GOLDEN CRESCENT AND 1000 ISLAND NEWS

  New York’s climate law will cost upstaters twice as much as city people New York’s rural-urban divide already maps onto energy politics as tensions mount   between the places with enough land to build solar and wind farms and the metropolis with rising demand for power from those panels and turbines. Keeping the state’s landmark climate law in place and requiring New York to generate the vast majority of its power from renewables by 2040 may only widen the split. That’s the obvious takeaway from data from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority. In a memo sent Thursday to Governor Kathy Hochul on the “likely costs of” complying with the law as it stands, NYSERDA warned that  the statute will increase the cost of heating oil and natural gas. Upstate households that depend on fossil fuels could face hikes “in excess of $4,000 a year,”  while New York City residents would see annual costs spike by $2,300. “Only a portion of these costs could be of...

  O Canada or no Canada? It’s a momentous question. Canada’s oil-rich province of Alberta is  poised  to hold an independence referendum, perhaps in October. Similar sentiment has been bubbling in Saskatchewan. In Quebec, secession is the perennial dream of millions. Will it be another rupture in the fabric of our era, like Brexit, Donald Trump’s rise or Russia’s Ukraine invasion? Or maybe the opposite? A putative Canadian secession crisis could prove a damp squib, evidence the world is restabilizing itself in a new geopolitical age. The word rupture was recently  given  currency by none other than Canadian Prime Minister  Mark Carney , decrying Donald Trump’s effect on NATO. Never say never but history isn’t a single train rushing down a single track. In fact, a lot has changed since we last  visited  Albertan independence seven years ago. All the news—every bit of it—suggests Canada finding its way back to an even keel. Property values and ...

  Did the far left ever really believe its own rhetoric when it came to climate change? True, when it comes to the positions staked out by any politician on the issues of the day, the age-old question is constantly in the back of everyone’s minds: How much of what they claim to believe is based on heartfelt, core convictions, and how much is due to outside political pressure or geared toward generating contributions? But nowhere is this question more pertinent than when it comes to politicians and their advocacy for climate change. Why? Because  it’s difficult to think of anything that comes close to rivaling the number of government mandates implemented and the amount of taxpayer dollars allocated to reshape society as has happened in the name of climate change. Surely, it wasn’t all based on empty rhetoric and misdirection, was it? Far-left environmental and climate change groups have significantly  increased their political  spending over the years. In turn, elect...

  February 20, 2026 The average residential electric bill impact for two offshore wind farms off Long Island  has increased nearly fivefold since 2019  to an anticipated $3.54 a month, according to state data, fueled by soaring construction costs and new projections for the price of wholesale energy. When former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo first announced Empire Wind and Sunrise Wind farms at a 2019 conference in Manhattan, the state announced the impact on average New Yorkers would be "less than a dollar per month per customer," or "approximately 73 cents." Much has changed since then. Nearly seven years later, amid ongoing challenges to the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry,  the estimate continues to adjust upward,  to $3.54 per month by 2028, when the projects are expected to be producing power, according Marco Padula, director of markets and innovation for the state Department of Public Service, which conducts the price-impact study. The $3.54 is a projected "l...

  New bipartisan bill aims to clear nuclear’s biggest remaining bottleneck The United States could still withdraw from the International Energy Agency if the Paris-based watchdog, considered one of the leading sources of global data and forecasts on energy demand, continues to promote and plan for “ridiculous” net-zero scenarios by 2050. That’s what Secretary of Energy Chris Wright  said on stage  Tuesday at a conference in the French capital. Noting that the IEA was founded in the wake of the oil embargoes that accompanied the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the Trump administration wants the organization to refocus on issues of energy security and poverty, Wright said. He cited a recent effort to promote clean cooking fuels for the 2 billion people who still lack regular access to energy — more than 2 million of whom are estimated to die each year from exposure to fumes from igniting wood, crop residue, or dung indoors — as evidence that the IEA was shifting in Washington’s direct...

  02/17/2026 10:00 AM EST   HOCHUL’S CLIMATE STAKES:  Gov. Kathy Hochul has a chance this week to formally propose changes to New York’s 2019 climate law in the budget process. The 30-day amendments to the executive budget due on Thursday are being closely watched for any tweaks to the landmark Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act. The Hochul administration  has been considering proposing changes  to the climate law as part of budget negotiations. The governor herself has publicly called into question the wisdom of the law’s targets given the present-day challenges New York faces. Hochul has some basic political calculus  to do — does she further burnish her credibility with business leaders who have called for changing the law and risk the wrath of the environmental movement? She may well decide that with her political star shining as brightly as ever… and nowhere for environmental activists to go in the primary… that tackling the thorny issue o...