When we say that communities of color benefit from the state’s Climate Law, we’re not being abstract. Climate change isn’t front-of-mind for New Yorkers right now – not when there are mouths to feed, bills to pay and $4 gas on every corner.
That’s why Gov. Kathy Hochul is hoping that Black and Latino New Yorkers, who are on the frontlines of the affordability crisis, won’t read the fine print on her proposal to delay implementation of the state’s Climate Law. If state legislators have the courage and ambition to reject her plan, they’ll secure billions of dollars of investment and energy bill relief for communities of color across the city.
Let’s follow the money: when the Climate Law was passed in 2019, New York set up the cap-and-invest program to implement it. Cap-and-invest makes polluting corporations pay for their pollution, then reinvests that revenue directly back into our communities. The state’s preliminary analysis puts first year revenue at $3 billion to $5 billion. In fact, at least 35% percent of that money is reserved for state-designated disadvantaged communities – including virtually the entire Bronx, almost all of Yonkers and Harlem and huge swaths of the Lower East Side, Queens and Brooklyn, particularly Sunset Park and Red Hook.
By delaying implementation of the law, the governor’s proposal would hold back up to $21 billion from being invested into neighborhoods that need the funding. That money would have lowered our neighbors’ and family members’ energy bills by reinsulating and weatherizing apartment buildings, installing rooftop solar panels and helping residents make the switch from expensive gas furnaces to efficient heat pumps. Hochul’s plan would let corporate utilities keep that money, to help them continue profiting from rate hikes and driving New Yorkers into debt.
If you’re not in debt to ConEd or National Grid, you probably know someone who is. According to Robin Hood’s Poverty Tracker, 2 in 5 NYC residents have fallen two months or more behind on their energy bills, and 1 in 4 have had their service cut off. Black and Latino families are more than twice as likely as white households to fall behind, and almost eight times more likely to have their utilities shut off. Implementing the Climate Law on schedule would give these families a lifeline by providing more than $8,500 in energy bill rebates to households making below $200,000 a year. By combining short-term bill relief with long-term energy efficiency upgrades, the Climate Law gives us the tools we need to keep vulnerable residents safe and warm in their homes.
But energy bills aren’t the only rising costs that communities are struggling with – New Yorkers are dealing with steep medical bills, too. The Climate Law protects neighborhoods like the South Bronx, where children are hospitalized for asthma at more than twice the citywide rate, and prevents nearly 12,500 asthma related emergency room visits, according to the State Energy Plan’s Health Impacts Analysis. Using cap-and-invest to replace some of the 15,000 diesel trucks spewing dangerous pollution into the South Bronx with pollution-free electric alternatives can lower the risk of asthma, cancer and lung and heart disease, reduce the burden of healthcare costs and yes, even save lives.
The Climate Law’s earmarked funding for disadvantaged communities was fought for and won by communities of color, union workers and their elected officials. The passage of the law in 2019 was a shining example of what can be achieved when we get a seat at the table to fight for our own interests. Now, Hochul wants to force through changes that would gut the Climate Law without giving us any input.
To her, and to legislators who are skeptical of the Climate Law, we would say: Come talk to us.
Come talk to a grandmother who has to make the choice between warming her prewar apartment and filling up her grocery cart. Come talk to a kid with asthma who can’t play outside because of diesel trucks idling on the street. Come talk to the young vocational school graduates who are ready and waiting to work the 123,000 NYC jobs that the Climate Law would create over the next decade.
These New Yorkers are dreaming of a better future – a future the Climate Law is ready to deliver, so long as our leaders commit to nurturing it, not cutting it down before it has the chance to bloom.
