Obama faces fracking protesters in NY

Protesters opposed to hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, greeted President Obama’s motorcade when he arrived Thursday at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.

The crowd of protesters chanted “end fracking now,” while waving anti-fracking signs, according to a White House press pool report.

{mosads}Obama went to Cooperstown on Thursday to speak at the Hall of Fame about the economic benefits of tourism.

Obama has pushed natural gas as a cleaner alternative to fuels such as coal and oil. In his State of the Union address in January, he said, “if extracted safely, it’s the bridge fuel that can power our economy with less of the carbon pollution that causes climate change.”

The town of Middlefield, of which Cooperstown is a part, is locked in a court battle over whether individual communities in New York can ban fracking. The state, meanwhile, has not decided whether to allow fracking.