Green Party Opposes Hochul’s Nuclear Push, Retreat on Climate
Renews its Call for an EcoSocialist Green New Deal
The Green Party said it strongly opposed Governor Hochul’s push to expand nuclear power in New York, saying it was a false climate solution that would drive up the cost of electricity while creating numerous environmental problems.
The Party noted that the long time needed for construction of nuclear plants means that it would have no impact on the dire need to keep global warming below the 1.5 degree C target, a target that has been exceeded globally over the last year and a half as extreme weather continues to accelerate its rampage across the planet. Nuclear is far from being carbon free, especially when its life cycle of construction, fuel development, decommissioning, and long-term storage of nuclear waste is included.
The Party renewed its call, first made in 2010, for an Ecosocialist Green New Deal, which combines a ten-year timeline to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions with clean renewable energy and conservation, combined with a robust Economic Bill of Rights to guarantee a Just Transition that provides economic security for all New Yorkers.
The global green party movement has opposed nuclear power since its formation half a century ago. It has also always called for public ownership and democratic control of the energy system. This includes public ownership of the transmission system. As both the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) and Pope Francis have pointed out, capitalism’s focus on growth and profits renders it incompatible with solving the existential climate crisis.
“While the climate denial by Trump and the GOP is a crime against humanity, the climate evasion by Democrats such as Hochul and Speaker Heastie also threatens human civilization as we know it. Rather than running away from the tepid goals in the state’s climate law (CLCPA), Hochul and the Democrats need to stand up to the fossil fuel industry. This includes a major carbon tax (not cap and trade) to stop the hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies provided to polluters by not making them pay for the damages they cause,” said Mark Dunlea, Secretary of the EcoAction Committee of the national Green Party.
Hochul is directing the New York Power Authority to build a new multi-billion nuclear plant, despite the head of NYPA testifying to legislators that it lacks the skills needed to build solar farms when he argued against the Build Public Renewables Act. The Governor is also promoting nuclear as a response to the spiraling demand for electricity coming from cryptocurrency, data centers (now Holtec at Indian Point), microchips (e.g., Micron in Syracuse), and artificial intelligence, rather than seeking to restrict such excessive energy use.
The Governor also recently proposed extending the subsidies from 2029 to 2049 for four upstate nuclear reactors, which is likely to cost $30 billion or more. The state’s subsidies for nuclear power, paid for by higher rates on electricity, have significantly exceeded the amount of subsidies the state has provided for renewables, a major reason why the state expects to miss the CLCPA (Climate and Community Protection Act) deadline to get 70% of its electricity from renewable energy by 2030. While spending tens of billions on old, rundown nuclear plants, NYSERDA (New York State Research and Development Authority) is proposing to slash funding for the successful Empower Plus program that helps low and moderate-income New Yorkers with energy upgrades.
In 2015, following the successful grassroots campaign to ban fracking, the Green Party helped draft legislation to move to 100% renewable energy by 2030 with an end to burning fossil fuels and a prohibition against nuclear power. It sought to implement the study by Stanford and Cornell professors that showed there was not a need to frack more gas. The bill was endorsed by 200 community groups, more than the far weaker bill that became the CLCPA. Besides faster timelines and stronger climate goals, it had a much more comprehensive requirement to develop, in two years, an actual detailed plan on how to achieve its climate goals. It also required local governments to adopt climate plans.
The CLCPA instead allocated three years to develop a “scoping document,” the state’s typical white paper that does more to outline issues than provide concrete answers. The CLCPA relegates that document to largely being used to “inform” the current update being done to the State Energy Master Plan. That planning process, totally controlled by the Governor, largely ignores the recommendations that did make it into the scoping document, relegating it to one of many things to “inform” the update. The draft incorporates Hochul’s push for nuclear power.
The Secretary General of the United Nations has noted that the slow actions by governments have opened up the gates to hell. The International Court of Justice, the UN’s principal judicial body, recently ruled that States have an obligation to protect the environment from greenhouse gas emissions and act with due diligence and cooperation to fulfill this obligation.
“The biggest barrier to solving global warming is not technology, but the lack of political will. While ending greenhouse gas emissions certainly presents challenges, we need strong leadership at all levels, but especially at the top, to coordinate the transition – similar to what FDR did after Pearl Harbor, mobilizing all of society’s resources to save our future,” said Gloria Mattera, co-chair of the Green Party of New York.
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