Kathy Hochul (D-NY) is now trying to walk back the state’s climate policies, proving once again that Democrats pursued a reckless climate policy transition with no clue of what they were actually doing.
Hochul wants to use the state budget to alter a 2019 New York climate law that Politico describes as a “nation-leading climate law” that “mandates drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.” Hochul puts the blame everywhere but on New York, citing tariffs and inflation, the Trump administration, and the effects of the pandemic. She even plays New York as a victim of its own expectations: “We’re judged by a different standard on our emissions,” Hochul said. “No matter what we do, we’re always going to fail, because we jacked up the standards so high on ourselves.”
ENDING THE WAR ON CO₂ IS THE RIGHT CALL
And whose fault is that?
New York set ridiculous climate standards, and Hochul wants to back out because meeting those standards is too difficult and would be too costly to everyday New Yorkers. Hochul’s administration admitted in court that meeting these standards “would require imposing extraordinary and damaging costs upon New Yorkers.” New York could meet those standards it has set for itself, but Hochul doesn’t want to because she now realizes the effects that policy would have.
This is not unique to New York. In California, Democrats have spent the last several years trying to gradually roll back climate policies after realizing just how damaging those policies are. Most recently, California Democrats claim that it is “now evident” that they have overregulated the oil and energy industries to the point that gas and energy prices are growing too great for everyday Californians. In other words, California Democrats have discovered what their detractors have been warning them about for years.
NEVADA GOVERNOR WARNS CALIFORNIA CLIMATE RULES THREATENING REGIONAL FUEL SUPPLY
By painting “climate change” as an apocalyptic event that a few American states can magically prevent, Democrats rushed headfirst into reckless policies without considering the consequences. This has led to a snowball effect of regulations and of businesses leaving the state, both of which lead to excessive costs on the residents who remain. New York and California Democrats are only now realizing these errors and are meekly trying to mitigate the effects without acknowledging that they created these volatile situations in the first place.
Combine this with the Democratic Party’s unwillingness to hold China accountable for its role as the world’s worst emitter, and you can see that Democrats have no idea what they are actually trying to accomplish on “climate change.” They can’t decide if it will kill us all or if addressing it is simply too expensive, so they sporadically shift back and forth depending on the political winds. Their policies and their rhetoric on the climate are reckless and directionless, and the result is always that normal people are burdened by new regulations, taxes, or costs.
