Offshore wind, one of many energy sources that was going to help New York meet incredibly ambitious goals to decarbonize its power grid, is now dangling in the breeze, with President Trump halting new federal leases and permits for offshore projects while the feds look deeper into their environmental and economic impacts.
It’s a comically stupid move by Trump, who has talked up unleashing oil and gas and all other kinds of energy on the theory that the United States needs to control its own future. To do that while trying to handcuff wind (and solar) proves that the man’s hypocrisy is the nation’s biggest renewable resource.
America needs all the electricity it can get to power air conditioners, factories, cars like the Teslas Donald Trump advertised the other day in a White House infomercial, internet servers that are hungrier and hungrier as AI scales up, and everything else on which our modern economy depends. Yet there’s that inconvenient truth that the climate is changing thanks to all the greenhouse gases humans have been pumping into the atmosphere over the decades, meaning we can’t just get it by burning oil and coal — or if we do, we hasten the planet’s irrevocable shift into a very perilous place.
So Trump and fellow Republicans need to end restrictions on wind and solar power, right now. On the other side of the political spectrum, Democrats need to get on the right side of nuclear power. Next generation generators are smaller and more efficient, and like the last generation of plants, they pump no greenhouse gases into the air.
Yet it was left-leaning New York, including then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo and then-activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who myopically cheered the closure of Indian Point, the nuclear facility that until recently provided a full quarter of New York City’s power.
Since the closure, as everyone who knows anything about energy predicted, New York State and City are relying far more heavily on fossil fuels. That’s not just going to make it damn-near impossible to hit the legal goals in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act — to slash emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and then to 85% below 1990 levels by 2050. It’s going to harm the environment in very real ways.
If the United States and New York are serious about building a dynamic economy in an era of climate change, it can’t consign energy sources, and especially not renewable energy sources, to the dustbin. It’s got to give them all a fighting chance to succeed. In some cases, that means getting out of the way and letting them flourish. In other cases, it means supporting some smart government subsidies. And before they balk at that notion, supposed free marketeers should open their eyes and acknowledge that the fossil fuel industry has gotten hefty subsidies and tax breaks from Washington year after year after year.
The economy needs energy, which is what makes everything go. The atmosphere doesn’t need more greenhouse gases, which are what’s putting so much at risk. Put the pedal to the metal, burning as little fuel as possible.