If Gov. Hochul wants a bright future for New York, she’ll end the insane ban on fracking

For all her talk of wanting to make New York more affordable and livable, Gov. Kathy Hochul refuses to even contemplate a huge potential boon to the state’s economy: lifting the ban on fracking.

Instead, last month she extended New York’s hydraulic-fracturing ban by prohibiting a new technique to use carbon dioxide to extract natural gas harmlessly.

This, when fracking is used across the country with no sign of the harms cited by its critics; the ban rests on nothing but pseudo-science and green bigotry against any and all fossil fuels — even though the technique and the abundant natural-gas drilling it has allowed is responsible for the US energy revolution of the last two decades and most of the nation’s progress in reducing carbon emissions.

It’s in wide use right next door in Pennsylvania, and a key reason why electric bills there run about half what they do here; it’s brought billions in economic benefits to the Keystone State.

 “If New York were able to produce just half the natural gas Pennsylvania does,” notes energy expert Jonathan Lesser, it could create “upwards of 50,000 direct jobs” and “many more indirect ones.” The resulting “tax bonanza” would bring Albany several hundred million dollars a year, “plus over $100 million annually in impact fees for local communities.”

And the Empire State might be able to harvest more gas than its neighbor: New York’s natural-gas reserves in the Marcellus and Utica Shale regions could be worth $1 trillion.

But ideologues used fearmongering and deceit to ban it starting in 2008, with then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo cynically signing the idiocy into law in 2014.

Cuomo, Hochul and state Democrats have instead inflicted New York with the wildly expensive and impractical “Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act,” which pretends wind and solar can provide most of the state’s power needs.

This crusade slams quality of life across the state, outlawing new gas hook-ups for homes and businesses and pushing up power prices even as it makes future blackouts a near-certainty.

And Hochul late last month tripled down on the nonsense by signing the so-called “Polluters Pay” Act, which aims to raise $75 billion with new charges on energy producers — costs that will inevitably be passed on to energy consumers, namely every man, woman and child in the state.

New York will fall even further behind the saner parts of the county as natural-gas production skyrockets after President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

Is it any wonder that United Van Lines ranks New York third on its annual list of the “Most Moved From States” in 2024?

The state won’t stop losing ground ’til it reverses course, and allowing fracking is the simplest first step: It won’t cost Albany a dime, but instead provide a windfall that could easily replace the MTA’s “congestion pricing” toll income and allow cutting many other taxes.

Yes, lifting the ban likely requires a huge political fight, but no Albany battle is more worth waging.

If New York is ever to rise from its economic doldrums and enter a new era of prosperity and affordability, it must face reality and join the rest of America in embracing fracking.