Is New York really green?

To the editor:

Gov. Jerry Brown of California recently signed a bill that commits California to 100 percent zero-carbon electricity by 2045.

But he failed to include methane in the legislation, which is a much-more potent greenhouse gas than carbon. And he continues to permit fracking for natural gas in California.

News coverage of the bill portrays California as moving to 100 percent renewable energy, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.

California and New York are supposed to be climate leaders, but their energy policies are ignoring the devastation that methane pollution is wreaking on our planet.

Here in New York, Gov. Cuomo often touts the state as a climate leader. But when it comes to energy policy, New York is falling behind. Progress with the state’s energy efficiency measures and renewable energy production has stagnated, while new construction and expansion of fossil fuel-based electricity generation continues.

Power plants that burn diesel fuel and natural gas, like the Competitive Power Ventures plant recently built in Orange County, are being proposed all over New York State. If these plants go online, they will lock us into decades of greenhouse gas pollution, further igniting climate change, devastating our public health and economy, and jeopardizing the safety of New Yorkers.

Natural gas transport pipelines, such as the Williams Pipeline proposed for New York City, similarly threaten the environment and public health, and enable these power plants to operate.

If New York and California want to be the climate leaders that Govs. Brown and Cuomo tout them to be, California needs to ban fracking and New York needs to deny permitting of all new fossil fuel expansion.

Coast to coast, we must move our nation to 100 percent clean, green, renewable energy now.

James Accordino

The author is project coordinator for the New York Public Interest Research Group at Bronx Community College.