Letter to the Editor from Jack Gorman, Activist and Co-Founder of Critica, a Bronx non-profit that works to improve the public’s understanding of science, published in the Riverdale Press, March 2025.
It’s cold these days in New York, and many New Yorkers are freezing at home, struggling to afford their utility bills. A staggering 1.3 million New York households are now 60 or more days behind on their utility bills. Unsurprisingly, it now costs more than ever to heat an apartment in New York City, to the tune of $200/month. Yet despite these grim statistics, Con Ed is demanding a nearly 13.5% new rate hike for natural gas, which would begin next year The fact that a public utility is raising prices in this context makes devastatingly clear what many of us in the climate-justice community have known for a long time: Our system of heating homes with fossil fuels is broken. Paying exorbitant rates for natural gas is increasingly economically and environmentally untenable. We need action from Albany to alleviate this affordability crisis, ideally by funding cleaner, cheaper sources of energy. To that end, it’s crucial that Governor Hochul implement the New York Cap and Invest Program (NYCI) without delay.
I am a lifelong New Yorker and a retired Bronx physician. Like many New York doctors of my generation, I still remember taking care of children suffering violent asthma attacks–which I saw routinely when I was a pediatric intern nearly 50 years ago. I vividly remember wondering then what caused so many children to gasp for air. But it was only years later that we learned how air pollution, caused by burning fossil fuels to heat our homes and run our cars, had devastated air quality in the Bronx and triggered a dramatic spike in childhood asthma rates in Black and Brown communities. It gave me firsthand professional exposure to the urgency of shifting away from polluting fossil fuels.
New York State has a clear path to solve the present energy and climate crisis. Energy from sustainable sources, like solar and wind, is increasingly cheaper than fossil fuels. Cities dedicated to increasing their use of sustainable energy, like Burlington, Vermont, have realized significant energy savings. We need to get New York State on track to liberate us from expensive and dangerous fossil fuel dependence.
Fortunately, New York has already taken a gigantic step in the right direction. In 2019, our state passed the Climate Leadership and Protection Act (CLCPA), mandating that we get off fossil fuels by 2050. But now comes the hard part: we need to pay for this transition. To do that, New York is legally required to implement its Cap and Invest program (NYCI), which will raise revenue for such efforts by limiting the amount of greenhouse gases that companies can release and placing a fee on emissions by large-scale polluters in our state. Effectively implemented, NYCI could raise $5 billion in 2025 and 2026, increasing to over $10 billion a year starting in 2027. That money would then be directed to a variety of projects speeding our transition to clean energy, reducing our energy bills, and decreasing the many health risks we suffer from burning fossil fuels.
NYCI is a win-win for communities and the climate, but Governor Hochul is refusing to take action in this moment. The draft regulations needed to kickstart NYCI were due to be released last summer. Nine months later, we’re still waiting on them. Accordingly, the cost of inaction is only getting higher. And while we struggle to pay ConEd’s exorbitant rates, we are forced to breathe polluted air that continues to give our neighborhoods some of the highest rates of asthma-related hospitalizations and deaths in the country.
Climate change deniers may try to tell us that programs like NYCI are too expensive or inconvenient. And to this end, attempts to finance the transition to clean energy sources have faced cumbersome challenges. For example, New York’s Climate Change Superfund Act, a new law that will pump billions into the state’s climate projects, is being challenged by Republican states intent on maintaining their fossil fuel businesses. This challenge, though, only points towards the strength of New York’s climate initiatives: these states are intent on crippling programs they know will push towards a less polluting future. Rather than shying away from a fight, Governor Hochul should take the next step in New York’s transition by implementing NYCI.
Amidst warmer winters and drier summers, we know that we must move away from burning coal, gas, and oil. Taxpayers should not be asked to shoulder the burden of the damage polluters have caused, nor should they continue to pay exorbitant utility bills to a dying industry. NYCI is a clear path for our state to pay for its legally mandated transition to sustainable energy. Now it’s time for the Governor to hold up her end of the bargain.