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asthma
It's Time to Make Gas a Dirty Word
The natural gas industry is destroying the climate, and destroying people’s lungs, and it’s trying to lock us into this expensive practice for decades to come.
Jul 28, 2026
We talk regularly about Big Oil, but it would probably make more sense to at least occasionally refer to it as Big Gas—many of the same players are involved, of course, and the two are often found in the same places, but it’s been clear for some time that oil is not a growth industry. The rapid rise of electric vehicles in most of the world undercuts projections of future use—we’re at or near the top of the plateau now, and by 2030 or so the amount of oil we use should be going down.
That’s why the hydrocarbon industry’s growth story has been largely about natural gas. It’s used for many things—heating, cooking—but above all for generating electricity, and it’s on that ground that the fossil fuel industry has set out to build its market, stressing constantly that it is clean and cheap. Two important new reports in recent days make it clear how false those claims really are.
The first comes from a Center for Climate Integrity team led by Rebecca Leber and Rebecca John. Leber has a long record covering the industry—her 2020 report in Mother Jones about the industry paying Instagram influencers to plug natural gas was an early landmark in our understanding of pay-for-play social media, as well as the lengths the industry would go to in order to tell its fibs. (“#cookingwithgas makes food taste better,” says Camille, an LA-based foodie who poses artfully with her spatula, to her 16,700 followers.”)
But as they document in the new report, which should be read in full, this is a very old story. It turns out that the natural gas industry has been playing the PR game for a very long time. As far back as the 1950s, gas had a bad image: it was known to contribute to respiratory problems when burned indoors (more on that later!), and to local air pollution. And as scientists first started analyzing the greenhouse effect in the 1970s, most of the concern was about carbon dioxide, but there was a growing realization that methane—which is essentially what natural gas is—was the smaller but still important sibling greenhouse gas. And so the industry began doing what it did best, which is lying, or, to use the technical term, “public relations.” They constructed a whole mythology around natural gas, turning it into the fossil fuel equivalent of the “other white meat”:
In the late 1980s, the gas industry and major oil companies started to brand gas as a “bridge fuel”—a clean-burning transition fuel to a renewable energy future. In reality, they planned a long-term future for natural gas, while simultaneously undermining renewables, obstructing the destination to which gas’ “bridge” was supposed to lead. Over the next 20 years, the industry effectively solidified the bridge fuel myth by co-opting the science and oversight originally intended to keep carbon and methane emissions in check.
Working together in a growing coalition that included the oil majors and ultimately several major environmental groups, the industry managed to temper concerns about methane using strategies crafted by the same firms that for decades undermined the scientific consensus about the harms of tobacco. AGA and allied groups aggressively challenged the science around methane through industry-funded studies and the creation of the objective-sounding Gas Research Institute.
But their approach was multidimensional. While muddying the waters on the industry’s methane problem, the gas industry was careful not to deny the issue of climate change outright, instead focusing attention on carbon dioxide. It paired this with relentlessly promoting the concept of gas as clean—certainly cleaner than coal or oil—and positioning gas as a bridge fuel and climate solution. In the process, the gas industry solidified partnerships with EPA with the explicit goal of fending off regulations in favor of voluntary emissions management, while also recruiting environmental organizations that would lend legitimacy to their arguments.
I want to highlight the effectiveness of this strategy with a story about… me. In 1988, before this campaign took off, I was writing The End of Nature, sometimes called the first book for a general audience on climate change. And in it I wrote:
A common suggestion is to replace much of the coal and oil we burn with natural gas, since it produces only about half as much carbon dioxide. But it natural gas—methane—escapes into the atmosphere before it burns, it traps solar radiation more efficiently than CO2… As a result, switching to natural gas may have no effect on the greenhouse effect. It might even make it worse.
So give me credit for knowing this crucial science when I was 27.
But not really, because I think I more or less forgot it over the next two decades, as the gas industry rearranged the terms of the debate, and turned it into the lesser of two climate evils, the “bridge” to a future of cleaner energy. This argument was bought wholesale by politicians, especially Democratic ones—if you go read Barack Obama’s State of the Union addresses, most of them include a paragraph praising the fracking revolution as both an economic boon and a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions; we were replacing coal with something cleaner. The Sierra Club’s leader, Carl Pope, barnstormed around the country with one of the fracking industry’s chief spokespeople, promoting this “solution” to the climate crisis.
