New York State has officially ordained the destruction of its electricity system and its economy with a mad dash to energy utopia, as prescribed by a 2019 statute called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act).  The Climate Act mandates a completely unachievable 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030, with even more draconian mandates following in quick succession thereafter.  New York City has piled on with its own fantasy energy statute called Local Law 97, mandating, among other things, forced conversion to electric heat by 2030 of most residential buildings over 25,000 square feet.  A so-called “Scoping Plan” on how to do all this, issued by the State in 2022, contains no bona fide feasibility analysis, and equally no bona fide cost analysis.  Everybody with over a sixth-grade education who has taken any time to look at this knows that it can’t possibly work.  The only question is how much destruction will befall us before the whole thing crashes to the ground.

Can anyone save New York from the coming self-inflicted climate and energy disaster?

In the category of people making futile efforts to try to save New York from its own folly, or at least from some portion of it, we have none other than yours truly, the Manhattan Contrarian.  As reported here back on February 23, I had just filed, along with co-counsel Cameron Macdonald, an amicus curiae brief at the New York Court of Appeals in support of the plaintiffs in a case called Glen Oaks Village Owners, Inc. v. City of New York.  In this case, owners of a large group of co-op buildings in Queens had sued seeking to have the City’s Local Law 97 declared invalid as pre-empted by the State’s Climate Act.  Note that victory by these plaintiffs would not have ended the folly of the State’s Climate Act and its associated destruction of our electricity system; but their victory would have eliminated the mandate to convert to electric heat without sufficient electricity, and therefore would at least have made it possible for residents of large buildings to avoid freezing in the winter when they have converted to electric heat and there is no electricity.

In the Glen Oaks case, the trial court had dismissed the plaintiffs’ complaint, finding that it had no basis in law.  But an interim appellate court, known as the Appellate Division, had reversed, and said the the plaintiffs should have a chance to prove their case.  New York City appealed that ruling to the state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, asking to have the trial court’s dismissal re-instated.