Perhaps Rube Goldberg Can Fix The Woes Of the New York City Housing Authority

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Perhaps Rube Goldberg Can Fix The Woes Of the New York City Housing Authority

  • Over the years I have returned repeatedly to the subject of the New York City Housing Authority, or NYCHA.

  • Begun with great optimism prior to World War II, NYCHA expanded rapidly in the 1960s and 70s, until it housed around 500,000 people. The economic model was always pure unmodified socialism — the government owns everything, rents are tied to income (“to each according to his needs”), and any shortfalls in paying costs fall on the taxpayers. But after all, we will save oodles of money because there will be no profits for the evil developers. For a few of my prior posts, see here, here and here

  • The socialist economic model always lacked any mechanism to renew the capital investment in the buildings as they aged. After 2000, buildings were turning 30, 40 and even 50 years old.

  • Beginning in the 2010s, NYCHA started regularly announcing large sums of money that it claimed it needed urgently for major repairs to these buildings.

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Can Anyone Save New York From Its Coming Self-Inflicted Climate and Energy Disaster?

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  • New York State has officially ordained the destruction of its electricity system and its economy with a mad dash to energy utopia, as prescribed by a 2019 statute called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (Climate Act). The Climate Act mandates a completely unachievable 70% of electricity generation from “renewables” by 2030, with even more draconian mandates following in quick succession thereafter.

  • New York City has piled on with its own fantasy energy statute called Local Law 97, mandating, among other things, forced conversion to electric heat by 2030 of most residential buildings over 25,000 square feet.

  • A so-called “Scoping Plan” on how to do all this, issued by the State in 2022, contains no bona fide feasibility analysis, and equally no bona fide cost analysis.

  • Everybody with over a sixth-grade education who has taken any time to look at this knows that it can’t possibly work. The only question is how much destruction will befall us before the whole thing crashes to the ground.

  • Can anyone save New York from the coming self-inflicted climate and energy disaster?

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As The Federal Government Abandons The Climate Fantasy, New York Doubles Down

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  • The first 100+ days of the second Trump administration (it’s now actually 113 days) have seen a near total abandonment of the fantasy that this one country’s government can change the weather and “save the planet” by suppressing use of hydrocarbon fuels and impoverishing the people.

  • Biden administration “climate” and energy policies amounting to thousands of pages in regulations and hundreds of billions of dollars in grants and subsidies to uneconomic energy projects have been swiftly reversed. Examples in just the past few weeks include:

  • The announcement by the Department of Energy just yesterday (May 12) of no fewer than 47 regulatory reversals, covering everything from ovens. to dehumidifiers, to clothes washers and driers, to shower heads, to dishwashers, and much, much more.

  • Rescission of hundreds of grants from the Department of Energy for so-called “green energy” projects.

  • Similar rescission of hundreds of grants from EPA, supposedly to fund “greenhouse gas reduction” and “climate justice” initiatives.

  • Commencement by EPA of a process to undo the “Endangerment Finding” — a regulatory action that underlies essentially all climate and energy regulation by that agency — and some 30 other climate and energy actions of EPA.

  • And these are just examples. There are many more.

  • At this point, you would think that the blue states might take the hint.

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New York Just Can't Catch A Break On The March To Climate Utopia

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  • In June 2019, when New York passed its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), it all seemed so easy.

  • Back then, everyone knew that “renewables” were cheaper than fossil fuels for making electricity; it was only the nefarious machinations of evil oil and gas companies that stood in the way of an effortless energy transition. New York would assume the mantle of climate leadership to show everyone the way.

  • And even as recently as December 2022, New York’s path to energy utopia still seemed clear. That’s when the state issued what it called the Final Scoping Plan under the CLCPA, laying out the simple steps to achieve the goal. Just keep putting one foot in front of the other, and by 2030 we would have 70% of our electricity from renewables.

  • In the just over two years since then, things have fallen apart with remarkable speed.

  • Yesterday, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum ordered a halt to all construction work on a project called Empire Wind, an offshore wind project located about 20 miles South of Long Island and just East of New York City. This is close to a final stake through the heart of the energy transition program outlined in the Scoping Plan.

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Markers On The Road To The Green Energy Wall -- Electric Trucks Edition

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  • In a post in December 2021, I first asked which state or country would be the first to hit the “Renewable Energy Wall” — described as “a situation where the electricity system stops functioning, or the price goes through the roof,” or some other aspects of impossibility become so unavoidable that the zero carbon fantasy must be abandoned.

  • In subsequent posts I have explored various ways that the Wall was starting to manifest — for example, cancellation of offshore wind energy developments, and abandonment of large investments in producing so-called “green hydrogen.”

  • Although the coming of the Wall has been obvious to intelligent observers for a long time, the green energy fantasists had set their statutory and regulatory mandates sufficiently far into the future that there was no immediate reckoning.

  • But now, five and more years on, that is starting to change. The first of the impossible mandates are suddenly looming. The arrival of President Trump on the scene has also been a huge negative for the green energy crowd. But for today I’ll focus on a subject that has much more to do with reality than with any action of the President. That subject is fully electrified heavy duty trucks.

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Amicus Brief Filed In Glen Oaks Village Owners v. City Of New York

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Amicus Brief Filed In Glen Oaks Village Owners v. City Of New York

  • Back at the beginning of the year, I had a post titled “New York On The March To Climate Utopia.” The post took note that everything about New York State’s vision for a zero-emissions economy and for “climate leadership” was in the process of falling apart.

  • Its contracts for vast off-shore wind farms to replace fossil fuel generation had either been completely canceled (the majority) or rebid at much higher and uneconomic prices (the minority). Its two contracted facilities to produce “green” hydrogen to back up the intermittent wind and solar had run into financial difficulties and were likely to fail. Its one big contracted high-capacity transmission line to bring the imaginary upstate wind and solar electricity to downstate markets had also been canceled, without stated reason but almost certainly because of unworkable economics.

  • In the few short weeks since that post, you would think that it would be almost impossible for the situation of New York’s utopian climate plans to have gotten any worse. But in fact the situationhasgotten worse — much, much worse.

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