And so it seemed novel to me when two Cornell scientists, Bob Howarth and Tony Ingraffea, about 15 years ago, began publishing data showing that leak rates from fracking meant that natural gas was no cleaner than coal—the argument that had been there all along. I wrote some early pieces on their work for The New York Review of Books, and then published a long piece in The Nation that made the same point I’d made more than a quarter-century earlier:
Our combined emissions of methane and carbon dioxide have gone steadily and sharply up during the Obama years. We closed coal plants and opened methane leaks, and the result is that things have gotten worse.
I’ve made up for my forgetfulness, I think, by helping lead battles against fracking, and against the buildout of liquefied natural gas (LNG) export terminals; those of you who have been long subscribers to this newsletter got to participate in that latter fight, which we won in the Biden years and then lost in the Trump risorgimento. But if the PR campaign flummoxed me, imagine how well it worked on people who weren’t paying much attention at all (which included virtually everyone in political life, especially Democrats who saw natural gas as a way to have their green cake and reccycle it too). Many thanks to Leber, John, and their whole team for laying the story out in all its gory detail.
The other claim about natural gas is that it’s cheap—this is the formulation that “leaders” like New York Gov. Kathy Hochul are currently relying on as they link fracked gas and affordability as an excuse to cut back on moving towards renewables, and that data center developers are using to justify a buildout of natural gas generation.
But a report out this morning from the good folks at Oil Change International puts paid to all that. It makes clear that the industry is running out of the really cheap stuff—the fracked gas from the Permian and Appalachian shales that it’s been pumping for the last two decades. Many of those wells are playing out fast, and now it’s going to need to turn to the more “geologically complex” Haynesville shale of east Texas and Louisiana, and that will drive up costs—especially since more and more of the gas is, at least theoretically, going to be exported to Asia as the industry builds out massive shipping terminals along the Gulf of Mexico:
If industry succeeds in locking in unprecedented demand for US gas by expanding exports and domestic consumption, US supply may be pushed to its limits. Gas supply can only meet such high levels of demand if prices rise to cover the higher production costs of marginal gas supplies. This connects rising dependence on gas to rising energy costs. US consumers and those in LNG-importing countries must push policymakers to reduce dependence on fossil fuels and accelerate the transition to reliable, affordable renewable energy
The numbers are fairly startling:
Between 2026 and 2040, the average wholesale price of gas could be 80% higher than during the past decade of US LNG exports, a decade when energy price volatility was already causing hardship in the US and LNG-importing countries. Prices could double relative to the 2020 to 2025 average by the late 2030s.
In other words, those politicians locking us in to natural gas are guaranteeing that our kids will spend much of their lives paying far more for energy than they should—and far more than people in the rest of the world will be spending. Because politicians in those countries are starting to wake up. A big piece in the Times yesterday described the ways that many governments are now trying to “unshackle” themselves from natural gas, after watching the supply dry up with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. In the Philippines, for example:
The country’s largest solar project began delivering its first megawatts of power in March. That came two weeks after the outbreak of the Iran War, which pushed up energy prices and knocked out 20% of the global LNG supply.
“That was fortunate timing. It was like fate,” said Emmanuel Rubio, the chief executive of Meralco PowerGen, the utility-backed power generation company that operates and invests in Terra Solar and gas- and coal-fired power plants in the Philippines.
For a country that imports nearly all of its fossil fuels, the solar project has proved that “we can actually be, to a certain extent, self-reliant,” he added.
The collection of lies around natural gas are collapsing in other ways, too. Another new study, this one from an Ohio team, went back to those fears around gas and indoor air pollution that dated all the way back to the 1950s, and what it found was truly startling. As Gary Fuller summarizes, replacing a gas stove with an electric burner—say, an induction cooktop, available online for $60—reduces childhood asthma dramatically. And when I say dramatically, I mean: better than the best medicine:
Ohio’s publicly owned MetroHealth began the study in December 2024 but funding was terminated early by the incoming Trump administration. It had been designed to investigate if replacing gas cooking improved asthma for 1,200 people living near Cleveland, Ohio.
