New Democratic Candidate for NY Governor advocates for BAN on FRACKING: Zephyr Teachout is a candiate for governor of New York in the Democratic primary on September 9. Her op ed (below) was published in the Binghamton Press Sun-Bulletin today. Last May Governor Andrew Cuomo told New York he would make a decision on fracking, a process for extracting natural gas, before he was up for re-election this year. In November, he repeated the promise. Today New York is less than two months away from the next election – and New Yorkers are still awaiting a decision. I’ve looked at the scientific evidence – peer-reviewed research that examines the impact of fracking on everything from human health, to drinking water, to climate change – and I’ve made a decision. If I am elected governor, I will ban fracking my first day in office. Fracking contaminates water supplies, pollutes the air, and disrupts rural communities and local economies. Shale gas extraction is a capital-intensive industrial process that creates few local jobs and is likely to result in a boom-bust economy that leaves extraction zones worse off economically than they were before the drillers came to town. We have enough sun, wind, and water for a renewable future. We must not surrender to the politics of scarcity, the idea that because there is not enough we must extract. We must take back our power. Renewables empower us as individuals, making us less dependent on a few giant incumbent companies for our energy. Policies that allow us to charge our cars in solar parking lots and sell our electricity to the grid would not only transition us to more sustainable sources of energy, but also promote a more decentralized and democratic economy. A top priority for my administration would be to identify how New York can move to 100 percent renewables. Research by the Solutions Project suggests this is possible. We can also encourage investment in clean energy by eliminating the massive taxpayer subsidies that prop up the coal, oil, and gas industries. Governor Cuomo has failed to lead on energy issues. Each day he dithers over fracking, he deprives New York workers of good jobs in the clean energy sector. As a 2009 study by researches at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst found, “[C]lean energy investments generate three times more jobs than an equivalent amount of money spent on carbon-based fuels.” Governor Cuomo says he wants to make a decision free of politics, one based on “facts and science and logic and information.” But the real reason the governor is delaying his decision appears to be precisely because of politics – and money. Cuomo has collected around $1 million from pro-fracking interests. His supporters include David Koch, one of the most extreme proponents of hydrocarbons in America, who made an $87,000 contribution to his last campaign. When the private interests of a few threaten to despoil our precious commons, a governor must make hard choices to look out for the public interest. These decisions require courage, which Governor Cuomo has shown he doesn’t possess. As Franklin D. Roosevelt, former US president and a former governor of New York, noted, “A nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.”
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 13:41:46 +0000
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