NY Lunacy – Bill Allows Residents to Sue O&G for Global Warming
We have lamented, on many occasions, that New York State (our beloved home state) has simply gone to Hades. The state is now run by left-wing radicals. When you cross the border into NY, you are entering The Twilight Zone (a pun and nod to the talented Rod Serling, who was born and grew up in Binghamton, NY). Case in point: A radical member of the NY Senate, along with a member of the NY Assembly, have teamed up to introduce a truly frightening bill. Senate Bill S9612, introduced by the wacky Sen. Zellnor Myrie, a Brooklyn Democrat, would allow anyone to sue oil and gas companies claiming damage from mythical (and unproven) “climate change.”
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The policies of politicians like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul have real-world consequences. Even if those policies never actually get implemented. Last week, the intellectually-challenged Hochul proposed banning the sale of all new natural gas appliances across the state, and indeed ban hooking up new homes and businesses to gas, by 2030 (see
The Upper Delaware Council (UDC) hosted a public presentation titled “Water Resource and Environmental Considerations with Shale Gas Development in the Appalachian Basin” last week at the Upper Delaware Council office in Narrowsburg, NY. The program was delivered virtually by Dr. David Yoxtheimer, Ph.D., P.G., assistant research professor and Extension associate with the Marcellus Center for Outreach and Research at Penn State University. Yoxtheimer did a great job of laying out the facts of Marcellus drilling–both the good and the not-so-good, with an eye on how to mitigate the risks.
Gov. Kathy Hochul is proposing to make New York the first state in the U.S. to ban natural gas heating and appliances in new buildings as a way to fight mythical man-made global warming. During her state-of-the-state address on Tuesday, Hochul proposed to ban the use of fossil fuels for heating and appliances (stoves) in homes by 2025, and a ban for businesses and larger structures (like apartment buildings) by 2028. New York would also prohibit the sale of any new fossil-fuel heating systems starting in 2030. Yes, she has certifiably lost her mind.
You may want to consider moving out of New York State if you still live here. The state has collectively lost its mind. NY political leaders are so consumed with hatred of fossil fuels they are about to force its residents to pay an average of $28,000 to convert their homes away from heating and cooking with natural gas, propane, and fuel oil (see
Industrial Energy Consumers of America (IECA), a trade group representing some of the biggest consumers of energy in the U.S. (i.e., manufacturers), wrote a letter to the governors of 12 states along the Eastern Seaboard asking those governors to prioritize natural gas pipelines in their respective states (full copy of the letter below). Recipients included Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and (falling on deaf ears) New York and New Jersey. According to the letter, manufacturing companies along the East Coast face growing natural gas scarcity due to the lack of interstate natural gas pipeline capacity.
Most New Yorkers are clueless about a law passed in 2019 called the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (or “Climate Act”), which limits carbon dioxide emissions to zero (an impossibility) by 2050 (see
In April, the New York State Assembly passed Assembly Bill A7389C. In June, the New York State Senate passed the same bill, sending it to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s desk for a signature (see 

Politics is fascinating for us (in case you couldn’t tell when reading MDN). This site often features articles about the intersection of politics and energy. Living in New York State, editor Jim Willis has long advocated for shale drilling. Fracking in NY was the reason Jim started this blog/news site! MDN began in 2009 when shale drilling in NY seemed about to take off. And then, a series of unfortunate events led to the profoundly corrupt Andrew Cuomo becoming governor, seizing power in the Empire State. Cuomo not only temporarily blocked fracking in NY, he ultimately signed a bill into law permanently banning it (see
In September, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that the state senators who represent Pennsylvania landowners living in the Delaware River Basin, primarily in Wayne and Pike counties in the northeastern corner of Pennsylvania, don’t have “standing” to sue the Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) to overturn its ban on fracking (see
It grieves us to write this, but New York State and its uber-leftist, very destructive Governor, Kathy Hochul, is running rings around Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia with respect to attracting one of four $2 billion hydrogen hubs. Hochul has just orchestrated adding two more states to what is now a six-state coalition aimed at grabbing the hub. In addition to six northeastern states, the NY coalition boasts the participation of 14 private sector industry leaders, 12 utilities, 20 hydrogen technology original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), ten universities, seven non-profits, two transportation companies, and three state agencies. There are over 60 partners cooperating to lay the groundwork for attracting the hydrogen hub to New York State.