Guess what, everybody: When the state forced the Indian Point nuclear power plant to shutter in 2021, it caused New York City’s carbon emissions to go up!
Wow, who could ever have imagined that closing down an emissions-free power source would force people to rely on other, less-green sources to satisfy Gotham’s vast energy demand?
Only anyone who bothered to think it through.
Remember, Indian Point was shut down before the state’s solar and wind capacities had any hope of replacing the lost wattage on their own.
(They’re still waaaaay behind.)
As a result, natural gas usage soared, along with carbon emissions.
New York City’s grid is in fact now “dirtier” than Texas’ and the US average.
That irony becomes even more bitter in light of the triumphalism around the Indian Point closure from the Empire State’s green fanatics, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo (who effectively pulled the plug) and the usual complement of celebrities like Mark Ruffalo.
And kudos (of a sort) are due to The Guardian’s Oliver Milman, who managed to detect this obvious point through the customary leftist brain haze around climate issues.
Side note: Why are lefty pubs so chronically late to the game on stuff like this?
The carbon-free value of nuke plants, the farce that is plastics recycling, the damage done by school closures — it’s just a never-ending series of shameless oopsies for them.
Cuomo’s successor is as bad on energy.
Gov. Hochul is waging a war on natural gas with huge disincentives in her budget plan and an earlier ban on gas hookups in new construction, all set to drive costs up, up and away.
Heck, she even wants to ban HFCs, a key ingredient in the coolant that makes unimportant things like affordable food refrigeration and air-conditioning possible — which means yet higher prices.
Can’t wait for Milman’s wistful take on that in 2030 or so.
Again and again, leftist climate policy proves itself to be founded on nothing more than patchouli-scented wishes and hemp-flavored dreams.
And average New Yorkers keep on paying the increasingly steep price.