Video, Audio, Photos & Rush Transcript: Governor Hochul Joins With U.S. Climate Alliance Governors to Announce Climate-Ready Workforce Initiative, Aims to Train 1 Million New Registered Apprentices by 2035

Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced New York's participation in the U.S. Climate Alliance's Governors' Climate-Ready Workforce Initiative to grow career pathways in climate and clean energy fields, strengthen workforce diversity, and jointly train 1 million new registered apprentices across the Alliance's states and territories by 2035. Governor Hochul made the announcement today at a Climate Week NYC event, which also featured her Alliance Co-Chair New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, founding Alliance member Washington Governor Jay Inslee, and White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi.

VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

AUDIO: The Governor's remarks are available in audio form here.

PHOTOS: The Governor's Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

 Well to quote Taylor Swift, "Welcome to New York." Delighted to have so many of you joining us here today. And this takes me back to a major speech I gave just a few months ago at the Vatican. And I was delighted by the fact that when our Pope, and I'm Catholic, our Pope prioritizes what we have to talk about and how we have to lift up the people of this earth, that he wanted to focus on climate change. So I went to Rome and had a chance to represent this alliance there. And I was so proud to do that, and we had some of our members, Gavin Newsom and Maura Healey. Governor Gavin Newsom from California, Maura Healey from Massachusetts joined me as well.

But I reflected for a long time on the words of Pope Francis and what he said. He reminded us that our moral responsibility extends beyond borders, it extends beyond politics, that we must safeguard our natural environment, but also our most vulnerable communities, the ones most endangered by climate change. I take that seriously as do my colleagues who are here today.

And I'm so proud to be joined by climate champions, someone like Jay Inslee, who has put this issue on the map and had been talking about it long before others saw the detrimental effects of climate change. He was whistling in the wind for a long time, but as leaders like that, that brought us to where we are today where you have Pope Francis, national leaders, state leaders, and the rest of the country talking about climate change. Not as something that's a fearful specter that could happen in the future. It is happening right now. And I want to give him a round of applause. This may be your last official climate week as a Governor. But stay with us on these issues.

My co-chair of the alliance Michelle Lujan Grisham, who brings that energy and that excitement and also representing a state that sees its position as well. It's not just the larger populated states, it's every state has a responsibility to find new ways to power the technologies in the homes and the business of their states. And I want to thank her for being a great champion on behalf of all the other Governors of the alliance. Let's give a round of applause to Michelle Lujan Grisham, our Governor of New Mexico.

Casey, yes, thanks for bringing the bottled up energy, the excitement that this week calls for. And I want to thank you for your leadership, not just this week, but throughout every day of the year. And having Ali Zaidi, once again representing the White House, which has been an amazing partner. As the genesis of the U.S. Climate Alliance, and Jay knows this because he was there, he's one of the early founders, was when Donald Trump, as President, walked away from the Paris Agreement that we were all supposed to adhere to. All the countries who signed on to this were committed to achieving goals and taking their own nations collectively forward joined with others. When he basically tore that up and threw it out in the garbage, we decided as states and those who came before me decided that more can be done together, and so it's been so refreshing for the last three and a half years to have the Biden administration represented by Ali the Biden Harris administration that we don't have to fight against, but we are strong allies together. So let's give a round of applause to him as well.

My dream team is here representing all my agencies. I thank them for all they do. And as I mentioned, I'm going to take notice this is the first time we've had two women leading the U.S. Climate Alliance, you want it done right, you put some women in charge, right Michelle? That's, okay, we're good. And no offense. We're just building on your work and taking it up. That's all. But as it's half of the nation is represented. Now my question is, where's the other half? That's for each state leader to decide, but why isn't this a 50 state coalition? I have to pose that question, but we do represent 60 percent of the country's economy, which is nothing small to laugh about. It is very significant. So what we do here is part of this alliance has an impact beyond our own individual state borders. And, we know that's happening.

There's always been this tension now since the Industrial Revolution, which created great industries and propelled our economy forward. But the pollution that was created to fuel that is something that I know personally as someone who grew up next to a steel plant. And I thought as a child that the sky was naturally orange because that's the color it was on the shores of one of the great freshwater lakes in the world, Lake Erie, that every night you could see molten lava being discharged into it because that's how the Bethlehem Steel operated. Nobody questioned it. It was 20,000 jobs. The economy was growing. No one thought anything about what was happening there until about the late 1960s and 70s. We started seeing the health effects and the rest is history. Finally woke up to mankind's assault on mother nature. It was profound.

So that is steeped in me deeply as a climate advocate. A huge champion because of my own childhood. But as economies grow, in our country at least the planet grew sicker. And as a result, we're dealing with the effects right now. And I also look at what are the effects. I've been Governor for three years. I have had more natural disasters. in my state than you could combine decades before. I had two hurricanes my first week on the job, more than Florida had that year. I have had the deadliest blizzards. My hometown of Buffalo, 42 people dead in a blizzard. Seven feet of snow came down. Record. The heaviest flooding.

