April 5, 2016

Anti-Energy Activists Take Their Show to Albany

Another week, another protest by anti-energy extremists who are trying to stop badly needed infrastructure.  Today’s excitement takes us to Albany, New York, where a coalition of anti-natural gas groups and other anti-fossil fuel groups are protesting the proposed Constitution Pipeline, which would deliver natural gas from Pennsylvania to New York. 

Unlike the neighboring Keystone State, New York’s already at an economic disadvantage due to its decision to ban shale development.  The privately financed and constructed Constitution Pipeline will help offset at least some of those losses by creating a new, reliable natural gas source that will generate $13 million a year in new, annual tax revenue and help local businesses by potentially relieving high energy costs.  In addition, construction of the pipeline will create hundreds of jobs to be filled by in-state workers.  That’s why the project has a diverse group of supporters, such as the trade union LiUNA, the Albany Times-Union, the New York State Business Council and the Manufacturers Association of New York. 

The federal government has already approved the pipeline, so activists are now focused on the New York’s Department of Environmental Quality.

If facts win the day, then the pipeline should have no problem.  But those who wish to see an end to fossil fuels—and  a further increase to the already-high energy costs that New Yorkers pay—have already shown that facts hardly  matter when there’s something new to protest.