The technologies of “fracking,” and horizontal drilling are rapidly transforming the world’s energy situation. These technologies make it possible to tap into vast deposits of both natural gas and oil in shale layers around the world. The United States is particularly rich in such deposits. American domestic energy production has been rising rapidly (and imports falling commensurately), while our carbon emissions have been falling to the lowest level since 1992, because natural gas is increasingly replacing coal as a fuel in electric generating plants.

And since energy is one of the most important of economic inputs, it is transforming the world’s geopolitics as well, much to the benefit of the United States and many of its allies (such as Canada and Australia) and much to the detriment of such countries as Russia, the Gulf States of the Middle East, and Venezuela.

Naturally, the environmental movement is outraged at these developments.

This misnamed movement (it’s actually an anti-commerce movement with more than a tinge of misanthropy about it) is populated almost entirely by members of the upper middle class with comfortable six- and seven-figure incomes. They don’t care what energy costs because even if the costs doubled, it would have no impact whatever on their own standard of living. Their consumption of Chablis and Brie would not have to be cut back.

The environmental movement has disproportionate influence on Democratic politics and if you’d like a perfect example of that, just consider Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York.

The Marcellus shale is a vast geologic layer underlying much of upstate New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Ohio. It is enormously rich in natural gas that can be accessed with the new technology. Pennsylvania has been exploiting this unexpected bounty with enthusiasm (Power Line has a neat little interactive map showing this). And that has had enormously positive effects on Pennsylvania’s economy and its government’s tax revenues.

The area of New York State underlain by the Marcellus shale has been in an economic depression for decades as its once booming industrial cities, such as Buffalo, Rochester, and Syracuse, have seen industry flee to areas with better weather, right-to-work laws, and fewer regulations. You would think that the economic possibilities of the Marcellus shale being demonstrated so visibly in the state immediately to the south would cause New York to move quickly to bring increased jobs and mineral royalties to western New York and greatly increased tax revenue to the entire state.

You’d be wrong. The environmentalists are in full Chicken-Little mode (ground-water contamination! fuel spills! greenhouse gases! children refusing to eat their vegetables!) and Governor Cuomo pathetically cowers before them. He (and his predecessor) have been dragging their feet in the time-honored way of politicians, ordering study after study and postponing decisions until the studies are in and evaluated. If the study doesn’t produce the data they want, the study is suppressed. Only when a report was “obtained by the New York Times from an expert who did not believe it should be kept secret,” did the people of New York State get to learn that the state Health Department regards gas drilling to be safe.

Of course, Pennsylvania has been an ongoing experiment for the last six years and more as to the safety of gas drilling. If there have been any disasters in the Keystone State with regard to the drilling, recovery, and transportation of gas from the Marcellus shale, it has gone unreported.

The reason Governor Cuomo has, effectively, told upstate New York to drop dead, is, of course, that Democrats running statewide for office win downstate, in New York City and its suburbs. Upstate is Republican country.

So Governor Cuomo is simply being concerned with what is most important to Governor Cuomo: his re-election. The welfare and prosperity of the State of New York come a long way second.