‘Very Wasteful’: Hochul Flogs Climate-Change Policies While Spending $400K on Private Jet Flights

As Glenn Reynolds often writes: I’ll take climate-change claims seriously when its policy activists start living by their own rules. 

New York has an abundance of airports, connecting flights, and all sorts of commercial transportation options for the climate-wise traveler. How does Governor Kathy Hochul choose to fly while promoting her climate-change regulatory agenda? New York Post reporter Jon Levine uncovered over $400,000 in private-jet flights chartered by Hochul over the last four years, at least half of which came in her 2022 election campaign while specifically flogging policies targeting fossil fuels (via Twitchy):

Gov. Hochul — who recently approved a controversial law that will force oil, natural-gas and coal companies to pony up $75 billion for carbon emissions allegedly contributing to global warming — has taken at least 30 flights aboard private jets since 2021, state Board of Elections records show.

The $415,000 tab was picked up by her campaign committee, records show. …

Hochul flew with two private-airline companies, Zephyr Jets and Apollo Jets, in the last four years. It is unclear what the destinations were, but no flight cost less than $5,000 while her most expensive was trip was billed Jan. 17 for $38,594.00, records show.

We’ll get to Hochul’s new law in a moment. First, though, let’s peel back the flights themselves. Where did Hochul go that she needed private transport so often? Levine notes that they mainly appear to be Democrat fundraisers:

In May 2022, she recorded the use of “private flights” after participating in a slew of events — which were almost certainly fundraisers.

Her April 2022 schedule mentions four private flights, all to airports in New York and New Jersey to attend “private events.” In May 2022 a private plane whisked her to the Hamptons. In August she was in Montauk.

Why take private jets to any of these locations? Commercial airlines fly to all of these destinations too. One pilot interviewed by Levine points out that New York and the Tri-State Area might be the most connection-dense region in the world, with all sorts of options to accommodate timing. Of course, that would force Hochul to plan ahead a bit, just like the rest of the hoi polloi that Hochul apparently prefers to avoid.

As noted, Hochul just signed a law that will penalize the energy producers whose products Hochul uses so wastefully:

New York state will fine fossil fuel companies a total of $75 billion over the next 25 years to pay for damage caused to the climate under a bill Governor Kathy Hochul signed into law on Thursday. …

Fossil fuel companies will be fined based on the amount of greenhouse gases they released into the atmosphere between 2000 and 2018, to be paid into a Climate Superfund beginning in 2028. It will apply to any company that the New York Department of Environmental Conservation determines is responsible for more than 1 billion tons of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Prediction: It won’t collect a dollar of revenue. Energy producers will file lawsuits to block it in court on two issues. First, the federal government has jurisdiction for this type of enforcement, and producers relied on that jurisdiction and regulation for operating policies. Second, this is an ex post facto fine going back so far as to beg for court intervention. States can’t make something illegal in 2024 and then enforce it all the way back to 2000. Even if New York alleged fraud, there are statutes of limitation for criminal enforcement, and even civil complaints have to be filed in a timely manner.

It’s a PR stunt from Hochul. Just like the rest of her climate-change advocacy, it seems. And just wait until the energy producers decide to relocate to less idiotic states than New York, and see how that impacts the political climate in the Empire State.