Some businesses have found themselves green with envy when looking at New York’s proposed budget. They assert the governor’s budget line item marked for climate lacks appropriate funding.
After seeing that New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s proposed executive budget does not include additional funding for climate-related issues, the NY Businesses for Climate Justice organization sent a letter to state leaders calling for legislative action.
Over 40 businesses in New York State banded together to sign the letter, addressed to the state’s Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins and Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, pushing them to work toward passing climate-related bills that would pump cash into the state government for environmental efforts.
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In the letter, the signatories noted that despite the state’s Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), which sets goals around emission reductions for the state, they believe the state has not made tangible progress toward those goals.
“Businesses prosper and effectively plan when there is clarity in our long-term direction, but we lack confidence that the CLCPA will be fully implemented and its climate targets reached. As New York business leaders, we are writing to express an urgent need for action in 2024 through real and meaningful budget commitments,” they wrote in the letter. “Governor Hochul recently called the climate crisis the ‘defining challenge of our era,’ yet we did not see new climate funding in the executive budget. We therefore look to the legislature to fill this void by including critical climate funding.”
The letter calls for the passage of six different legislative bills: The Green Affordable Pre-electrification (GAP) Program, The NY Tropical Deforestation-Free Procurement Act, The Climate Change Superfund Act, The NY Home Energy Affordable Transition Act, The Just Energy Transition Act and The NYS Residential Solar Storage and Tax Credit.
One of the letter’s signatories is B Lab, which oversees B Corp certifications for brands looking to prove their prowess around environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives.
Grace Mausser, policy manager at B Lab, said the organization helped to author the letter sent to Stewart-Cousins and Heastie. She noted that the goal is to take action forward.
“This is…pushing governments not just to say that they want green investment, that they want a just transition, that they want to create more infrastructure, but to actually put the money [and] the planning power behind it to make that happen,” Mausser told Sourcing Journal. “A lot of companies will [make claims], but the B Impact Assessment is designed to actually award companies that walk the walk. We want our government to do that, too.”
Some of the bills, like the Superfund Act, allot dollars directly to initiatives that would help move forward the goals of the CLCPA. Others, like the Just Energy Transition Act, take aim at a clean energy transition by replacing the state’s high fossil fuel sites throughout the state.
Mausser said though 15 B Corps, including crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, signed the letter in the Empire State, New York isn’t the only place that B Lab and other companies want to see change. For instance, B Lab has been working with legislators in California on its proposed carbon emission disclosure legislation.
She shared that B Lab hopes the legislative pressure on New York culminates in results that inspire other legislative bodies to adopt climate-related legislation and show interest in funding green transitions.
“We’ve found that it’s very effective for B Corps to engage directly with their state-level policymakers. Often, they’re a bigger fish in a smaller pond. When you compare it to federal-level stuff, more bills are passing at the state level, and those are often maybe not just as impactful, but almost as impactful, as some federal-level legislation,” she said. “They’re really changing local economies, and they’ve become examples for other states. It can really have a huge ripple effect.”
Mausser also noted that it can be useful for government leaders to understand that while some businesses lobby against environmental policy that would enforce harsher restrictions, others have already begun the work and proven that they can run successful, profitable businesses even with stronger consideration for the environment.
“We know—because we’ve heard from legislators saying this—they hear from business groups who are opposed to climate legislation, that are opposed to these types of bills that would actually upgrade our grid and make our entire economy more sustainable,” Mausser explained. “So it’s really helpful to legislators to hear that there are a lot of businesses that actually support these things and actually already have implemented things that are aligned with these pieces of legislation.”
Neither Stewart-Cousins’ office nor Heastie’s office returned Sourcing Journal’s requests for comment.
