Liberals like to tout their ecological bona fides, and preen over their commitment to combating climate change — but when it comes to the high cost of these efforts to change the weather, well, that’s another story. Feature the “mounting anger,” as Bloomberg puts it, over the soaring costs of gas and electricity in New York State amid the push by Democrats to promote green energy. Consolidated Edison wants to raise its rates by as much as 11 percent. 

Consumers, needless to say, are fuming, in part because rates have risen in the past three years, Bloomberg adds, with “a jump of almost 9% in New York City electric bills and 8.4% for gas heating in 2023.” This surge in prices is hitting consumers hard. One Yonkers resident, Bloomberg reports, tells Con Edison at a hearing that the high prices “may force her and her husband to sell the home they have been living in since 1984” in search of lower costs.

“We are going to see mayhem in and around our city and the country if these rates increase any more,” another New Yorker, Kisha Skipper, gripes. She needs extra electricity to pay for her portable oxygen concentrator — a medical device to help with breathing, per Bloomberg’s report. “I don’t have to tell you how astronomical my bill already is,” and “I can’t decide on whether to feed my child,” she adds, “or to pay my own medicine bill.”

New York Democrats’ ecological fanaticism is one of the key drivers behind the more expensive electricity, the Albany-based Empire Center reports. Since the state in 2019 adopted the Climate Leadership Community Protection Act, which committed New York to the goal of running on “green electricity,” the center says, “companies have been reluctant to invest in new gas or oil power plants.”

Such investments by utilities, the center suggests in a July 17 report, “would feel too much like trying to open a brewery during Prohibition,” in light of the hostility of the liberal establishment to fossil fuel-based energy generation. Plus, too, the center reports, “even if companies were willing to invest in New York, there would be no guarantee that Albany’s bureaucracy would grant the necessary permits for a new power plant.”  

The center reckons that despite the Democrats’ talk of promoting green power, “so far New York’s energy policy has produced more virtue signaling than clean and affordable energy.” Worse, in the center’s telling, is that the liberal policies have “scared energy companies and investors and added a whole lot of uncertainty to New York’s economy.” Yet the Democrats are blithely “behaving as if New York has an endless supply of cheap electricity.”

The Con Edison rate hikes are the latest evidence to belie that assumption. The utility is eyeing some $21 billion in capital spending over the next three years, Bloomberg reports, in part to help meet “New York City’s target of electrifying most building heating systems by 2050.” That pie-in-the-sky idea is of a piece with the state “Climate Leadership” scheme that aims for “100% zero-emission electricity by 2040,” per Bloomberg.

New York isn’t the only state grappling with the cold reality of higher energy costs caused by liberal hot air over climate change. Politico cautions that Albany’s woes are “an early sign of the dangers Democrats across the country will face as they press forward with similar policies at the state and federal level.” New Jersey, California, and Maryland, too, are “wrestling with the issue,” Politico says, and to a degree “reconsidering their ambitious plans.”

Under Governor Hochul and her Democratic colleagues at Albany, though, New York seems to be doubling down on the costly climate plans. The state is even seeking to gouge billions of dollars from major fossil fuel companies in an effort to punish them for their past carbon emissions — hardly a step toward more abundant, cheap energy. No wonder the Empire Center warns: “If things do not change, one day New York’s electricity system is going to blow a fuse.”