Kathy Hochul Has One Last Chance to Do the Right Thing on Climate

In recent weeks, New York Governor Kathy Hochul has indicated that she wants to roll back the state’s landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act—to the horror of everyday New Yorkers and civil society organizations, who have called to keep the act intact. But by passing a second extension to budget negotiations this week, New York lawmakers have given Hochul a little more time to reconsider.

The CLCPA passed in 2019 amid global climate strikes and the determined efforts of local advocacy groups like NY Renews. Enacting the CLCPA put New York on track to significantly curb greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and align itself with environmental justice. Setting legally binding emissions reductions targets, the CLCPA upon passage was celebrated as the strongest climate law in the nation, and a mark of New York’s commitment to climate leadership. Now, amid unprecedented environmental deregulation—including the rollback of the Endangerment Finding, which allowed the federal government to regulate greenhouse gases, and a second withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement—the CLCPA is one of the last serious U.S. climate policies left standing.

Yet over the last few months, the CLCPA has fallen subject to an extremely high-stakes and last-minute attempt to substantially alter its core provisions.

The CLCPA seeks to lead New York into a green and equitable future by mandating that the state achieve GHG emissions reductions by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 and 85 percent below 1990 levels by 2050. As of this past January, New York had only progressed 25 percent toward meeting the nearer benchmark, and remained significantly behind on renewable generation, offshore wind, and energy storage goals. New York lawmakers failed to meet the deadline for issuing regulations to meet the law’s emission reduction goals in 2024, leading to a lawsuit in which an Albany County judge found that the state had violated the CLCPA. After failing to meet the revised deadline of early February 2026, Hochul secured a longer extension via an appeal, essentially leaving her with two options: comply with the law or change it. This month, instead of choosing to pursue compliance, she specified how she would change it—by delaying the law’s deadlines and/or altering pollution accounting methods.

According to Hochul, who fossil fuel and utility lobbyists have spent $16 million trying to influence since she became Governor in 2021, the CLCPA’s targets, as currently written, are “costly and unattainable.” But the high costs Hochul cites aren’t inevitable—they reflect just one conception of how the targets might be implemented, by relying heavily on carbon pricing. Other and more comprehensive proposals have suggested changing and even scaling the CLCPA’s renewable energy and energy storage goals, in combination with measures such as strengthening labor standards and utility regulations along with zoning reform, while following the law’s original timeline. Further state leadership on renewable energy could also help save money for ratepayers, who are already being burdened with climate costs.

Whatever the underlying motivation, Hochul’s choice to roll back the law inevitably signals a concession to fossil fuel interests, which have spent millions seeking to lobby the Governor since she took office in 2021. It is also a concession to the Trump administration, suggesting that the state will effectively succumb to a hostile environmental agenda and sit back and take the administration’s attacks on renewable energy development, rather than independently champion the clean energy economy that the administration is so desperate to foreclose. Lastly, it is a concession to climate doomerism and an act of pure near-sightedness, with long-term public health and safety costs. Not only New Yorkers, but Americans as a whole—and particularly young people—will suffer the consequences if the states leading the charge to protect our communities and the environment suddenly backtrack because of an authoritarian swing in the political headwinds.

What Governor Hochul should show New Yorkers and current or prospective Democratic party voters nationwide is the determination, grit, and radical optimism needed to advance real and lasting climate solutions, many of which are well within reach. When the state has violated the CLCPA, the clear answer is to redress the violation—not to avoid violations simply by reducing the demands of critical climate legislation. Environmental justice, civil rights, and law groups, including the New York Civil Liberties Union, New York Lawyers for the Public Interest, and many more, agree: the Governor should honor, not seek to dismantle or destroy, New York’s seminal climate law.

By remaining faithful to the CLCPA, Hochul can help protect New Yorkers’ Constitutionally-recognized human right to a healthy environment and public health, and set New York up to benefit in countless ways, including economically, from an energy transition. She can also prevent New York from enduring the long-term risks of a failure to transition, including possible climate liability lawsuits, and also financial risks. These financial risks are considerable, as recognized by the state’s decision to restrict oil and gas investments for the Common Retirement Fund, and prospective. And if she reverses course and decides to honor the CLPCA, Hochul can inspire states across the country to take similar action and forge an effective, multi-state resistance to the federal government’s anti-climate crackdown.

Hochul, slipping in the polls, is surely looking to shore up support ahead of the gubernatorial election in November. She would likely fare better by modeling the courage to defend hard-won policies and defend New Yorkers’ futures in a livable climate, rather than by undermining this critical work and punting serious climate action farther down the road, when the damage from the crisis and the costs of combating it will only have grown. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent election after a grassroots campaign defined by big ideas like free universal child care proved that New Yorkers want leaders who envision and will pursue real systemic change.

New Yorkers, particularly including young New Yorkers like myself, will remember this moment and what happens to the CLCPA. We will also remember which lawmakers spoke up in defense of robust climate action and which ones did not, or were willing to compromise on essential components of the CLCPA’s implementation. Likewise, we will remember which Democratic state party leaders stayed true to their promises of pursuing bold climate action and which ones sacrificed the agenda that has mobilized young people for their causes time and again, merely paying lip service to our existential cries. Americans, as well as elected officials and communities around the world, are paying attention to which course New York will pursue: offering the leadership we so desperately need to transform this existential crisis, or retreating, reducing legal demands at the expense of people and the planet.