Prof Ash Sehgal of Case Western Reserve University, the project’s leader, said: “We had completed the project at fewer than 100 households. As a result, over 1,100 households were unable to benefit. We also had to lay off about 20 project staff.”
The team finished the stove replacements that were underway and closed the project, but to the researchers’ surprise, the benefits could be clearly detected even in the scaled-down study of 72 homes.
Sehgal said: “We were surprised when we analysed the results and found a very large effect size. The improvements in asthma symptoms following stove change were similar to–or even greater than–those reported in clinical trials of commonly used asthma medications.”
Angela Bland, a 38-year-old resident of Akron, Ohio, said: “I didn’t realize my gas stove was the issue until I used the electric stove. I now need my inhaler way less often.”
If you want more on this study, check out Sammy Roth’s Climate Colored Goggles newsletter. He interviewed Segal too: “Our improvement was about twice as much as you typically see with medical treatment of asthma,” the researcher said. It truly is remarkable to think how much good we could do simply by dousing the campfire that most people have in their kitchen.
Anyway, to summarize: The natural gas industry is destroying the climate, and destroying people’s lungs, and it’s trying to lock us into this expensive practice for decades to come.
Any effort to slow it down is met with massive resistance. In Colorado, for instance, some towns have tried to prevent gas hookups in new buildings, requiring them to go all-electric. The industry has responded by organizing on behalf of a constitutional amendment called the “Right to Natural Gas,” which will go on the November ballot. As Maya McDaniel writes:
The proposed amendment states that “producers and utilities have the right to sell natural gas to homes and businesses.” That could force changes to building codes that encourage electric heating and cooking, undoing progress toward electrification.
“Really, it’s just a cynical attempt to lock fossil fuel industry profits into the state constitution,” said Kelly Nordini, CEO of Conservation Colorado, an environmental nonprofit. “That’s bad for people’s pocketbooks, for clean air, for clean water; it has no provisions for public health or safety.”
Really, the first lucky break for natural gas came back in the 19th century, when it acquired that moniker, to differentiate it from “manufactured” or “town” gas, made by burning coal in the absence of air, and then piped through municipalities for street lighting and other tasks. These gasworks shut down as big deposits of naturally occurring gas were discovered, hence the name.
I’ve taken to calling it ‘fracked gas’ in recent years, since that industry term for the new methods of liberating the fuel from tight rocks makes it sound almost as disgusting as it is. “Fossil gas” works too, or perhaps “asthma gas.” But our job is to make it a dirty word of some kind. The future depends on it.
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Trump’s Drive to Undermine Our Progress on Clean Transportation Will Erode Our Health
Instead of making our health a priority, the administration has chosen to delay progress in order preserve a pollution-producing and car-centric status quo.
Apr 23, 2025
Picture this: You’re a kid in New York City living in the South Bronx and you have asthma. While friends go outside to play, you stay behind, worried that an asthma attack could send you to the hospital. Your neighborhood is surrounded by three highways and five bridges, with 300 trucks driving by every hour spewing toxic pollution. Unfortunately, this is common for many children in the lower income areas of the city who face disproportionate air pollution. Children in the South Bronx face a 17% asthma risk, over double the national average. In 2016, asthma-related ER visits were over six times higher in New York City’s low-income areas.
Neighborhoods like the South Bronx and Harlem are uniquely vibrant, but their problem with pollution is not unique as over a third of us—39% of the country—live in areas with failing air quality grades. Despite this clear public health crisis, the Trump administration is actively dismantling solutions to reduce these transportation emissions that disproportionately harm low-income communities and communities of color.
Traffic, industrial activity, and other sources create Particulate Matter 2.5 (soot) pollution. In NYC, soot contributes to 2,000 deaths and 5,150 emergency visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and heart disease each year.
Increased emergency room visits, cancer rates, and even premature deaths are the consequences of our current economic system and policies that pollute our communities, schools, workplaces, and places of worship. Traffic, industrial activity, and other sources create Particulate Matter 2.5 (soot) pollution. In NYC, soot contributes to 2,000 deaths and 5,150 emergency visits and hospitalizations for respiratory and heart disease each year. For people of color this risk is greater as they are 2.3 times more likely than white people to live in a county with failing air quality grades. Our freight system, which moves the goods we all rely on, creates especially dangerous “Diesel Death Zones,” that harm primarily low-income and communities of color. Freight trucks and buses make up less than 10% of the vehicles on U.S. roads, but are responsible for more than half of the soot and nitrogen oxide emissions from the transportation sector. Decades of racist zoning decisions, weak environmental and public health protections, and other discriminatory policies have resulted in a dirty transportation system that overwhelmingly hurts our communities.
