Fidel joins Putin - and the NYT - in the fight against shale gas

Cuba´s Fidel Castro is joining Russia´s Putin - and the New York Times - in condemning the American-led shale gas revolution:

Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said on Thursday the world was on an "inexorable march toward the abyss," which he blamed in part on the discovery and exploitation of vast reserves of so-called "shale gas" around the world.

The Energy In Depth blog has some thoughts about the new Cuban-Russian alliance:

For nearly forty years, Cuba and the Soviet Union joined hands across the Atlantic to oppose western civilization. The private sector became the bête noire for both countries, with Cuba and the USSR consistently looking for evidence that would undermine economic freedom (they failed). But with the fall of the Soviet Union, the legitimacy of communism also crumbled under the weight of a superior economic model: the market economy. The ideological link between Russia and communist Cuba was strained, if not completely severed.
But shale development represents a new bond between Cuba and Russia, a source of joint opposition that is, once again, premised on nothing more than flawed logic and a commitment to undermining a superior (and safer) economic system.

Why the New York Times has chosen to join the Casto/Putin team is more difficult to understand. The Reason.com blog offers one explanation:

However, leftish opposition to fracking is not about the problem of industrial accidents; it's about the fact that cheap abundant relatively low-carbon natural gas undercuts their preferred forms of high-cost renewable energy, chiefly wind and solar power.