{"id":2999,"date":"2024-03-11T12:19:09","date_gmt":"2024-03-11T16:19:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/?p=2999"},"modified":"2024-03-11T12:19:09","modified_gmt":"2024-03-11T16:19:09","slug":"will-the-legislature-kick-the-can-on-climate-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/will-the-legislature-kick-the-can-on-climate-costs\/","title":{"rendered":"Will the Legislature \u201cKick the Can\u201d on Climate Costs?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week Albany heads into a new phase in the development of the state budget as both houses of the New York State Legislature unveil their budget priorities.\u00a0 Governor Hochul advanced her plan<\/a> back in January.\u00a0 With the expected approval of the Senate and Assembly plans this week, the battle to reconcile the three competing plans will start in earnest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final budget is supposed to be completed by the end of this month, although in recent years the fight over the final version extended well into April \u2014 beyond the start of the new fiscal year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final budget will authorize the state to raise and spend somewhere around $235 billion over the next twelve months.  In addition to the fiscal side, the final budget will address pressing state programmatic and policy priorities.  Yet, in one key area \u2014 the rising costs of spending on damages caused by a rapidly worsening climate \u2014 Governor Hochul\u2019s budget plan<\/a> comes up short: It includes some spending on climate projects, but does so in a way that would pass those costs solely onto the backs of taxpayers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What will the Legislature do in response?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last year, the state Senate advanced a budget that shifted a large portion of climate damage response costs off taxpayers and onto the largest oil companies.  The plan also was designed to protect the public from having those fees shifted back onto taxpayers in the form of higher consumer costs.  Unfortunately, last year\u2019s Assembly plan sided with the governor in requiring that all climate costs be paid by taxpayers, not Big Oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Will it happen again?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This year is different \u2014 the coalition calling for Big Oil to pay is large and diverse and at least half the Assemblymembers support the proposal that matches the Senate\u2019s plan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A coalition<\/a> of over 400 environmental, civic, religious, and youth groups and 100 local elected officials have been demanding that the world\u2019s largest oil companies pay for New York\u2019s staggering infrastructure climate change costs as part of a final budget agreement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Climate Change Superfund Act<\/a> requires the companies most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions to pay $3 billion annually for each of the next twenty-five years to help cover the environmental damage they have done.  The legislation is designed to prevent these costs from being shifted onto the public, as confirmed by an independent think tank\u2019s analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Climate change resiliency measures are uniquely necessary \u2014 and expensive \u2014 in New York.  A recent review<\/a> of Governor Hochul\u2019s climate-related public announcements documented that she had pledged over $2 billion in 2023 to cover damages and projects to boost the resiliency of New York\u2019s infrastructure damaged by climate change-driven extreme weather \u2014 funds that would instead be paid by Big Oil if the Climate Superfund was approved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s expected that the state\u2019s climate costs will be enormous.  A study<\/a> by New York State Comptroller DiNapoli revealed that over a ten-year span, more than half<\/em> of New York localities’ municipal spending outside of New York City was or will be linked to climate change.  New York City may need to spend around $100 billion<\/a> to upgrade its sewer systems to withstand intensified storms.  And those costs are on top<\/em> of the <\/a>$52 billion<\/a> that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has estimated it will cost to protect New York Harbor from rising sea levels and storms.  Estimates<\/a> suggest that Long Island alone<\/em> could incur up to $100 billion in climate-related costs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These financial burdens are projected to escalate, potentially reaching $10 billion<\/a> annually<\/em> for New Yorkers by the middle of the century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who\u2019s on the financial hook?  Right now you are \u2014 unless legislation is passed to allocate at least some of those costs to those who are most responsible and who have the greatest ability to pay \u2014 the largest oil companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Remember, scientists<\/a> working for oil companies like Exxon decades ago made \u201cremarkably accurate projections of just how much burning fossil fuels would warm the planet.\u201d  Yet for years, the industry \u201cpublicly cast doubt on climate science, and cautioned against any drastic move away from burning fossil fuels, the main driver of climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, we\u2019ll know which side the Legislature is on.  Will they protect taxpayers and put Big Oil on the hook?  Or will they adopt the governor\u2019s position and agree to pass all of those climate costs onto the public?  The answer will have a big impact on your wallet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week Albany heads into a new phase in the development of the state budget as both houses of the New York State Legislature unveil their budget priorities.\u00a0 Governor Hochul advanced her plan back in January.\u00a0 With the expected approval of the Senate and Assembly plans this week, the battle to reconcile the three competing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2999"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3000,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2999\/revisions\/3000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}