New York, thanks for leading on the climate

New York State sets a new global benchmark for climate policy with the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. It is arguably the most ambitious climate legislation passed by any government in the world. As activists, scientists and media drop the phrase “climate change” in favor of ones like “climate crisis,” New York has now given governments a gold standard for passing a policy equal to the problem.

Are all the details worked out? Nope. Well, surely all the technologies needed to implement the policy are proven and available? Nope. The way this works is that governments craft ambitious policy in the form of targets in the future, in this case 2050. And then the governed play our parts to that steady back-beat of policy targets. Any 2050 targets based on technologies proven today would seriously underestimate our potential.

This is what everyone gets wrong about “World War II-style mobilization.” The U.S. didn’t win the war by passing a “Nazi tax” to unleash American ingenuity on defeating Hitler. No, the U.S. won the war by asking Americans to invent things and promising to buy them: like synthetic rubber, like jet fuel, like a Liberty Ship that could carry 10,000 tons of cargo and get built in four days for $2 million.

Just like the Green New Deal being developed and debated at the federal level, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act doesn’t lead with a carbon tax nor a cap-and-trade mechanism. Instead, the New York law leads with targets followed up by a process of cooperative panels drawn from various sectors of society charged with turning the targets into an evolving set of regulations and investments to achieve progress over time on dozens of different challenges to meeting the targets.

In sum, the way government sends a serious message to the market is to say it is willing to pay inventors and industries until the problem is solved, whether that problem is putting a man on the moon, defeating fascism (abroad) or surviving the climate crisis.

New York has taken the first step on that path: stating a target that is at least as ambitious as winning the war seemed in 1941, reducing total emissions in the state 85% below 1990 levels by 2050, and offsetting the remaining 15% through measures like removing carbon dioxide from the air. In other words, creating a net-zero economy in 30 years. From an economy that today derives 80% of its energy from fossil fuels that produce emissions.

By taking that first step, New York is exposing itself on two very contentious policy debates. First, how much can any state or city do to address this crisis without a national policy that brings along all 50 states and their cities? Second, should the climate and justice goals be linked in the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act, as they are in the Green New Deal resolution?

In the first debate, the question isn’t simply should New York decrease its emissions to mitigate climate change and increase its resilience to adapt to climate change. Yes, it is prudent to do so. The question is, what is the end game? It really matters to New York if it’s one of 10 states with a climate policy, or one of 40, or part of a national policy for all states. If the full effort of the United States is not behind fighting the climate crisis, then New York should spend more of its money on adapting because mitigation will fall short and there will be more adapting to do. In sum, state action is no substitute for national action.

In the second debate, the question is nicely illustrated in a late change in the law attributed to Gov. Cuomo. It’s been reported that the governor changed a requirement in the bill that at least 35% of clean energy funding be spent in disadvantaged communities to a requirement that “no less than 35% of the overall benefits of spending” accrue in such neighbors.

This is a crucial issue: Is equity better served by targeting inputs (spending) or outputs (benefits)? Would you want your fair share of the spending on a seawall or your fair share of a seawall? They probably aren’t the same thing. But New York has made a choice (the right one, in my view) and now the rest of us can debate it.

Someone had to go big first. That was New York. Now my state of Pennsylvania can play our well-practiced role and leverage the advantages of backwardness to learn from New York’s successes and failures.

Hughes is the founding faculty director of the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania and a professor of practice at the university’s Stuart Weitzman School of Design. He was chief policy adviser to Mayor Michael Nutter and the founding director of sustainability for the City of Philadelphia, where he led the creation of the Greenworks Plan.