New York should lead, not retreat, on climate progress

I have been concerned about climate change for all of my adult life, starting with that first abnormally hot summer of 1988. I’ve taken various actions to reduce my personal and household carbon emissions. And for the past ten years, I have volunteered for climate advocacy organizations, including the Rochester Chapter of Citizens Climate Lobby (CCL) and Color Fairport Green’s “40×30” Committee.

Since late 2025, I have witnessed Governor Hochul’s retreat from statewide climate progress. In an agreement with business interests, she has withheld implementation of the All Electric Buildings Law, and she suspended a state-wide program to gradually reduce fossil fuel emissions – known as Cap and Invest, a strategy successfully implemented in other states and nations.

Now, the Governor is seeking to further delay the state’s climate efforts by pausing action until 2030 and moving back our first emission-reduction requirement to 2040. In her haste to push the Legislature, the Governor has relied on misinformation. Her main argument—that NYS climate mandates are the culprit for rising energy costs—has been fully debunked by numerous analyses. Thankfully, she seems to have moved on from that, but the damage has been done. As with most climate work, a large percent of our effort is spent overcoming misinformation. The truth is, rising energy costs today have more to do with higher natural gas prices and ever-increasing costs of maintaining New York’s aging electrical grid.

With negotiations already underway in Albany, what are our goals as climate activists? For one, I’d like the Legislature to give the public ample time to become informed and engage. There’s a lot at stake now, and more time is needed for a fair and open process. We can’t let it be resolved in backroom budget deals!

Second, I want the consequences of delaying action to be fully understood. Too often, governments are pressured, in part by fossil fuel interests, into retreating on climate. In doing so, they undermine the collective momentum across the world. That truth is hidden in Governor Hochul’s own recent statement, in which she cites retreats from climate action in other states to justify New York State’s. If New York follows suit, the negative spiral continues. And with every delay, we pass the buck to future leaders who then face even harsher choices—either pursue steeper transition policies or accept ever worsening failure. Again, the Governor’s own statements back that up. She delayed putting a cap on emissions two years ago. Now, she says implementing the policy would cause too steep a transition.

Finally, we could not be handing the fossil fuel industry a simpler playbook for sinking climate progress: they raise natural gas prices and blame it on climate action; New York leaders blink. If the Governor gets her way this year, take a wild guess what will happen to energy costs leading up to 2031, the year she is promising resumption of climate policy (and conveniently also the year after her term expires)!

We are better off in a world that works to reduce how much oil, coal, and gas it mines, transports, and then burns. The benefits of that work reflect our common values. New Yorkers want clean air and water. We want to ensure that coral reefs, arctic ecosystems, polar bears, salamanders, and wild birds are sustained for future generations. We want to avoid making huge land areas throughout the world unlivable. We want to reduce the risk of extreme weather events, droughts, heat waves, and forest fires. We value New York’s farms and farm workers, the Finger Lakes, Great Lakes, and forests of the Adirondack Mountains, and don’t want them harmed by rapidly warming climate and all its side effects. These are all at stake if we don’t act.

For New York to remain a leader, we need a gradually declining cap on fossil fuel emissions. If combined with an emissions trading system, funding would be available for a rebate program to benefit households statewide, spurring the economy and creating jobs. Next, we need to ensure that new building construction aligns with, NOT undermines, our clean energy transition, and for that, we need the All Electric Buildings Law implemented.

Along with these major policies, New York would be strategic to prioritize numerous smaller actions: adding more EV charging stations, especially along state and federal highways and in urban areas where there are concentrations of rental property; providing funding for local governments, like Monroe County, to implement their Climate Action Plans; making it super easy for households across New York to find and utilize various financial incentives for conserving energy and replacing their fossil-fuel-powered appliances with zero-emission electric ones; taking advantage of innovations that have made heat pumps, EV’s, and solar affordable; and continuing to make progress cleaning up and strengthening our grid. We need to realize the benefits to New York State’s economic self-sufficiency in switching from imported fossil fuels to clean, home-generated energy.

Can we meet the existing Climate Law’s target of 40% emission reduction by 2030? I for one would like to see a few more years of deeper resolve and prioritization.

Bill Maier
Fairport resident and environmental educator

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