New England originally planned to get its oil and natural gas from Appalachia, but the necessary pipelines were blocked and canceled starting in 2016 by a series of environmentalist protests targeting the region’s pipeline infrastructure. As Time put it, “The U.S. has a Not In My Back Yard (NIMBY) problem with energy infrastructure.”
That resistance is spearheaded by segments of the environmentalist movement nominally more concerned with the fate of fish like the candy darter and the Roanoke logperch than their fellow man’s need for energy during the winter. In reality, some actors likely have more sinister motives: Environmental groups tied to the New England anti-pipeline movement have received tens of millions of dollars in “donations” from Russian-government-run energy companies.
It starts to make sense when you take a closer look at the interests involved. Boston was the U.S. hub of imported Russian oil and natural gas, with about 20 percent of New England’s supply coming from the country, until the invasion of Ukraine. This arrangement provided a boon to the Kremlin’s coffers, one Moscow was keen to preserve by exploiting blue-state environmentalism.
Now the region is reaping the consequences of foreign dependence.
[Way back when, the Soviets helped fund anti-energy activism around the world. This is just more of the same. And we keep getting fooled by it. — Ed]
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