Two-faced RFK Jr. ‘politicized science’ to kill NY – Latest News
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says he’s combating the sort of “politicized science that drove Froot Loops to the top of the food pyramid.”
President Donald Trump’s secretary of health and human providers has made a national model out of questioning regulatory seize, difficult false consensus and demanding transparency in public health.
But when it comes to fracking in New York, Kennedy wasn’t the whistleblower. He was the mythmaker.
Will he apply the identical skepticism to the fracking ban he himself helped create?
In 2013, Kennedy personally lobbied then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo to abandon a modest plan to allow simply 40 take a look at wells for hydraulic fracturing to extract natural fuel within the state’s Southern Tier.
His justification? A then-unreleased public health research from Pennsylvania’s Geisinger Health System, which Kennedy claimed would quickly affirm the health risks of fracking.
That research was by no means printed. But the parable it supported proved helpful.
Cuomo reversed course. The take a look at wells by no means opened.
And the fracking ban — initially pitched as non permanent — hardened into everlasting coverage.
The injury was actual: While neighboring Pennsylvania surged forward with an vitality increase, New York’s rural communities have been left behind.
Billions of {dollars} in vitality sources went untapped. Thousands of good-paying jobs by no means materialized.
Local economies that would have been revitalized as a substitute fell additional into decline.
In 2009, the Southern Tier counties of New York had larger GDP per capita than their neighbors throughout the border in northern Pennsylvania. Then New York banned fracking, whereas Pennsylvania embraced it.
Over the following decade, the financial trajectories flipped.
A current Heritage Foundation research evaluating these geologically comparable “Twin Tier” areas discovered that New York’s ban price its counties an estimated $11,000 per resident — or $27,000 per family — in misplaced financial output.
While Pennsylvania noticed a increase in jobs, small-business growth and tax revenues, New York’s rural economic system stagnated.
From motels and eating places to trucking and native trades, fracking fueled a broad-based revival in Pennsylvania.
In banning it, New York didn’t simply shut the door on drilling — it shut out an complete period of alternative.
Now, Kennedy is the nation’s high public health official — and he’s in a place to revisit the very type of politicized, fear-based narratives he claims to oppose.
Kennedy has made a profession out of attacking what he calls “inconvenient science” — from vaccine security to Big Food’s grip on national dietary pointers.
He rails towards media manipulation, company affect and authorities collusion with particular pursuits.
But if he’s severe about any of that, he should apply the identical customary to himself.
The arguments used to ban fracking in New York haven’t held up.
Oversight has improved. Technology has superior. The environmental and health dangers are far more manageable than the alarmist rhetoric of 2014 advised.
And but the ban stays — frozen in place by outdated speaking factors and a decade-old political determination Kennedy helped orchestrate.
Fracking just isn’t with out environmental penalties. But neither is vitality poverty, rural financial decline or mass outmigration.
Public health is about more than air high quality — it’s about jobs, housing and alternative, too.
If Kennedy really desires to lead a national dialog on science, health and integrity, he ought to begin by revisiting the story he helped sell.
New York’s fracking ban was not grounded in rigorous science, however in worry, political stress and a conveniently timed delusion.
Kennedy doesn’t regulate vitality. But he does form how the nation thinks about public health trade-offs and scientific trust.
He can’t have it each methods — decrying captured science when it fits his present agenda, whereas ignoring it when it advantages his personal convictions or previous positions.
To restore public trust in science, Kennedy ought to call for a full, unbiased review of New York’s fracking ban.
This isn’t about pleasing the vitality industry — which has largely deserted hopes for fracking in New York — or about political leverage within the ongoing Constitution Pipeline dispute between Trump and Gov. Kathy Hochul.
Rather, it’s about Kennedy modeling the identical transparency and mental honesty he calls for from others in difficult established views. The credibility of his complete mission depends upon it.
Anything much less would affirm what many already suspect: that Kennedy’s combat towards “politicized science” applies solely to causes he opposes — and by no means to the environmental narratives he helped create.
David Catalfamo, president of Capital Public Strategies, was a communications director and vice president for financial development underneath Gov. George Pataki.
