NY’s ‘Climate’ Suicide

Buried by the baby formula crisis, the horror in Buffalo and other grim news has been the most ominous single development for New York’s future: Word from the former head of the Public Service Commission, John Howard, that the state’s beyond-fossil-fuels law will cost New Yorkers “hundreds of billions” in higher energy bills.

And his numbers come right from documents released by the state Climate Action Council, which is tasked with figuring out how to make the plan work.

That is beyond question more than New Yorkers can pay: All this madness will do is fuel the exodus out of the Empire State before the plan finally becomes so obviously insane that it gets abandoned.

Then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo pushed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act into law in 2019, as he polished his credentials for a potential future presidential run. Advocates for the Climate Action Plan say the costs will pass $300 billion, but Cuomo & Co. simply ignored that, expecting to be long out of office before reality hit home.

Instead, Albany pretends that Con Ed and other utilities will pay, not taxpayers. Except that utilities only get their income from ratepayers, who are the taxpayers.

Honesty about all this would’ve sunk the plan, so Cuomo hid the truth. Heck, Gov. Hochul is still pushing this insanity in a bid to bolster her immediate political future. So much for her vows of “transparency.”

Anyone who seriously looks at the numbers knows the law’s mandated transition away from all fossil fuels by 2050 simply isn’t achievable, not with current technology nor any on the horizon. But Howard, a former Cuomo appointee, now has the freedom to sound the alarm. “The Legislature . . . has given this commission nearly the exclusive responsibility to reach into New Yorkers’ pockets to pay for the CLCPA mandates,” he thundered at a PSC session.

He’s not the only Democrat crying foul. Transport Workers Union Local 101 boss Constance Bradley warned that Hochul’s expanded zero-emissions plan would “wipe out thousands of good union jobs.” And TWU International chief John Samuelsen says Democrats need to “decide whether they’re for the working people or the elites.”

Indeed, since New York gets so much of its tax income from the rich, sticking the cost in utility bills instead is another burden on the poor and working class.

The sooner the state abandons this madness, the better. Consider it one more reason to vote out every New York Democrat you can come November.