Just came back from Long Island a couple weeks ago, surveying the effects of a thousand year flooding event. And that was my second thousand year flooding event. I don't think there's thousand year events anymore. We had record tornadoes. We had more tornadoes in July in New York than all of the states that are comprised of Tornado Alley combined. So something is happening. The hottest temperatures, the coldest temperatures. You'd have to be in a coma not to recognize that there is a profound shift in what is going on here. And I have to deal with that. The costs are enormous. The communities are suffering. People lose their homes, their livelihoods. So we have to find this balance between growing our economies and the energy that's required to support that, create thousands of jobs, which is so important. But also, what are the effects? And we can no longer turn a blind eye to that.

And that's what we're talking about here today. Because here in New York, we're welcoming the growth of AI. We're gonna have the nation's largest semi computer dedicated to responsible AI to solve society's problems. That's what I wanna use it for, to harness it for good. We have the largest semiconductor manufacturing facility being built in America. 50,000 new jobs are coming to Upstate New York. That's something we're very proud of. But as we have more fab chips and all these facilities, at the same time, we want to reduce our carbon emissions to save the planet. They seem like they're in conflict, and they are a challenge, but we're already hard at work at solving those problems.

We have hydroelectric power from Canada. I just met the Canadian Prime Minister last night. We talked about our joint work on the Champlain Hudson line, bringing power from Quebec down, hydropower to power 20 percent of New York City's power needs. That's extraordinary. We made that decision my first week on the job. We need to move forward with this.

So we're investing in the clean energy technologies, advanced manufacturing, building all the resiliency we can to prepare for this. And we're really proud of our offshore wind achievements. I literally just left a company that's looking at our state for being involved in building component parts, but this year we completed the nation's first utility grade offshore wind farm in the country. That's significant. And that's going to power over 600,000 homes, and we're constructing more ports to accommodate this.

But the point is I want to turn these investments into jobs. That's why we're here with our friends in labor. Let me give a shout out. The people of labor, the men and women, Who have had to transition from traditional jobs and be acclimated to this whole new world of opportunity.

Sometimes change is hard, but our relationships with labor are so strong. It's so strong and powerful. They see their role in the clean energy future and that's what I'm embracing here today. That's what we're talking about here today. So this gives us thousands of opportunities.

Occupational hazard is you lose your voice when you give too many speeches, and it is only Monday.

I'm announcing $2.3 million just from New York to support careers in offshore wind. And we already have an offshore wind training institute on Long Island. IBEW Local 3 will train more than 500 New Yorkers for careers in offshore wind.

That's how we're going to continue moving this industry forward. And they'll understand how to safely operate hundreds of feet above the waves, how to build these, this infrastructure and power our lights and charge our phones. And also, that's just New York.

Let's talk about what we're doing nationally through this alliance. We are all engaged in this work. Every state is involved in this. They see the opportunities, but also the help we have from the federal government, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the Chips and Science Act. Our partners in the Biden-Harris administration have unleashed this massive wave of opportunity, and we're all seizing it.

We believe that these combined investments will lead to 3 million good paying jobs already in the climate field. Seventy percent, this is what's important, 70 percent will be available to people without a college degree. This is unprecedented, this moment in time. We're not talking about some transition happening in the future, we're talking about it unfolding right now, and that's what we're so excited about.

And [we're] opening the doors to underrepresented communities. And I go to these job sites all the time and I want to see more women and people of color and the unions recognize this. That's where they're doing their recruiting, because these industries had been previously closed off to them. But also, the skills we need. I just talked to someone now who told me if they come here they're going to need a thousand jobs. And I said, sure, that's not a problem. Okay, now I have to figure that out. And we will, that's how you combine ambition and objectives that are so important together. And that's what this is all about.

So we're launching here the Governor's Climate Ready Workforce Initiative. Thank you governors for supporting this as well. And this initiative, our working together will create over 1 million registered apprentices in climate ready fields by the year 2035, which is right around the corner.

And this is a model. We've used this model before, just like we have in construction and manufacturing. You train people in the skills, you give them hands on experience, you point the way, you show them a path forward. and they are part of the economy that's so important, but at the same time they're lifting up their own families and increasing their income.

We need them to build solar panels to soak up the power of the sun. I need them to help raise the wind turbines in the ocean. Safeguard our shorelines and build more resiliency, we need them there, so we can't do it alone. This is why a national effort sharing best practices working with our educational institution and community organizations will help do it. So that's what today's announcement is.

We're committed to this, we believe this is the missing link, that if we are intentional, put money behind it and work together as 24 states, there is no stopping us. And so I thank everyone for being part of this and there's no limit to what we're going to do together because we are the first generation to truly see the effects of climate change.

We've talked about it for years. We are the ones and we have to protect it for the young people coming behind us. We do not want them to ever question as I did when I was growing up in Buffalo in Lackawanna saying, how did you let this happen? We are the ones who are saying, we will not let it happen. It stops right now.

Thank you very much, everyone.

Contact the Governor's Press Office