It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World
By: Chandu Visweswariah
A trifecta of decisions by the Trump administration, Gov. Hochul of New York and New York’s Public Service Commission has us hurtling towards climate disaster 85 times faster. It’s one thing to be stupid, another to accelerate our plummet towards harm by 85 times.
The mischievous methane molecule is responsible for over 40% of global warming. We all speak of “carbon” (by which we mean carbon dioxide in the atmosphere), but that’s less than 60% of the problem. Methane is a powerful heat-trapping gas. One ton of unburned (typically leaked) methane does as much climate damage over 20 years as 85 tons of carbon dioxide. When leakage and upstream emissions are taken into account, natural gas is worse than coal as a source of energy! This is seemingly good news, because there is enormous low-hanging fruit to reduce methane emissions, which means we can make progress 85 times faster than trying to reduce carbon dioxide. But we live in a mad, mad, mad world where everything is turned on its head.
The Obama and Biden administrations implemented strict rules on methane leakage, which mostly occurs at oil and gas wells, and in the natural gas distribution system. The Trump administration, promptly after coming into power, delayed these regulations by 10 years. During those 10 years of delay, an increasing fracking and natural gas industry will continue to leak escalating amounts of methane, each ton of which will do many times the damage of carbon dioxide. It’s one thing to be stupid, another to give 85 times the harm 10 extra years to do damage (the harm is actually even more than 85x over a 10-year period).
The Hochul administration in New York recently approved the Trump-backed Northeast Supply Enhancement (NESE), a fracked gas pipeline project, overturning a decade of methane-related environmental progress. A billion dollars will be invested in the underwater pipeline which will perpetuate fracked gas use and methane leaks for at least 30 more years. By then, catastrophic environmental tipping points will be in full force. It’s one thing to be stupid, another to accelerate climate harms by 85 times.
Speaking of the Hochul administration, New York’s All-Electric Building Law (AEBL) that was passed in 2023 and slated to go into effect on January 1, 2026, has been delayed. A U.S. District judge had found that a lawsuit filed two years ago by fossil fuel interests was merit-less. The fossil fuel interests appealed. New York State had a chance to claim obvious irreparable and imminent harm to the environment and all New Yorkers and put the law into effect while the appeal is heard. But New York passed up the “irreparable harm” legal argument. “What could be urgent about environmental action? We can wait…”
As part of that delay, fracked-gas infrastructure will continue to grow and more buildings depending on gas for heating, hot water and cooking will be built. All of which will cause more natural gas to be used, more methane to leak, and incalculable climate harm to be imposed on the planet. It’s one thing to be stupid, quite another to delay progress while enduring 85 times the harm.
The approval of the NESE pipeline by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation was based on a letter from the Public Service Commission that the pipeline was necessary for grid reliability for the New York City region. Speaking of the Public Service Commission, they issued orders with steep and inflexible requirements for Community Choice Aggregation (CCA) and recently rejected all CCA supply contracts. In the words of Noam Bramson, Executive Director of Sustainable Westchester, “Recent outreach and education requirements mandated by the State Public Service Commission … have, in practice, presented significant implementation challenges for community energy programs like ours. … we are unable to obtain State authorization to launch the new contract on schedule.”
In practice, this means that communities’ efforts in Westchester County and across the state to band together and purchase clean energy will come to an end. Which means 130,000 customers will have to fend for themselves, and some of them will opt for “default grid power,” 98.1% of which is generated from natural gas in Westchester County. Which means more fracked gas, more methane leakage, and speeding up of a cascade of environmental tipping points by a factor of 85. Instead of requiring transparency and disclosures from the fossil fuel industry, the Commission is imposing unreasonable requirements on clean energy and sabotaging community-based efforts in order to hasten climate change. In so doing, this Commission has effectively turned its “Public Service” mission on its head. It’s one thing to be stupid, another to hasten climate change by a factor of 85.
We live in a mad, mad, mad world.
The only saving grace is that we as consumers can choose not to use fossil fuels with five simple steps:
- Use public transportation or electric vehicles for transport.
- Use heat pumps for heating and cooling.
- Use electricity for heating your domestic hot water.
- Migrate to an induction stovetop.
- Get your electricity from a 100% clean source either with your own rooftop/backyard solar OR community solar OR opting for electricity supply from a 100% clean Energy Service Company (ESCO).
Tell our President in Washington, Governor in Albany, the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Public Service Commission by your actions that we reject their 85x stupidity and we are taking matters into our own hands!
This is an opinion and analysis article. The views expressed by the author are solely his own and not those of any organization he is affiliated with or CURE100.
