Since California decided to plunge headlong off of this cliff, it couldn’t be long before New York decided to follow suit, right? It was easy to miss this headline last week, particularly with all of the hurricane activity dominating the news, but unelected New York Governor Kathy Hochul took time out of her busy schedule to order the state Department of Environmental Conservation to implement another mandate in the name of the climate. Under this plan, all new passenger cars, SUVs, and pickup trucks sold in the state will have to be “zero emissions” (in other words, electric vehicles) by 2035. She spoke of “sustained state and federal investments” to make it possible for there to be progress on the required “electric vehicle infrastructure” to support such a change. So precisely how does she plan to pull that part of it off in barely ten years? We don’t know because she didn’t say. (CNY Central)

New York State Governor Kathy Hochul directed the State Department of Environmental Conservation to take major regulatory action Thursday that will require all new passenger cars, pickup trucks, and SUVs sold in the state to be zero emissions by 2035.

The step to achieving significant greenhouse gas emission reduction from the transportation industry is complemented by new and ongoing investments, including progress on electric vehicle infrastructure, zero-emission vehicle incentives, and ensuring New York communities benefit from historic federal climate change investments.

“New York is a national climate leader and an economic powerhouse, and we’re using our strength to help spur innovation and implementation of zero-emission vehicles on a grand scale,” said Gov. Hochul. “With sustained state and federal investments, our actions are incentivizing New Yorkers, local governments, and businesses to make the transition to electric vehicles. We’re driving New York’s transition to clean transportation forward, and today’s announcement will benefit our climate and the health of our communities for generations to come.”

So the state government plans to “helpfully” drive up the cost that everyone pays for their next vehicle massively. And once you have that vehicle in your driveway, you’re going to need to figure out how to recharge it. There are home charging stations available on the market today, so you might be okay as long as you don’t plan on driving further than a few trips in your own community.

But if you need to take any longer trips, that’s where the “electric vehicle infrastructure” I mentioned above comes into play. That means there will have to be charging stations available all across the state, including all of the very rural areas in the northern tier of New York. At the moment, that infrastructure simply doesn’t exist. There are well over 110,000 miles of roads in the state and the number of public charging stations is less than 10,000 with most of those being in the larger population centers. Who is going to build them all and how long would that take?

For the sake of argument, let’s just say that you could have a sufficient number of charging stations ready to go in ten years and they didn’t all go bankrupt because there aren’t nearly enough customers for them yet. We will suddenly be burning through a lot more electricity than we currently use in New York. The state’s electric grid isn’t quite as bad as some other states in the southwest or on the west coast, but it’s getting there. We’ve already maxed out the state’s hydroelectric power potential and we will be unlikely see approval for a new nuclear plant that could be finished by then. Has anyone in Hochul’s office run all of these numbers? Or are they just issuing orders at random so it looks like they are “doing something” about the climate?

One other question leaps to mind. What will they do about people who travel over the border into Pennsylvania or Ohio where such mandates aren’t in effect (yet) and buy gas-powered vehicles there? Will New York State troopers prevent them from returning home? Will the DMV refuse to register them? That all sounds very unlikely, so we’ll just be sending local money to other states when it could have been spent at home, driving the economy and providing jobs.

People are fleeing the state in massive numbers that are growing every year. We’re losing congressional seats with each passing census. We can’t even fix the roads. But we’re going to go all EV in a decade? New York deserves whatever fate awaits it if the voters here keep electing people like Hochul. (Assuming she ever actually gets elected, that is.)