03/29/2024

Blue, green — and brown

Go West, young man.

That’s our advice for Andrew Cuomo. By West, we mean California, where he would do well to ask his fellow Democratic governor — Jerry Brown — why good liberals should support fracking. In a budget-focused press conference this week, Brown put it this way:

“I have to balance my strong commitment to dealing with climate change, renewable energy, to what could be a fabulous economic opportunity,” Brown said. “This could be good. But there are issues. And I want to look at it.”

As well he should: The state’s Monterey Shale formation, stretching from Los Angeles to San Francisco, holds an estimated 15.5 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Fracking could mean as many as 500,000 jobs by 2015 and 2.8 million by 2020.

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