This piece has been updat­ed to reflect that the leg­isla­tive ses­sion has end­ed, and the cli­mate bill was not brought for­ward to a vote.

“If you cobble together enough city and states, then the federal withdrawal from Paris becomes less and less significant."

The eight mem­bers of New York’s Inde­pen­dent Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­fer­ence (IDC), may not be the first peo­ple you’d expect to spon­sor a piece of land­mark cli­mate leg­is­la­tion. In the tra­di­tion­al­ly blue Empire State, the IDC cau­cus­es with Repub­li­cans, allow­ing the state’s GOP to form a major­i­ty — all despite the fact that New York­ers reli­ably elect a Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty into their state­house. The rea­son IDC mem­bers cite for the alliance is prag­ma­tism, and a desire to make bipar­ti­san action more pos­si­ble. The real­i­ty, more often than not, is that they put a damper on pro­gres­sive efforts.

That’s part of why their unan­i­mous spon­sor­ship of the Cli­mate and Com­mu­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion Act (CCPA) — a bill laud­ed as a mod­el for oth­er states hop­ing to defy Trump’s attacks on the envi­ron­ment — came as a sur­prise to Dan Sher­rell. Sher­rell is cam­paign coor­di­na­tor for New York Renews, the coali­tion of more than 100 labor, com­mu­ni­ty and envi­ron­men­tal groups that draft­ed the CCPA and has attempt­ed to get it passed through New York’s state leg­is­la­ture since just after the Paris Accord was agreed upon in late 2015.

After being intro­duced by non-IDC Assem­bly Speak­er Carl Heast­ie, the bill passed through that body by a wide mar­gin on Mon­day night, after a short debate. In the sen­ate, the CCPA’s fate fell to New York State Sen­a­tor — and IDC mem­ber — Tony Avel­la, the bill’s lead spon­sor who, along­side fel­low spon­sor and IDC mem­ber Jeff Klein, would have had to con­vince Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader John Flana­gan to bring the bill to a vote in the cham­ber in order for it to get passed. Avella’s office did not respond to In These Times’ request for a com­ment. Even though the IDC has endorsed the bill, New York Renews mem­bers feared Avel­la may con­tin­ue stalling until the leg­isla­tive ses­sion is slat­ed to end today, extract­ing the good PR of hav­ing sym­bol­i­cal­ly backed pro­gres­sive leg­isla­tive while doing rel­a­tive­ly lit­tle to get it passed into law. Wor­ry­ing­ly for the coali­tion, two IDC mem­bers ear­li­er this week also vot­ed to defund ener­gy and envi­ron­men­tal pri­or­i­ties that the CCPA would enshrine into law.

“The IDC has cho­sen to take lead­er­ship on the CCPA. We wel­come them to the cli­mate fight, and call on them to bring this bill to a vote,” Sher­rell told In These Times bef. ​“This could not be more cru­cial after Trump’s exit from the Paris Accord.”

But his fears proved well found­ed. Flana­gan did not bring the CCPA to a vote, and the leg­isla­tive ses­sion expired at the end of the day on Wednes­day. Sher­rell tells In These Times that New York Renews will be call­ing on the IDC and the gov­er­nor to pass the bill in a spe­cial ses­sion of the leg­is­la­ture this sum­mer, when law­mak­ers are expect­ed to recon­vene to dis­cuss New York City’s pub­lic school sys­tem. ​“If they’re com­ing back to deal with school­ing for NYC kids,” Sher­rell says in an email, ​“then sure­ly they can pass a bill to pro­tect those kids’ future from a wors­en­ing cli­mate crisis.”

As the prospects for cli­mate action at the fed­er­al lev­el grow increas­ing­ly bleak, the impact of states like New York — and bills like the CCPA — could extend well beyond their borders.

After the White House announced it was with­draw­ing the Unit­ed States from the cli­mate treaty on June 1, atten­tion has shift­ed increas­ing­ly to what cities and states can do to stem ris­ing tides. New York State Gov. Andrew Cuo­mo, Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Jer­ry Brown and Wash­ing­ton Gov. Jay Inslee teamed up to cre­ate the Unit­ed States Cli­mate Alliance, now com­prised of 13 states, that seeks to uphold the com­mit­ments laid out in the Paris Agree­ment through state-lev­el policy.

