A Valley Viewpoint Narrative
There is something almost predictable about government in New York.
Albany announces an ambitious program.
Politicians hold a press conference.
There are speeches about leadership, bold action and how New York will once again show the rest of America the way forward.
Then somebody eventually asks a fairly basic question:
Can you actually do this?
In the case of New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, two federal judges have now answered that question in essentially the same way.
Not like this.
New York enacted the law in 2024 with an enormous goal: collect $75 billion from major fossil-fuel producers and refiners to help pay for infrastructure intended to address the effects of climate change.
The political pitch was straightforward. Governor Kathy Hochul and supporters argued that taxpayers shouldn’t be left paying the costs associated with climate change when companies that produced fossil fuels contributed to the problem.
That’s an argument worth hearing.
But there was another question that deserved just as much attention:
Does New York have the constitutional authority to impose this kind of liability for emissions and activity occurring around the country—and around the world?
For the second time in less than a month, a federal court has said no.
On September 23, U.S. District Judge P. Kevin Castel permanently blocked enforcement of the Climate Change Superfund Act. His ruling concluded that the law was preempted by the federal Clean Air Act and separately intruded into an area reserved to the federal government involving foreign affairs.
And here’s something important that tends to get lost when everything immediately becomes Republican versus Democrat:
This wasn’t the first judge to reach that conclusion.
On August 31, Chief U.S. District Judge Brenda Sannes of the Northern District of New York also blocked the law, concluding that federal law preempted New York’s approach. Sannes was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama.
So perhaps this deserves to be treated as something more substantive than another partisan food fight.
Climate change isn’t the only issue
You can believe climate change is real.
You can believe government has a responsibility to prepare infrastructure for severe weather.
You can support renewable energy.
And you can still ask whether New York’s climate policies are legal, affordable and realistic.
Those things aren’t mutually exclusive.
That’s where I think Albany repeatedly loses the plot.
The debate too often becomes a morality play.
Support the state’s latest climate initiative and you’re saving the planet.
Question it and somehow you’re against clean air, clean water or the future of our children.
That’s nonsense.
Public policy isn’t measured by the sincerity of the people proposing it.
It is measured by what it actually accomplishes, what it costs, whether it works and whether government has the authority to do it.
And here in the Hudson Valley, those questions aren’t academic.
They’re sitting on the kitchen table every month.
They’re called utility bills.
The view from the Hudson Valley
Ask families around here whether energy affordability is some abstract policy discussion.
It isn’t.
People aren’t sitting at their kitchen tables debating international climate models.
They’re looking at the electric bill.
They’re looking at the heating bill.
They’re looking at the mortgage, groceries, property taxes and insurance.
They’re trying to figure out why earning more money somehow doesn’t seem to mean having more money.
Meanwhile, New York is trying to fundamentally transform the way an economy of nearly 20 million people produces, distributes and consumes energy.
That transformation requires enormous amounts of new generation, transmission, storage and grid infrastructure.
Right here in the Hudson Valley we’re seeing part of that transition firsthand.
The Town of Ulster, for example, is reviewing three battery-energy-storage proposals. Across the Hudson Valley, 18 proposed projects represent about 2.8 gigawatts of storage capacity. At the same time, New York remains well behind its 2030 storage target, with roughly 562 megawatts operational against a 6,000-megawatt goal.
Those numbers tell us something important.
Changing an energy system is much easier to announce than it is to build.
And somebody eventually has to pay for it.
Stop governing by press release
That is the larger lesson I take from these court decisions.
It isn’t that New York should abandon environmental policy.
It isn’t that fossil fuels have no environmental consequences.
And it certainly isn’t that we should ignore climate change.
It’s that government needs to stop confusing ambition with achievement.
Albany loves goals.
- 2030.
- 2031.
- 2032.
Pick a year, hold a press conference and announce another mandate.
But ordinary New Yorkers don’t live in 2050.
They live in 2026.
They have bills due Friday.
They need electricity tonight.
Their employers need reliable power tomorrow morning.
And they need policymakers willing to acknowledge that reliability, affordability, economic growth and environmental stewardship have to coexist.
That’s not climate denial.
That’s governing.
And then there’s accountability
There is another question Albany should answer.
How much government time and taxpayer money has been spent designing, implementing and defending policies that ultimately cannot survive judicial review?
Because taxpayers pay on both ends.
We pay for government to create these programs.
Then we pay government lawyers to defend them.
And when the courts conclude government exceeded its authority, nobody in government gets a bill.
We do.
Again.
That should bother conservatives, liberals and everyone in between.
The September 23 decision is particularly striking because Judge Castel didn’t merely object to some technical regulation implementing the law.
He declared the Climate Change Superfund Act unconstitutional and permanently enjoined New York officials from enforcing it.
Two federal courts.
Two defeats.
Same fundamental problem.
At some point, that stops looking like bad luck.
It starts looking like a warning.
The uncomfortable middle
Here’s where I probably disappoint people on both sides.
I don’t believe the answer is pretending environmental problems don’t exist.
I also don’t believe the answer is handing Albany a blank check because politicians attach the words “climate change” to something.
There is a middle ground that our politics seems determined to abandon.
Protect the environment.
Build more energy.
Modernize the grid.
Encourage technologies that actually work.
Maintain reliability.
Respect constitutional boundaries.
And never forget the person opening the utility bill.
Because government can announce all the climate goals it wants.
It can produce glossy reports.
It can hold press conferences.
It can promise to lead the nation.
But leadership isn’t measured by the size of the announcement.
It’s measured by whether the policy survives contact with three things:
The Constitution.
Economic reality.
And the people expected to pay for it.
New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act has now run headfirst into the first one.
Albany would be wise to start paying considerably more attention to the other two.
To comfort the afflicted … and afflict the comfortable.
