The 3 most important climate laws you’ve never heard of

Good morning. Today is Friday. Today we are going to look at some low profile but important climate legislation that Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law this week. And we’ll hear about the feeling of déjà vu as monkeypox spreads through the city, along with confusion over how to get the hitherto scarce vaccine.

New York has the nation’s most ambitious legally protected climate goals, but its Democratic leaders are under growing pressure from a highly engaged section of the party to move forward. faster to make them come true.

You will no doubt hear more in the coming weeks about calls for a special session to vote on allowing the state authority to build publicly owned renewable energy projects – a Measures that supporters claim were voted on but never implemented.

Climate activists are pushing Governor Kathy Hochul to sign a two-year ban on certain energy-intensive fossil fuel-burning cryptocurrency mining facilities. They were also disappointed that a statewide bill to limit the installation of ductwork in new buildings did not pass this year.

But some climate bills are so dire, so hard that they get little news, do make it law. While they may not sound appetizing, experts say, they are essential building blocks for achieving the state’s goal: essentially, by 2050, stop the entire New York economy from emitting emissions. The planet’s warming gases caused the climate crisis.

Here’s what those laws do:

Allows the state to set new energy efficiency standards for buildings, equipment and machinery.

Without the Regulations and Standards Act, agencies could not fully enforce the overall climate law.

The new law allows them to make rules governing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings and the activities within them, something that had not been possible before in such rules.

Enable utilities to enter a new area of ​​business: thermal heating and cooling.

This is important because it gives gas facilities something to do when gas use is phased out – hopefully, advocates say, reducing lobbying efforts. their staunch opposition to bills and other actions that could limit gas use.

It allows the pilot development of utility-scale projects to heat and cool buildings by pumping air, like heat pumps, but at a scale that can work for entire blocks or zones. large building complex. Geothermal pumps and other systems can heat and cool without burning fossil fuels, but require large investments to test and build.

Salary requirements are more common for renewable energy projects.

Governor Hochul also signed a bill requiring unionized workers to be employed in more jobs such as installing solar panels and building renewable energy infrastructure.

Like the thermal power bill, this legislation, advocates say, helps expand political coalitions in favor of climate action by bringing into play multiple state power coalitions.

Hochul, at Wednesday’s signing, said New York would stand firm on climate, as well as on abortion rights and gun regulation, despite recent Supreme Court decisions as a The decision is removing the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to regulate the emissions of power plants.

“Do what you want, we will do everything we can to protect our lives, our families, our bodies and the future of our planet,” she said.

Weather

Showers and thunderstorms are forecast in the late afternoon. Temperatures will peak during the day in the mid-80s before cooling down to a low of 70 in the evening.

PARKING OUTSIDE

Valid until tomorrow to Monday (Eid al-Adha).

A strange virus spreads in the city. The community is scared. It takes time to find the best prevention methods. Some groups are stigmatized. Different treatment for the rich and the poor.

This is a scenario that New York City knows well. There was, of course, the start of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, as the city bore the brunt of the first wave to peak in the United States, the aftermath of a deadly flu epidemic a century earlier. The AIDS crisis that devastated the city’s gay community in the 1980s and 1990s – etched into the memory of many New Yorkers, the AIDS crisis ravaged the city’s gay community in the 1980s and 1990s – raged for years before scientists found a life-saving treatment.

Now, reminders of those epidemics have surfaced as thousands of New Yorkers scramble to get vaccinated for monkeypox, a disease that represented the first major outbreak in the United States in years. city, with 141 cases recorded, and spread mainly among men who have sex with men.

Although it can be painful, monkeypox is not usually deadly, a risk not comparable to AIDS, which was almost always fatal in the 1980s when it first occurred. , or with Covid-19, has killed more than 1 million Americans.

But that, My colleague Sharon Otterman reports, didn’t quite put the city’s gay men at ease. Many find the public health response slow and disorganized, and fear the fact that the virus is being spread sexually among men could cause homophobia in the community. AIDS era.

“It’s not fair. I feel like we’ve gone back to an era of HIV stigma,” said Irving Ruiz, who lives in Queens, who said he was queuing to get vaccinated because it was close. Here he saw someone with severe monkeypox, with rashes going up and down on his hands and feet.

Even more frustrating for vaccine seekers, the rollout so far echoes the early days of a Covid-19 vaccine, when finding an appointment could be like winning a radio contest. City decide to assign appointments for the first dose about the monkeypox vaccine is much sought after online, using Twitter – a relatively small social media app – as the primary way to keep people informed. On Wednesday, 2,500 appointments took place within minutes.

“By following the guidance of the Ministry of Health, we have no chance of getting a vaccine,” Nicholas Diamondwho spent hours refreshing the city’s website looking for a shot. “I am really concerned that city, state and federal governments have learned nothing from the Covid response. “

Ashwin Vasan, the city’s health commissioner, apologized for the hiccups and said they were being fixed as the effort expanded.

“Equity is an extremely difficult thing to preserve in a supply-scarce environment,” he said.