GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  10/27/2025   JUDGE ORDERS CLIMATE RULES, HOCHUL BALKS  — POLITICO’s Marie J. French:   An Albany County judge ruled that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration is violating state law by failing to issue regulations to reduce emissions. The decision is a major victory for environmental groups that sued to force New York to comply with the state’s 2019 climate law, which requires emissions to be cut 40 percent from 1990 levels in the next five years. The  judge’s ruling  Friday directs the Department of Environmental Conservation to issue regulations to cut emissions by February 6. Hochul has delayed the rollout of regulations to implement a cap-and-trade style program to limit emissions and charge for pollution, citing affordability concerns. The program, which  she first proposed , was viewed as the main pathway to incentivize electrification and raise revenue to achieve the state’s statutory emissions targets. The judge’s ruling could force Democratic l...

  The biggest battery project in New York has been canceled in a major victory for the nascent nationwide grassroots movement against energy storage development. It’s still a mystery why exactly the developer of Staten Island’s Swiftsure project, Fullmark Energy (formerly known as Hecate), pulled the plug. We do know a few key details:  First , Fullmark did not announce publicly that it was killing the project, instead quietly submitting a short, one-page withdrawal letter to the New York State Department of Public Service. That letter, which  is   publicly available , is dated August 18 of this year, meaning that the move formally occurred two months ago. Still, nobody in Staten Island seems to have known until  late Friday afternoon  when local publication  SI Advance  first reported the withdrawal. Second , Swiftsure  was going to be massive.  It was the largest planned battery storage project in New York State, according to public re...

October 24, 2025 Angela Merkel resumed Germany’s decommissioning of nuclear stations and decided that the smart approach was to buy “cheap” Russian gas at the same time as Germany invests heavily in wind energy. Remarkably (or not), Germany’s final decision to go ahead with the second pair of Nord Stream pipelines was taken  after  the initial Russian invasion of Ukraine. Britain decided some time ago to decarbonize its energy supply, a bad idea made worse by the fanaticism with which Ed Miliband, the current secretary of state for energy security and net zero (choose one, Ed), has taken to this task. For obvious reasons, most of the focus of this effort in the U.K. has, when it comes to renewables, been on wind, not solar.  Among the false claims used to promote this program (one is that it’s cheaper) has been that it will enable Britain to achieve energy independence from “ foreign dictators .” How’s that going? From   Energy Digital   (January 15): The UK and...

  The shifting winds of the Trump-era energy transition were on full display during Equinor’s quarterly earnings call today. The Norwegian oil and gas giant said it has finished installing foundations at Empire Wind, a massive offshore wind project off New York that President Donald Trump temporarily halted earlier this year. It also signaled it intends to play a more active role at Ørsted after buying more shares in the troubled Danish offshore wind developer. But even as Equinor said it was sticking with offshore wind, company executives made clear there are limits to their support. Equinor will invest little money in the industry beyond its three projects in construction: Empire Wind in the U.S., Dogger Bank off the United Kingdom and Baltyk in Poland. A company official also expressed hesitancy about investing in the power sector more broadly, even as vast amounts of capital pour into the industry to meet the needs of electricity-hungry data centers. Equinor is a large gas prod...

  When it comes to climate policy, Donald Trump may be less of an outlier than bien-pensant Europeans — or their imitators in California and New York — like to think. Tony Blair, not the worst bellwether in certain circles, has now signaled unease over how things are going —   for the second   time this year . Blair’s argument does not rest on the reality of climate change, but on whether the current approach toward it makes sense. In his view, it does not. Moreover, he warns that “most people” are coming to the same conclusion. The Hoover Institution’s John Cochrane would agree. Writing in  the Grumpy Economist , his splendid blog-turned-Substack, he describes the growing awareness: [T]hat that this boy shouted wolf once again, that this emperor has no clothes, that climate change though real is not the civilization-threatening disaster pitched at Davos, Paris, and the media, that hugely expensive climate policies do no good. This, he maintains, will add “just one m...

  The climate conformity caucus is breaking up at long last, and the latest evidence is a change of mind by none other than  Bill Gates . The  Microsoft  billionaire turned liberal philanthropist now says the “doomsday view” about the climate is wrong, and “it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.” As epiphanies go, this is welcome. Mr. Gates, in his advocacy, has been a leading promoter of the view that a warming climate is an existential crisis that demands urgent political action. His 2021 book has the nuanced title, “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.” Without innovation, he wrote, “we cannot keep the earth livable.” The effect on humans “will in all likelihood be catastrophic.” Now, on the cusp of the latest COP30 climate conclave in Brazil next month, Mr. Gates offers different advice. An essay released on his website promises “three tough truths about climate,” the first of which is that risin...