The Cal­i­for­nia leg­is­la­ture is push­ing its own ambi­tious leg­is­la­tion, and is one of sev­er­al West­ern states team­ing up with Cana­di­an provinces to col­lab­o­rate on cli­mate solu­tions. Many now see New York, and the CCPA in par­tic­u­lar, as pre­sent­ing the next oppor­tu­ni­ty for promis­ing state-lev­el action. As Sher­rell puts it, New York can be a ​“beach head for cli­mate progress in the next four years.” Heather McGhee, pres­i­dent of the left-lean­ing think tank Demos, and pro­gres­sive econ­o­mist Robert Reich have called the CCPA ​“the most pro­gres­sive cli­mate-equi­ty pol­i­cy we’ve seen.”

So what exact­ly is this pol­i­cy? The CCPA would task state agen­cies with cre­at­ing indi­vid­u­al­ized plans to reduce their green­house gas emis­sions, attempt­ing to put some meat on the bones of Cuomo’s 2015 pledge to dra­mat­i­cal­ly reduce emis­sions by 2050. The bill fur­ther stip­u­lates that 40 per­cent of state ener­gy fund­ing be direct­ed toward the low-income com­mu­ni­ties and com­mu­ni­ties of col­or most like­ly to be hit worst by cli­mate impacts. The bill also requires that fair labor stan­dards—includ­ing a pre­vail­ing wage — be enact­ed at all green projects receiv­ing state funds. Such a tran­si­tion, the bill’s back­ers argue, could cre­ate as many as 100,000 jobs statewide in the next sev­er­al decades.

“New York Renews was co-found­ed by the envi­ron­men­tal jus­tice move­ment … after the People’s Cli­mate March in 2014,” says Eddie Bautista, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the New York City Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Alliance. ​“It shouldn’t be a shock to any­one that jus­tice and equi­ty con­cerns are at the cen­ter of it. How could we pos­si­bly demon­strate lead­er­ship if we’re not incor­po­rat­ing what every­one now acknowl­edges to be the dis­pro­por­tion­ate impacts of cli­mate change on com­mu­ni­ties of color?”

As Bryce Covert, draw­ing on a body of research, point­ed out in The Nation last year, race is the most sig­nif­i­cant pre­dic­tor of whether some­one is like­ly to live near con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed air, water or soil. Six­ty-eight per­cent of African Amer­i­cans nation­wide live with­in 30 miles of a coal plant, and Black Los Ange­lenos are twice as like­ly to die dur­ing a heat wave as their white coun­ter­parts. And as Hur­ri­canes Kat­ri­na and Sandy both showed, com­mu­ni­ties of col­or are more vul­ner­a­ble to cat­a­stroph­ic dam­age from cli­mate-fueled storms and the dis­place­ment that can fol­low them. By 2013, for instance, some 80 per­cent of res­i­dents who fled New Orleans’ pre­dom­i­nate­ly black Low­er 9th Ward had not returned, and black res­i­dents were sig­nif­i­cant­ly less like­ly to return to the city in the year after the storm than non-black residents.

With its robust equi­ty pro­vi­sions, Bautista adds, the spe­cif­ic atten­tion the CCPA pays to cli­mate-impact­ed com­mu­ni­ties could be an exam­ple for oth­er states. And the bill’s scale also shows that mean­ing­ful cli­mate pol­i­cy needn’t be kneecapped by Trump: ​“If a state as large and diverse as New York is will­ing to take this lev­el of com­mit­ment, then sure­ly the rest of the states could fol­low,” says Eddie Bautista, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the New York City Envi­ron­men­tal Jus­tice Alliance. ​“If you cob­ble togeth­er enough city and states, then the fed­er­al with­draw­al from Paris becomes less and less significant.”

But time is run­ning out. NY Renews mem­bers and allies have flood­ed Avella’s office with calls, ask­ing him to intro­duce the bill. Sher­rell esti­mates from peo­ple who’ve told him about their calls to Albany that there have been around 500 so far, ​“but they’ve lost count,” he told me.

