percent who think the government should act even though they are not sure that climate change is happening, according to a poll conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
And those polled said they’d be willing to foot a little of that cost in higher electric bills.
If the cost of fighting climate change is only an additional $1 a month, 57 percent of Americans said they would support that. But as that fee goes up, support for it plummets. At $10 a month, 39 percent were in favor and 61 percent opposed. At $20 a month, the public is more than 2-to-1 against it. And only 1-in-5 would support $50 a month.
“I feel we need to make small sacrifices - and money is a small sacrifice - to make life better for future generations, “ said Sarah Griffin, a 63-year-old retired teacher in central Pennsylvania. “Surely I have enough money to spend on something that’s worthwhile.”
Greg Davis, a 27-year-old post-graduate student in Columbus, Ohio, agreed: “It’s far more important to protect the environment than to save money. I think that’s true for businesses as well as individuals.”
That a majority is willing to pay more is a new phenomenon, said Tom Dietz, professor of sociology and environmental science and policy at Michigan State University.
Dana Fisher, director of the Program for Society and the Environment at the University of Maryland, said it’s noteworthy that a majority was “willing to pay at all,” and added that the levels of support for $10 a month and $20 a month are significant.
But so was the opposition to higher costs.
James Osadzinski, 52 of Rockford, Illinois, said simply: “I have a set budget. I don’t have the money,” while for 26-year-old nurse Marina Shertzer of Pensacola, Florida, it doesn’t make sense because she doesn’t see climate change as a threat, but something cyclical and normal.
Of those polled, 77 percent said climate change is happening, 13 percent weren’t sure, and only 10 percent said it wasn’t happening.