Opinion: When it Comes to Climate, Hochul is No Better Than Trump

“New York needs a governor who respects the will of the vast majority of voters who want climate action, and whose elected representatives already passed climate laws on their behalf.”

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has positioned herself as fighting Donald Trump’s lawlessness to defend New York. And some people are buying it: Time Magazine even featured her in their “Climate 100” list.

But as a climate organizer who has spent years pushing the governor to lead on climate, I know the truth: When it comes to climate in 2025, Hochul is no better than Trump, showing herself willing to violate state law, ignore the will of voters and cave to his demands for more destructive, expensive fossil fuel pipelines.

Throughout the past year, Gov. Hochul has openly shared her intention to subvert the state’s democratically passed landmark climate law, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), even explicitly talking about “changing the law.”  In practice, she is ignoring it: She has refused to release most of the regulations required to kickstart the Cap and Invest program recommended for implementation of the CLCPA.

Indeed, an Ulster County Supreme Court judge recently ruled that Hochul was in violation of the CLCPA by failing to release regulations to implement the law. Hochul announced plans to appeal the ruling in response. Meanwhile, the governor has also signaled her openness to delaying implementation of the All Electric Buildings Act, passed in 2022, a key pathway to meeting the emissions reduction targets in the CLCPA. 

As if violating the CLCPA and delaying implementation of legislation that already passed wasn’t bad enough, Hochul still has not signed a 2025 bill repealing the “100 foot rule” and just last week approved the Williams-NESE pipeline at Trump’s behest. This pipeline already went through a legal, democratic review process and was rejected in 2020. Thousands of New Yorkers submitted comments against the pipeline, and New Yorkers have shown up at rallies and marches across the city calling on her to reject it. 

But from her backtrack on congestion pricing (even before Trump attacked it) to her willingness to greenlight Trump’s pipelines and ignore state law, Hochul has shown she doesn’t care what voters in New York State want or think, nor does she care about following the laws enacted by our representatives. It is outrageous that she pretends to fight Trumpism while deciding she herself is above the law. 

Hochul backtracks, delays and hedges under the guise of “affordability,” but a recent report from the New York State Comptroller’s office outlined how much the climate crisis will cost New Yorkers, making clear that adhering to the state’s climate law and implementing the Cap and Invest program to make major corporate polluters pay for their damage is an affordability imperative. (The state’s own modeling and outside studies show that most families would see lower energy bills from Cap and Invest.) Moreover, the Williams Pipeline will cost ratepayers in New York City more than a billion dollars, while hurting beachfront communities that rely on summer tourism and business. 

With the United Nations warning the world is on track to breach the 1.5 degree warming limit set in the Paris Agreement with “devastating consequences,” New York needs a governor who respects the will of the vast majority of voters who want climate action, and whose elected representatives already passed climate laws on their behalf. Clearly Gov. Hochul is not the climate leader we need. 

Liat Olenick is a co-founder or and organizer with Climate Families NYC. She lives in Brooklyn.