Evidently prepared to jump ahead of NJ Governor Phil Murphy (D), NY Governor Kathy Hochul (D - New York’s replacement for infamous former state Chief Executive Andrew Cuomo), reportedly is prepared to include in her upcoming budget a ban on the use of oil or natural gas to heat new buildings.
MRCTV readers might recall my December 22 piece covering Murphy’s alarming and authoritarian NJ “Energy Master Plan,” intended to ban most use of oil or natural gas to heat homes in NJ by 2050.
Now, as Reuters reports, New York’s Hochul is ready to engage in a great leap past Murphy, proposing in her budget what she foreshadowed in her January “State of the State” address, when she said she wanted to see:
…zero on-site greenhouse gas emissions for new construction no later than 2027.
Of course, one mustn’t get the wrong impression from her January statement. Hochul wasn’t implying that she would enter the construction market as a private participant and make all her projects “zero on-site” for “greenhouse gas emissions,” allowing buyers to choose or avoid her offerings. Heck, she didn’t even define what she considers to be “greenhouse gas emissions” or how solid her evidence is to prove such an assumptive statement. She used – and continues to use -- euphemisms and government power to restrict the kinds of actual energy-generating sources other people can choose.
Something about that seems inherently violent and bullying.
Reuters continues, never questioning the underlying assumptions:
A decision by the state would follow similar gas bans in New York City in December and dozens of smaller U.S. cities in recent years as they seek to shift from fossil fuels to cleaner forms of energy.
Cleaner?
How is Reuters calculating that?
Do they mean electric power driving electric heat at homes?
If that’s the case, then shall Reuters dig into the sources for that power?
The biggest sources in the US are the burning of coal and natural gas, both of which release carbon dioxide (is that output the focus of their “greenhouse gas emissions” claim?) and would not, strictly speaking, fall into their glorious fantasy of “cleaner forms” of energy – especially since natural gas is one of the very energy sources Hochul cites as climate-dangerous (even though it has not been proven as such, at all).
And the slick rhetorical tactic of implying that a “shift away from fossil fuels” is either cleaner or even a shift away from fossil fuels is utterly erroneous.
As Hawaii has shown, and as I wrote in May, last year, the state government’s attempt to “shift from fossil fuels” to all electric has been a disaster, creating a new need for employment of “fossil fuels” in order to maintain the superficial image of “clean” electric power.
There’s darkness coming for the beautiful island paradise of Hawaii.
Managing Editor at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE.org) Jon Miltimore reports that Hawaii Governor David Ige’s (D) bureaucracy is ready to shut down the state’s final coal-driven electric power plant, and replace it with a humongous battery that residents now are discovering will be fueled by… Oil.
Yep.
Then there are wind farms…
As I wrote in 2019:
(T)he Associated Press has noted that windfarms kill 573,000 birds each year. And, as shocking as it might seem, they also burst bat lungs. The turbines themselves require vast amounts of carbon-using energy to construct, including concrete, steel, and fiberglass blades that, in total, weigh between 800 and 900 tons – per turbine. All of this requires energy, to mine the ore, transport the raw materials, make, and transport and build on site. And the sites require vast access roads that destroy wildlife habitats, not to mention the bizarre health effects people cite when living near the infrasound created by mills, and the energy-intensive process of re-blading and refurbishing needed every 20 years.
I also noted that the tons of poured concrete at the base of every single windmill not only emits CO2, it requires investment of “fossil fuel energy” to acquire and move the constituent elements for the concrete, mix them, and deliver them.
And I got to observe:
Then there’s “solar,” which, as the Obama-Solyndra federal subsidy boondoggle reflects, is not a cost-effective large-scale power provider, and poses massive secondary and tertiary environmental problems.
As I noted in 2018, when writing about the California government mandate that all new homes be solar-powered by 2030:
Solar power can be useful for small, low-demand, items. Photovoltaic cells can be used to charge batteries, phones, and signs. But there is a translation problem when people try to apply solar power to larger energy needs. Scientifically, the solar industry is still prey to what are termed the “thermodynamic efficiency limit” and the “ultimate efficiency limit,” and it’s the ultimate efficiency limit (pertaining to electron paring) that makes solar power less attractive than other forms of carbon-based energy for people on the market.
Politicians like Hochul (and Newsom and his ilk in California) appear utterly blind to these costs, and to other costs, that have real-world consequences for those interested in buying homes. As Scott Beyer wrote in 2020 for The Independent Institute:
The latest example is California’s solar panel mandate, which took effect this year. It requires all new homes under four stories to come with a rooftop photovoltaic solar panel. The state’s energy commission estimates that this requirement will add $9,500 to construction costs, which is significant in a state with an extreme affordable-housing shortage. The National Association of Home Builders estimates that each marginal $1,000 price increase will cut 10,000 Californians out of the home buying market, meaning the mandate will block an estimated 95,000 residents from homeownership, while also burdening renters.
And, of course, the push to stop people from using easily transportable, storable, sources of energy also is a push to force people onto an electric grid that will be controlled by the government.
What a shock.
But most important is the moral vacuum Hochul exhibits in her attempt to mandate how other people heat their homes and offices.
One might notice that I’ve written about this many times – because many authoritarian elitists like Hochul keep creating new fronts in their collectivist assault to run other people’s lives.
One also might notice that I have likened this to feudalism, which it is. In Hochul’s plans for New York residents, as with Murphy’s plot for NJ, the politically-connected will be much like royally-favored feudal lords, and the people will be forced to continuously pay their liege lords for the “privilege” of being able to own, power, and heat their homes and businesses.
How this is a positive sign for anyone is beyond my ability to fathom. But, one thing this indicates is that Hochul is unwilling to consider things like morals, economics, and politically-driven “climate science” as she tells others how they must live.
In that, she is much like others of her elitist ilk. And we can expect more politicians to join that nefarious gang.
Related: CA Passes Mandate: All New Homes Must Be 50% Solar-Powered by 2030 | MRCTV
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