At a time when households and small businesses are struggling to afford their energy bills and corporate utilities continue to raise rates in New York, Governor Hochul wants to weaken the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), our landmark Climate Law, in an alleged attempt to lower costs. That deeply flawed argument risks making energy more expensive in the long run and would lock us into the kind of volatility that has defined the fossil fuel era.
If the past several years have taught us anything, it is that the climate crisis is already here and that vulnerable communities bear the brunt of its consequences. In my district of Astoria, children suffer from disproportionate asthma rates from peaker plant pollution, giving our neighborhood the unfortunate nickname of “Asthma Alley.” In Queens, Hurricane Ida highlighted the deadly impacts of flooding in low-income immigrant neighborhoods and the inequality in access to disaster recovery resources.
