It bans cloud seeding and geoengineering. Passing this off as a ‘ban on chemtrails’ is deliberately dishonest.

a Class B misdemeanor for the injection, release or dispersal of “a chemical, a chemical compound, a substance, or an apparatus into the atmosphere within or above this state for the purpose of affecting the weather, including temperature, climate, and intensity of sunlight.

Yeah. A series of fucktarted decisions caused Germany to fuck themselves:

• Germany turned off all their nuclear plants (why?!)
• Germany turned off all their coal plants (good)
• Germany vastly increased natural gas imports and tied themselves at the hip to Russia (they were publicly told this was a bad idea. Germany laughed it off)
• Germany ramped up solar/wind production (good)
• Germany did not invest in grid-scale storage to go with that solar/wind (Just going whole-hog on trusting Russia)
• Russia invaded Ukraine and held natural gas exports to Germany’s throat (boy, who would have guessed Russia would fuck over Germany?!)
• Germany had to emergency expand their LNG imports amid record-high prices and with hastily-built LNG terminals (LNG is also the most expensive way to import natural gas)
• Germany had to online coal plants due to shortages (boy, those nuclear plants would have been damn helpful!)
• Germany now has some of the highest priced electricity anywhere

They really, really, really should have kept those nuclear plants like France…

Yeah, the date on the package means even less if you freeze it. Frozen meat is good for years.

(Freeze your ground beef, freeze your bread. Throwing away food is expensive!)

Yep, France has cheaper energy than Germany. France went nuclear, Germany went solar/wind (and even had to re-online some coal plants due to shortages).

The pushback on nuclear from anti-fossil advocates never ceases to amaze me.

Batteries plus solar is still cheaper than all other power systems.

Several of my friends live in states with energy provider choice. Buying from the 100% green power providers is more expensive. Natural gas is extremely cheap after all.

Yep, the unreliability is exactly why buying from 100% green energy providers is more expensive than buying from natural gas providers. Batteries are extremely expensive, natural gas is cheap.

Source: Several of my friends live in states with energy provider choice; the green providers cost more.

They required the choice between two different administrators.

Most US states have this. They mandate you can choose your energy provider.

Are you getting their specific electrons? No. (Electrons in AC systems don’t actually travel very far, you get the same ones jiggling back and forth!) But they make that much more power and your previous provider makes that much less power. The end result is you buy power from that provider, just as promised.

As you said, the grid must be balanced. Your old provider cannot generate the power, and your new provider must generate the amount if power you now buy. If either of those are not the case, the grid is not balanced.

In the US, a big part of it is that natural gas is a waste product of oil fracking. If you want the oil, you will get a giant gob of natural gas to go with it. The stuff is really, really fucking cheap because of this.

Yep. Meanwhile the US has some of the cheapest and is mainly Natural Gas.

Lots of US states have legislation that lets you choose your energy provider. People buy from the 100% green energy providers if they wish to pay more, not if they wish to save money.

Source: Several of my friends live in these states; they pay more to buy from 100% green energy providers.

it must be short term as a response to market shocks

NYC has had rent control for decades. If we are talking about short-term rent control working, we are necessarily talking about removing rent control from NYC.

Talking about adding more rent control in NYC is doubling down on failure, doubling down on fucking over NYC renters.

Economists of all stripes agree rent control doesn’t work. A mere 2% think it has positive effects, according to a 2012 survey by the IGM Forum.

The analysis of rent control is among the best-understood issues in all of economics, and – among economists anyway – one of the least controversial. In 1992, a poll of the American Economic Association found 93 percent of its members agreeing that 'a ceiling on rents reduces the quality and quantity of housing.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_control_in_the_United_States#Commentary

NYC renters have suffered enough. Why would you subject them to failed policies like rent control?

and promised to try better in future

This part in particular really pisses me off. It isn’t learning, it isn’t ‘going to do better’, it’s just saying what it thinks you want to hear.

I fucking hate sycophants.

No, it’s not.

Vast numbers of empty properties in NYC are the current reality. This conversation will not be able to continue if demonstrable facts are being denied.

That would leave properties empty with high taxes

Welcome to New York City. This is already the case.

When a cost goes up for all owners at once, this leads to everyone raising rent prices at the same time. There is no opportunity for a renter to jump ship to a cheaper property, they all went up. The maximum changed.

Yes, this will price out many people from being able to afford housing.

Better pass a rent freeze first

Renters are already fucked in NYC. Stop making their lives worse with proven failures like rent control.

the middle class disproportionately rents. It is the wealthy who own.

Just like every other cost related to owning and maintaining a rental: property taxes get passed down to renters.

This tax hike disproportionately affects middle and lower class individuals.

Just like every other cost related to owning and maintaining a rental: property taxes get passed down to renters.