The CCPA has been in a sim­i­lar spot before. It also passed through the Assem­bly in 2016 but nev­er made it to the Sen­ate. It was includ­ed in a ver­sion of the FY2018 bud­get debat­ed this spring, though was nixed in the final bud­get Cuo­mo signed in April, after nei­ther Cuo­mo nor the state sen­ate made it a pri­or­i­ty in their bud­get bills. But giv­en the Trump admin­is­tra­tion, Bautista says, the stakes are high­er this time. ​“It’s pret­ty hard to over­es­ti­mate how impor­tant this moment is, par­tic­u­lar­ly in light of the Paris with­draw­al,” he says. ​“The only way that we’re going to be able to impede at least the worst of cli­mate change is through a com­bi­na­tion of local and state actions that fill the void left by the Trump-ocaplypse.”

This isn’t the first occa­sion pro­gres­sives have had to be angry at the IDC. Ire against the cau­cus has been boil­ing since November’s elec­tion, and a num­ber of state and nation­al politi­cians — includ­ing Rep. Kei­th Elli­son (D‑MN) — have called on the cau­cus to rejoin Democ­rats so that the par­ty can claim a prop­er major­i­ty. Giv­en New York is one of the country’s most deeply blue states, pro­gres­sive lead­ers are eager to have it punch at or above its weight in oppos­ing Trump.

As Alex Shep­ard and Clio Chang wrote for The New Repub­lic, ​“The sit­u­a­tion in Albany would be weird in any polit­i­cal envi­ron­ment, but it’s high­ly prob­lem­at­ic in the Trump era, when pro­posed fed­er­al immi­gra­tion and health care poli­cies have made mil­lions of New York’s res­i­dents vul­ner­a­ble. A Demo­c­ra­t­ic major­i­ty in the Sen­ate could pro­tect these people.”

All this puts Demo­c­ra­t­ic Gov. Andrew Cuo­mo in an awk­ward posi­tion. He’s gen­er­al­ly con­tent to go along with the IDC, in large part because his own pri­or­i­ties tend to favor con­strained bud­gets. He’s refused to active­ly urge them to rejoin Democ­rats (though he’s said it would be ​“opti­mal” if they did).

Yet in the months fol­low­ing Hillary Clinton’s trounc­ing in the gen­er­al elec­tion, the cen­trist wing of the par­ty he rep­re­sents has nev­er been weak­er than it is now on the nation­al stage. Mem­bers of the New York Renews coali­tion — gen­er­al­ly clos­er to the Democ­rats’ Bernie Sanders wing — see the CCPA as a chance to hold his feet to a fire lit by pro­gres­sive vot­ers. IDC spon­sor­ship of the bill could turn the CCPA into a polit­i­cal­ly easy oppor­tu­ni­ty to chal­lenge Trump on the nation­al stage — some­thing he seems inclined to do, giv­en the flur­ry of cli­mate-relat­ed announce­ments he made in the days after the White House’s with­draw­al from the Paris Accord. Despite this, he’s remained qui­et about the CCPA.

Regard­less of what hap­pens in the Sen­ate, Bautista says shock waves from the bill are already being felt. In ear­ly June, Cuo­mo announced the cre­ation of a task force on cli­mate jobs along with sev­er­al oth­er mea­sures seem­ing­ly inspired by the CCPA. Lan­guage from the bill, too — includ­ing the 40 per­cent invest­ment pro­vi­sion — was lift­ed almost ver­ba­tim and includ­ed in the ​“100 by ​’50” Act intro­duced by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D‑Ore.), Bernie Sanders (I‑Vt.) and oth­ers short­ly before late April’s People’s Cli­mate March, out­lin­ing a tran­si­tion to 100 per­cent renew­able ener­gy usage by 2050. ​“This bill is just one of a vari­ety of approach­es that we’ll be advanc­ing in the com­ing years,” Bautista says. Now, Avel­la and his cau­cus col­leagues have to decide whether it will be allowed to move forward.

“The IDC was cre­at­ed as a way to get things done with the Repub­li­cans,” Bautista says of the bill’s still-uncer­tain prospects for pass­ing through the leg­is­la­ture with bipar­ti­san sup­port. ​“So prove that it can!”