Analysis put forth by the governor suggests that the cost would be shared with consumers, leading them to pay an average of $595 more each year per family on natural gas, for example, versus $330 more under the federal accounting method. Industry members and fiscal conservatives have long warned that environmental goals would lead to increased costs. But the governor’s critics say that moving the goal posts will fundamentally undermine the efficacy of the state’s climate plan. “Changing our methane accounting means we save money by simply hat to weed not needing do to save human civilization — which doesn’t seem like much of a savings to me,” State Senator Liz Krueger, who leads the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement. The presence of methane in the earth’s atmosphere rose during the 20th century , only to level off in the first decade of the 21st century, according to Robert Howarth, a professor of ecology and environmental biology at Cornell University who helped craft the state’s climate law. But with the growth of the shale gas industry, the presence of methane in the atmosphere began to skyrocket and “is now rising faster than it ever has before,” he said. Mr. Howarth warned that the ongoing emission of greenhouse gases risked further melting of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice and Greenland ice sheets, and the dramatic — and catastrophic — slowing of the North Atlantic’s system of ocean currents. Stopping the ocean currents would be devastating for agriculture in North America and Europe, he said. “You’re talking mass famine if that were to happen. Does anyone think about that? And it could happen in the time period of 10, 20, 40 years.” State officials argue that the financial burden of such a regime on customers could run the climate plan around on the shoals of statewide sticker shock, putting the entire plan in jeopardy; a more palatable plan for New Yorkers would be far superior. “I don’t see a law as a victory,” Basil Seggos, commissioner of the State Department of Environmental Conservation, said in an interview earlier this week. “I see implementing the law as a victory, and if the law itself becomes too costly to implement, then ultimately it doesn’t succeed.”
