For all the jokes from predictable corners about the Florida-man proposal to shoot down Hurricane Irma, the prize for most futile climate-change-deterrence strategy belongs to far more culpable parties. As we approach Hurricane Sandy’s five year anniversary, New York politicians deserve serious consideration for the title. Accordingly, the organizers of the October 28 #Sandy5 March over the Brooklyn Bridge are rightly targeting more than just Republicans who deny climate science, but also the self-appointed leaders of “the resistance” we find in the Democratic Party. Climate justice activists across the country would do well to follow suit because shamelessly insincere climate politics will be a mainstay of establishment Democratic politics for decades to come.

Consider New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. The day after Trump’s June 1 announcement that the United States would withdraw from the Paris Agreement, de Blasio declared the city’s intention to unilaterally uphold the treaty’s terms, accepting on behalf of our city the mantle of “American climate leadership” abandoned by Trump. But a close look reveals a city bureaucracy more adept at churning out private-sector climate consultants than administering an energy transition on par with Churchill’s conversion of the British Navy from coal to oil. Shortly after de Blasio’s counter-announcement, the New York Times itemized the exodus of ranking staffers, analysts, and program directors from an Office of Sustainability better at shoring up its officials’ resumes than the city’s coastline.

On the one hand, there is the immediate problem of being understaffed as the administration scrambles to deliver its plan for reducing the city’s greenhouse gas emissions 80 percent by 2050 (80×50, as they say). That plan is due at the end of this month. But the bigger issue with the revolving door at such agencies is the practical lack of faith demonstrated by precisely those experts who best understand the political constraints on implementing meaningful sustainability. There is something at least nominally accountable about civil service compared to academic pursuits or a career in consulting. Go figure that when the chance presents itself to slip the leash of such accountability, the “experts” do just that. And this in trendy new disciplines such as sustainability and resiliency defined by their commitments.