A climate change battle erupted during New York State’s budget negotiations. “Governor Hochul’s excuse that New York needs to gut its nation-leading climate law in order to save New Yorkers money is flat-out wrong,” Krueger said. Late yesterday, Hochul backed down, withdrawing a proposal slipped in just days before the budget deadline.
Krueger represents Roosevelt Island in Albany.
by David Stone
The Roosevelt Island Daily News
A Climate Change Battle in Budget Talks
“Saving money by ignoring what we need to do to save civilization won’t work out for us in the end, but rejecting the governor’s plan and putting the Climate Change Superfund Act in the budget will,” Krueger said in a joint statement with Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz.
The dispute was over Hochul’s plan for changing measuring methods for counting greenhouse gas emissions. Critics falling in behind Krueger and Dinowitz argued that it benefited the energy industry.
“It sparked a firestorm in Albany, amid concerns that the governor was trying to make an end run around one of the nation’s strongest climate laws,” reported the New York Times.
“Governor Hochul’s effort to force into the state budget a plan to weaken New York State’s accounting of methane emissions would gut New York’s nation-leading efforts to fight climate change,” Krueger and Dinowitz said.
Krueger added, “Changing our methane accounting means we save money by simply not doing what we need to do to save human civilization — which doesn’t seem like much of a savings to me.”
But yesterday, the battle ended – for now. Hochul backed down, withdrawing her proposal.
New York has one of the nation’s best laws in the climate change battle. For now, it remains intact.
