The State That’s Prioritizing Residents’ Safety Over Natural Gas Profits

New York is telling the oil and gas industry to get out.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration recently announced that hydraulic fracturing has been banned in the state, as the process “could contaminate the state’s air and water and pose inestimable public-health risks,” the New York Times reports.
“I cannot support high volume hydraulic fracturing in the great state of New York,” says Howard Zucker, the acting commissioner of health.
Fracking, which involves shooting a highly pressurized mixture of water and chemicals into shale formations to release natural gases, is currently driving a drilling boom across the country and is a big reason why your gas is so cheap.
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New York has long been resistant to the process. The state already had a de-facto moratorium on fracking for several years, and as we reported in July, New York’s top court upheld Home Rule, which gave municipalities the right to apply its zoning laws to oil and gas wells. The latest decision is just a final blow to the state’s natural gas industry.
Mother Jones notes that New York isn’t the first state to ban fracking — that honor belongs to Vermont, which banned it in 2012 (but since it doesn’t have natural gas, the move was mostly symbolic). Because New York sits on the gas-rich Marcellus shale formation, “this is the first state ban with real significance,” Kate Sinding, a senior attorney in New York for the Natural Resources Defense Council, tells the publication.
Proponents of the process cite its potential to bolster the economy and create tens of thousands of jobs. That’s why, as Capital New York reports, Gov. Cuomo is already anticipating “a ton of lawsuits” in response to the decision.
Still, it’s a major victory for our health and the health of the planet. Actor and prominent eco-activist Mark Ruffalo (who recently wrote a Huffington Post article about the many dangers of fracking) posted an Instragram video about the decision and thanked Cuomo, Zucker and Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Joe Martens for their work.
He also gave a shout-out to “all the beautiful, dedicated people on the anti-fracking movement who used science, their guts, their brains and their hearts to make this day a reality.”
Let’s hope this this movement catches on country-wide.

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How a Second Chance Can Benefit Prisoners and Taxpayers

The numbers are shocking. Almost half of all prisoners who received parole in the previous 15 years had been recincarcerated within three years of their release, according to a Pew Research study published in April 2011. It’s no wonder that overcrowding has crippled the U.S. prison system, as taxpayers foot an ever-growing bill to keep criminals behind bars. It may seem at times that there are revolving doors to our nation’s prisons, but there is one cost-effective solution that has proven results: education. Research has shown that inmates who took part in educational programs were at a much lower risk of recidivism within three years of their release. With that in mind, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced a plan to finance college classes in 10 state prisons, giving inmates the opportunity to earn either an associate’s or bachelor’s degree over a two- to three-year period. Currently, New York spends $60,000 per year on every prisoner. The education program would be a fraction of the cost — $5,000 per inmate, per year — and would hopefully keep participants from returning to jail. “Giving men and women in prison the opportunity to earn a college degree costs our state less and benefits our society more,” Governor Cuomo said in a press release. “Someone who leaves prison with a college degree has a real shot at a second lease on life because their education gives them the opportunity to get a job and avoid falling back into a cycle of crime.”
MORE: Why Prisons of the Future May Look Like College Campuses
While New York is far from the only state to experiment with prison education, for the most part, these programs have been funded and run by private groups. A study by the University of Missouri’s Institute of Public Policy found that the state’s inmates’ chances of finding full-time employment after being released were greatly enhanced if they had completed a prison education program. Reincarceration rates for those with full-time jobs were “nearly cut in half” compared to those who were unemployed. In New York, Bard College has directed a smaller initiative, with enrollment of around 500 prisoners since 2001. Of those participants, more than 250 have earned degrees. While the state’s recidivism rate hovers at around 40 percent, only 4 percent of prisoners who took part in the Bard Prison Initiative returned to the prison system. Of those who graduated, the recidivism rate dropped to 2.5 percent. Overall, researchers at the RAND Corporation found that inmates who participated in prison education programs have a recidivism rate of 43 percent less than those who did not.
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With statistics like these, why wouldn’t state or even federal governments invest in correctional education? Opponents of Governor Cuomo’s plan, like Republican Senator Greg Ball, say that the last thing the state should be doing is funding education for criminals, especially when law-abiding families are struggling to send their own children to college. But that outlook may be shortsighted. In 2010, more than 650,000 people were released from prisons nationwide. At the current rate, almost half of them will return. By providing these people with an education that can help them get jobs, taxpayers could save $2.7 billion per year. That’s no small sum of money. And providing correctional education has another positive result: giving a second chance to those who want to leave behind a life of crime.
MORE: One Unexpected Benefit of Educating Young Criminals