Somebody Please Tell Kathy Hochul That The Climate Jig Is Up

It’s Climate Week here in New York, and you can feel the excitement. The UN General Assembly is in town, and simultaneously something called the “Climate Group” (“Our mission is to drive climate action. Fast.”) is holding some 600 (!) events to promote policies that they somehow believe will “save the planet.”

At one of these events yesterday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul showed up to deliver what she probably thought was a significant policy speech. The Governor’s web page describes the speech this way:

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced New York’s participation in the U.S. Climate Alliance’s Governors’ Climate-Ready Workforce Initiative to grow career pathways in climate and clean energy fields, strengthen workforce diversity, and jointly train 1 million new registered apprentices across the Alliance’s states and territories by 2035. Governor Hochul made the announcement today at a Climate Week NYC event, which also featured her Alliance Co-Chair New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, founding Alliance member Washington Governor Jay Inslee, and White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi.

In the speech the Gov went on and on about how in New York the energy transition is really happening and is going to create zillions of “green jobs”:

We're not talking about some transition happening in the future, we're talking about it unfolding right now, and that's what we're so excited about. And we’re opening the doors to underrepresented communities. And I go to these job sites all the time and I want to see more women and people of color and the unions recognize this. That's where they're doing their recruiting, because these industries had been previously closed off to them.

She may be “so excited,” but while our airhead governor isn’t looking the world is passing her by. A few data points from the past few days:

• The Wall Street Journal has a front-page article today, with headline and sub-headline “America’s Ambitious Climate Plan Is Faltering. Global emissions are at records, while shift away from fossil fuels slows amid high costs, surging power demand.” There are obligatory nods to the supposed climate crisis (this is the Journal’s news pages, not the opinion section), but there is no avoiding the reality. Examples from the article: “Climate optimism is fading. Higher costs, pushback from businesses and consumers, and the slow rollout of technology are delaying the transition from fossil fuels. . . . Investment in improving the efficiency of buildings—a major driver of emissions—fell last year, the International Energy Agency says. Spending decisions happening now can lock in emissions for decades. Multibillion-dollar liquefied-natural-gas terminals being built in Texas and Louisiana could serve a projected demand boom in places such as Southeast Asia.” 

• How’s that EV roll-out going? From Reuters, September 19: “[A]uto industry . . . data [released] on Thursday . . . showed the fourth consecutive monthly drop in EV sales, prompting the European Automobile Manufacturers' Association (ACEA) to demand "urgent action" to prevent further decline. . . . Sales of fully electric cars slumped 43.9% in August, as the bloc's biggest EV markets Germany and France recorded drops of 68.8% and 33.1% respectively, ACEA said.” Those are rather dramatic drops. In the usual European way, the manufacturers’ trade association took consumer resistance to buying EVs as an opportunity to demand more government subsidies and mandates: “[The ACEA said that] EU institutions [need] to come forward with urgent relief measures before new CO2 targets for cars and vans come into effect in 2025.”

• This one is from a few weeks ago, but another so-called “green hydrogen” project has failed. It was only two months ago that I had a post on the failure of a big green hydrogen project in Australia. The latest such failure, last month, comes from Germany. From Hydrogen Insight, August 14: “The refusal of potential green hydrogen customers to sign binding sales agreements, as well as uncertainty over the price of the product, contributed to the collapse of a plan to build a renewable H2 project in the German city of Hannover. . . . [Officials originally] estimat[ed] that it would cost around €25m. However, by the time the project was cancelled in March this year, costs had ballooned five-fold to around €136m.” This was for just a 17 MW facility.

Maybe some day those “underreprestented communities” that Governor Hochul talks about will figure out that what’s holding them back is reliance on government planning and handouts as the route to economic betterment.