New York Can’t Meet Its Ambitious Climate Targets. Maybe the Plan Was Doomed From the Start

It’s hot and humid in New York City. After a long, cold winter, the heat came suddenly—days after the official start of summer. Central Park hit its highest temperature— 99 degrees —since 2012 and Con Edison, the area’s main electricity provider, issued blackout warnings.

Between 2018 and 2022, an average of 525 deaths a year were attributed to heat stress, or due to an underlying illness that was exacerbated by heat, according to city data . Weather extremes are likely to become more frequent in the coming decades because of climate change. The state is no stranger to this —in the last two years, 49 high temperature records and 10 low temperature records have been broken.

These increasingly frequent temperature extremes can be particularly harsh during hot summers in the most densely po