For Immediate Release
Wednesday November 6, 2013
Contact: Roger Downs (518) 426-9144 or roger.downs@sierraclub.org
Ed Cox Stars Tonight as Richard III
Buffalo, NY - Tonight, NY GOP Chairman Ed Cox will give the keynote address at the Independent Oil & Gas Association’s annual meeting with a speech entitled: "Andrew Cuomo: Hamlet of the Shale" in which he will make a call to open the fracking floodgates in New York during his party’s ‘winter of discontent’.
The Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter’s Roger Downs responds:
“Tonight’s speech shows how out of touch Ed Cox is with NY voters. Poll after poll demonstrates that New Yorkers are increasingly opposed to fracking and understand the economic downside of drilling is as severe as the threat to public health and safety.”
"Cox’s demand to permit fracking in New York comes at a time when the Pennsylvanian fracking boom is busting, with the exodus of drilling rigs leaving deep scars of joblessness and debt across the State. The implosion of the fracking economy has put PA Governor Corbett’s job in jeopardy – yet it is the model Cox demands that we bring to New York. Conversely, a new report by the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center shows that jobs in the clean energy sector have grown by 24 % since 2011 in MA, with nearly 80,000 people directly employed in the new green economy. That’s more than twice the number of natural gas jobs created in Pennsylvania during the entire fracking boom.”
“Governor Cuomo, in his deliberation of the pros and cons of fracking, has sided with precaution. If Cox intends to draw out the overplayed analogy of Cuomo as a handwringing Hamlet – then he is most certainly aspiring to play the role of Richard the III.
After driving the party of Theodore Roosevelt into the ground, Cox is now pandering to a listless oil and gas industry in New York. One has to wonder if he is really thinks this move will help his party or is he just cashing in with the frackers, like a defeated despot willing to wager his kingdom for a horse.”
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