Gov. Andrew Cuomo has grown so desperate to dodge the blame for the natural gas shortage hitting Long Island and parts of Brooklyn that he’s gone on the attack against his own Public Service Commission.
You wouldn’t know it from the gov’s letter Thursday to John Rhodes, the PSC chair, but the commissioners are his own appointees.
Yet that doesn’t stop him from diving deep in conspiracy theories.
As the utility warned far in advance, its moratorium is necessary because a key proposed pipeline got blocked — by another agency that answers completely to Cuomo, with a New Jersey agency then agreeing.
Why, Cuomo demands to know, did the PSC let National Grid avoid making other plans to handle the potential shortage?
It’s simple: Because there was never any good reason to block the pipeline: The pretext for doing so — a supposed threat to the water purity between New Jersey and New York — is patently absurd, since it would run right next to an existing pipeline, installed years ago with no problems.
The gov makes a big deal of ordering the commission to look at the alternatives now — but all of them are well-known, with obvious problems that make the pipeline by far the best option.
(Switching to oil or trucked-in natural gas means higher carbon emissions and other environmental risks; no major source of alternative energy can possibly be ready in time, or at anything like the low cost; etc., etc.)
Cuomo rails about National Grid’s “over-reliance on a highly complex and controversial pipeline project.” Hah! Only the rapidly escalating demands of extreme environmentalists made it “controversial,” and industry mastered any “complexities” decades ago.
The gov then makes noises about revoking the company’s license and/or holding it liable for damages — once again (as he regularly does with Con Ed) using the utility as a scapegoat to avoid taking any blame himself.
He hasn’t yet gone as far as to rap the half-dozen Long Island Democratic state senators who, after long opposing new pipelines, suddenly requested an exception in this one case once their constituents started screaming.
But Cuomo is plainly feeling the heat, and rightly so — since his policies are literally leaving innocent consumers out in the cold.
Read more at NY Post
Now isn’t this what Cuomo wanted? The citizens of NY State to stop using carbon-based energy and go strictly to “green energy”? So why is he acting this way? Oh, I get it. Those same citizens want cheap, reliable energy to heat their homes and cook their meals. And don’t see any climate emergency in spite the constant drumbeat that we are at some tipping point.
This politically created energy shortage is indeed, unfortunate not only for New York area consumers but New England (overall). The NY/NJ pipeline is only the latest of several projects that the NY DEQ, with Governor Cuomo’s blessing, have blocked construction over the past 2-3 years. While I wish no bad tidings on anyone, perhaps a really COLD winter in the Northeast will prove instructive. When all the “finger pointing” gets in high gear when thousands of folks are sitting in cold, dark luxury apartments on the east coast, perhaps these folks will start looking at FACTS and educating themselves how our energy system REALLY works! If they bother to look at the “root cause” of gas curtailments & blackouts, they will determine it’s due to short sighted governmental POLICY, not ineptitude by energy PROVIDERS. My hope is this unfortunate development drives a rational, well informed debate regarding our energy TRANSITION & attendant environmental protection. Most people take our energy system for granted and give little thought to the MANY positive impacts of fossil fuels in their daily lives. Perhaps a large slice of “Humble Pie” will wake up the citizenry to the challenges posed by energy imperatives. Time for a “cool change”…
Cuomo is a total idiot blaming the Big Apples gas shortage on everyone but himself and the DNC and the Eco-Freaks the Keep i in the Ground idiots with that stupid finger pointing at the ground but of course he will never suffer from a shortage like the avage man on the street dose because this arrogant old Peacock has his own way to keep himself warm on some cold windy snowy night
GOOD! I really like that. You, morons in New York voted for the clinically insane lunatics/democrats, now you have it. You get what you deserve, you arrogant, uneducated, brainwashed suckers.
You are the ones who elected psychopaths to run your city. Now you can enjoy your ride to the Liberal Hell.
I really feel for my former colleagues at Watervliet Arsenal and Benet Labs. They are all conservative men and women living in a rural area, subjugated by irrational fools in NYC.
The Big Apple still has worms in its core and these worms are so bad the other worms avoid them