Is Kathy Hochul a meth head?
Governor Kathy Hochul is set to shred New York's landmark climate law, the CLCPA. We won't know the full extent of the damage until she finalizes the state budget—already a record-setting 50 days late—but Hochul's been gabbing for months about the specific changes she intends to make.
The Governor intends to do two things:
- Delay the implementation of the law by several years
- Change how New York measures its methane emissions to make them look smaller on paper... without actually reducing emissions
I get why she's doing the first part. Hochul just spent six years pretending the CLCPA doesn't exist, and now that the first major deadline is approaching—New York must get 70% of its electricity from renewable sources by 2030—she's kicking the can down the road. Kathy's like the kid who doesn't do the homework and then begs teacher for a multi-year extension.
But why is Hochul dead set on purposefully undercounting methane emissions? Don't we want an accurate measurement of how much we're contributing to global warming? Don't we need to know the true scale of the problem in order to fix it?
I've been searching for answers. Here are a few I came up with.
- It's because Hochul has taken at least $16 million from Oil, Gas, and Utility lobbyists. All that money and all those fancy dinners convinced her that climate change is a hoax. Hochul is a full-on climate denier.
NY Renews
- It's because Kathy's husband, Billiam Hochul, works for a giant law firm that represents the very fossil fuel gas pipeline project she and Donald Trump are resuscitating together. Kathy's afraid if people knew how much methane we were actually emitting they'd get mad, and her husband might not get a big promotion or something. Hochul is protecting hubbeh.
- It's because she's consumed so much buffalo sauce over the years that her brain is now permanently basting in the stuff and it's messed with her logic and reasoning centers. There is some evidence of this. Hochul is washed.
But to be honest, I don't think any of those are right.
The only reasonable explanation is that Kathy Hochul is physically and psychologically addicted to methane gas. She freakin' loves the stuff! Why else would she change a perfectly good law—a law that's been called the strongest climate act in the nation and a "bold example for the nation and the rest of the world to follow"—to make it seem like we're emitting way less methane than we actually are?
Hochul's bid only makes sense if she actively wants to put more methane in the atmosphere.
Methane gas addiction is actually really crazy. Way crazier than being addicted to, say, methamphetamines, which at least feel cool (presumably).
Why? Because methane gas is so, so unbelievably bad for climate change.
Methane is worse than CO2
Sing along if you know it. The fossil fuel we call "natural" gas—the same gas that comes out of our stoves, heats our homes, and generates 40% of our country's electricity—is composed of 98% methane.
One molecule of methane is 83 times worse for climate change, i.e. 83 times more effective at trapping the sun's heat, than a molecule of carbon dioxide.
83 times!!
Now, there are a couple caveats:
- Methane is only 83x worse than CO2 when it escapes into the air unburnt. Burning methane isn't good, but it's way better than letting the gas escape into the atmosphere.
- Methane is only 83x worse than CO2 over a 20-year timeframe. Methane is kind of like people that way... after it hits 20-years-old, things start to go downhill: methane's chemical composition begins to break down. Carbon dioxide, on the other hand, is godlike in its ability to perfectly persist in the air for centuries.
So what exactly is Hochul trying to do?
Hochul's plan: calculate methane's impact using a 100-year-timescale instead of the CLCPA's 20-year-timescale
This gets complicated, so let's start with a violent metaphor.
Let's imagine that I, Jon, am determined to find out how good I am at kicking ass. My plan? Head to the Bed-Stuy YMCA and challenge a gym-goer to a fight.
Now, which YMCA member do you think I should challenge?
A) The 20-year-old college kid pumping iron in the weight room
or
B) The 100-year-old osteoporotic shuffling around the track
I'll reiterate that the criteria here is accuracy. I want to accurately gauge my abilities in hand-to-hand combat. Test my mettle, y'know?
...
Yeah, obviously I should challenge the 20-year-old! Sure, I might get my ass kicked... but at least I'll have a clear sense of where I stand. I wouldn't learn much by sucker-punching an old-timer. I wouldn't look very cool or tough doing it, either.
And yet that's exactly Hochul's plan: beat up the old guy, call ourselves a hero, and put off signing up for those Brazilian jiu-jitsu lessons for another few years.
But here's the kicker, folks.
New York is already massively undercounting our methane emissions.
*Record scratch* Say whaaaaat?
You may be surprised–or not!—to learn methane emissions today are self-reported by the very private, for-profit fossil fuel and landfill companies directly responsible for producing those emissions. This is true not just here in New York but all over the country: we do not require independent measuring. In fact, gas plants and landfills don't even have to do any real measuring at all: the EPA's Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program requires mostly estimates and a list of relevant emission factors—not direct measurements.
But how do we know for a fact that we're undercounting methane emissions?
Well, two years ago a study was conducted using airplanes equipped with special instruments that can accurately detect methane gas in the atmosphere at the super-sensitive scale of parts per billion. These planes flew around New York City's polluting hotspots, collecting data.
What they found is that our actual methane emissions were 2.3 times the amount those facilities were self-reporting to the EPA.
That 2024 study, by the way, was funded by NYSERDA, New York state's official clean energy agency. But the study changed nothing. We're still relying on inaccurate, self-reported data from deeply biased sources.
Here's a fun question: if we already undercount methane emissions by over 2x, what will switching to a 100-year-timescale do?
Switching to Hochul's hundred year scale will undercount real methane emissions by 600-700%
Measuring methane on a hundred year timescale is like measuring a raging fire by how warm its embers are... in 2126. That is to say, you understate its impact—what's technically called its Global Warming Potential (GWP). Over a hundred year period, methane gas goes from being 83x worse than CO2 to only 30x worse than CO2. That's roughly 64% less impactful, or 2.8 times.
If Hochul gets her way, we'll be lying to ourselves in two different ways at the same time:
- Pretending there's 2.3x less methane in the air than there actually is
- Pretending methane is about 2.8x less potent than it actually is
Multiply those two distinct gaps—the 2.3x physical gap and the 2.8x potency gap—and what you find is that New York's reported methane climate impact is about to be understated by a factor of over 6x in the near-term.
Why this matters so much
The choices we make over the next 20 years may well determine whether billions of people die from climate change, as this NASA scientist on Instagram keeps reminding me.
Nobody wants to hear that, I am aware. But politicians like Kathy Hochul are out here acting like we've got all the time in the world. Acting like the Amazon rainforest isn't at extreme risk of turning into a dry savannah. Acting like the Atlantic ocean current, which circulates heat around the world, isn't about to collapse.
Folks, it doesn't have to be this way. But it'd be a lot easier to change the world if the Governor of New York acted like she gave a fuck about its future.
Get help soon, Kathy Hochul.
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