Tupper Lake residents are angry, frustrated and genuinely worried over our latest energy bills. We can’t afford electric school buses, and we certainly don’t have the infrastructure to charge them. Meanwhile, it’s impossible to ignore the boondoggle New York state leadership has made of our energy system. The state now reports that upstate households could face more than $4,100 in annual energy‒cost increases. Make no mistake: this crisis is the direct result of deliberate decisions to reduce — and refuse to invest in — traditional, reliable sources of energy. And those decisions were driven by the fear New Yorkers were sold about the supposedly imminent climate disasters we would face if we didn’t comply.

For years the public was told urgently, repeatedly, theatrically and wrongly that climate change was an “existential threat.” The imagery was sweeping: vanishing Arctic sea ice, drowning cities, apocalyptic storms, even warnings that Adirondack winters could disappear, a theme repeated in regional climate reports and news coverage.

In 2022, Gov. Kathy Hochul embraced the existential‒threat language as she positioned herself as a national climate leader and fully backed the 2019 Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA), a law so sweeping that unwinding is proving to be a political and regulatory mess now landing squarely on New Yorkers.

This pattern of climate alarmism didn’t begin with Hochul. Long before she declared New York a climate battleground, Al Gore was warning of a “planetary emergency.” UN officials were forecasting vast swaths of the Earth becoming “uninhabitable.” And a handful of politicians, now years in the rearview, insisted we had twelve years left to “save the planet.” None of it aged well. The world stubbornly refused to end, and the notion that our individual “carbon footprints” determined humanity’s fate was always a marketing invention dressed up as moral instruction.

Yet today, as she scrambles to recalibrate, Hochul is backtracking on the CLCPA. Asking for a pause, urging lawmakers to revisit the law, approving new natural‒gas infrastructure from Pennsylvania, and promoting an “all‒of‒the‒above” energy strategy.

Before Hochul, Gov. Andrew Cuomo fused strong climate rhetoric with the old fear of aquifer contamination to block Southern Tier landowners from developing natural gas. And it was Cuomo who signed the 2019 CLCPA into law, setting in motion the sweeping mandates New Yorkers are now being forced to absorb.

And for those of us in Tupper Lake, it’s worth remembering that New York’s activist‒political machine leaned on the aquifer boogeyman long before climate politics discovered it. In the late 1990s, we lost a major economic opportunity because of dire warnings about contamination to our “massive underground aquifer.” Today, as we struggle with real water problems, we’d give anything to have that supposedly abundant aquifer the State once claimed it was protecting.

And yet New York imports natural gas from Pennsylvania. Really. This is what happens when critical energy decisions are shaped in a political sandbox rather than by competence. Instead of leveling with people, Albany hid behind an aquifer excuse that conveniently matched its climate messaging. Meanwhile, piping in the same gas from across the border — though nowhere near the quantity we actually need — lets us pretend we’re virtuous. The aquifer narrative didn’t protect anyone; it patronized the public. It asks us to believe aquifer geology changes at the state line, and worse, that Pennsylvania is somehow more competent than New York at managing the very same resources.

For decades, the public trusted scientists. That trust erodes when highly uncertain climate processes are presented as absolute truth, when debate is shut down with “the science is settled,” and when predictions fail. I spent more than 27 years in the environmental community. We never needed to tell the public “the science is settled.” When you have the truth, you don’t need to.

And fortunately, a few honest brokers called out the drift from science to slogans, especially the endlessly repeated ‘97%’ claim, which has been falsely wielded as proof of unanimous scientific agreement and used to silence questions. Real science is built on evidence and inquiry, not on enforcing consensus from voices with clear climate‒related financial interests.

“Existential threat” has a specific meaning: something that endangers the existence of a people, a nation, or humanity itself. Nuclear war qualifies. A planet‒killing asteroid qualifies. Applying it to climate change turned a complex scientific topic into civilizational doomsday. Once that narrative took hold, it shaped an entire generation.

The consequences were not abstract. Young people absorbed the rhetoric deeply. Surveys show rising climate anxiety, fear about the future, doubts about having children and a belief that the world may not be livable in 50 years. Teachers heard despair. Therapists report eco‒anxiety. Some young adults even reconsider marriage or family plans. For heaven’s sake, they were told to calculate their “carbon footprint” as if their very existence were a problem.

Critics argue this outcome was predictable. When leaders tell children the planet is dying and then show them how they are supposedly contributing to its demise, it is no surprise that many lose hope. That rhetoric lands hardest on the young. And if there is one reason above all others that I push back against this, it is this: my kids — every kid — deserve better than fear dressed up as truth.

The existential rhetoric has quieted, which speaks volumes about how overstated the claims were. Yet there have been no apologies to the young people who were terrified, no acknowledgment of the scientists whose reputations were damaged, and no accountability for the leaders who used apocalyptic language to justify sweeping policies.

A healthier climate discourse would acknowledge uncertainty, welcome debate, and resist the impulse to frame this fascinating area of environmental interest as civilizational doom. The era of existential alarm may finally be fading, but the damage remains — and because of the 2019 CLCPA and the mess we are in, New Yorkers should not expect energy to become more ‘affordable’ anytime soon.

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Jed Dukett is a former acid rain scientist. He lives in Tupper Lake.