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Friday, May 17, 2019

The Green New Deal As A Slow Suicide Pact

NY Governor Andrew Cuomo seems to have the goal of killing off his state's economy.  At least he's working overtime in that direction.  Cuomo's latest move is to kill a pipeline project that would have brought natural gas to Queens, Brooklyn and the rest of Long Island.  That area includes about a third of all the residents of the state, and it is an area that is running out of natural gas supply.  If you think about this for a moment, you will realize what this means.  Moving forward, there will be no new hookups for natural gas.  New homes won't be able to heat with low cost and low emission natural gas.  They will instead be heated by high cost electricity which means more burning of high emission coal, or they will use oil heat with its much higher cost and higher emissions.  In one move, Cuomo guarantees that new construction on Long Island will produce more pollution as well as cost substantially more to heat.  And Cuomo made this move for "environmental" reasons.  He doesn't want to be seen promoting the use of fossil fuels.

This is not the first time Captain Andy has run the state aground in connection with natural gas.  The Marcellus natural gas field runs under a large swath of upstate New York, but Cuomo banned the use of fracking which could allow the gas to be extracted.  The area of New York involved has been in economic stagnation for the last 50 years at a minimum.  The gas wells could have given residents huge increases in their incomes, provided tens of thousands of good paying jobs and resulted in a major boost to the state treasury as well.  Cuomo nixed it.

In the northern suburbs of New York City (like Westchester County), there is already such a shortage of natural gas that no new hook ups are allowed.  Again, that is the result of Cuomo killing a different pipeline for natural gas a few years back.

The crazy thing is that no one in New York seems to be paying attention to this fiasco.  It's just business as usual with the state literally teetering on the edge of the economic abyss.

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