The reality is not hopeless: The electrification of personal and freight vehicles, the expansion of mass transit, and other strategies can expand affordable transportation options, reduce air pollution, and save lives. Electrifying trucking and transitioning our grid to clean renewable energy would result in over $1.2 trillion in public health benefits and an 84% decrease in deaths from diesel emissions by 2050. With public transit expansion, we could further reduce emissions and lower transportation costs for families. Currently, low-income families spend around 30% of their salary on transportation, but with transit expansion we could save residents in urban areas an average of $2,000 per year. This would also open up options for those unable to drive and save 84,000 lives from traffic fatalities by 2050. The bottom line is that transitioning to cleaner vehicles and improving public transit makes us healthier and more connected, reduces emissions driving climate change, creates jobs, and boosts the economy.
For decades, WE ACT for Environmental Justice has advocated for and advanced equitable, clean transportation regulations and investments at the city, state, and federal levels. In New York, our initiatives, including the successful Dirty Diesel campaign, helped reduce emissions from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s (MTA) bus fleet by 95% citywide. At the Federal level, WE ACT and the “Clean Air for the Long Haul” cohort worked with the Biden-Harris administration and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to update federal regulations to reduce pollution from vehicles. We also advocated passing the largest ever investments for climate justice, which provided long-needed funds for decarbonizing transportation through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA), as well as to advance landmark executive orders. After decades of advocacy, the Biden-Harris administration finally began moving toward a holistic approach to center environmental justice.
Freight trucks and buses make up less than 10% of the vehicles on U.S. roads, but are responsible for more than half of the soot and nitrogen oxide emissions from the transportation sector.
Today, this progress is under threat as the Trump administration and Republican allies are determined to attack environmental justice and dismantle these policies. On his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14154 “Unleashing American Energy,” which called to repeal the “Electric Vehicle (EV) Mandate.” The term “EV Mandate” conflated several federal and state regulations that curbed vehicle emissions. Under the false banner of protecting consumer choice, the administration aims to undo protective emissions regulations, despite pleas from even automakers not to do so. In addition, the administration has rescinded memos that directed state transportation agencies to take into account environmental justice in transportation planning. Most viciously, the administration illegally froze funds for programs like the Clean School Bus Program, established under IIJA, which supports school districts in transitioning to clean, zero-emission buses. This threatens the health of children and families, and puts school districts in a difficult position.
Instead of making our health a priority, the administration has chosen to delay progress in order preserve a pollution-producing and car-centric status quo. Actions violating the U.S. Constitution, rule of law, and sound science, along with ignoring the needs of everyday people, have become hallmarks of this administration. Now, Trump and his allies are attempting to illegally remove California’s right to lead in the clean transportation transition by repealing the state’s waivers to regulate vehicle emissions. The administration is also interfering in NYC’s efforts to curb emissions and to fund the MTA’s public transportation through congestion pricing.
Right now, we need our elected officials to stand up for their constituents, for clean air, and for our future. Vulnerable communities across the country bear the overwhelming majority and heavy toll of air pollution, economic struggles, and worsening extreme weather driven by the climate crisis. Our leaders should address these issues, not make them worse to serve the interests of polluting industries.
We have the opportunity to clean up our dirty transportation sector, address and reverse decades of discriminatory policies, and better our lives. Children with asthma; families; and residents of the South Bronx, Harlem, and communities nationwide deserve clean air and fair, accessible transportation. The Trump administration and allies are pushing to shift us into reverse; instead, we must protect our clean transportation progress and drive positive change forward.
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'Children Are Dying': Sanders Pushes Pharma Giants to Cap Cost of Inhaler for Kids
"No child in America should be sick or die because their parents cannot afford or access the inhalers they need to breathe," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Aug 13, 2024
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday urged a pair of pharmaceutical corporations to immediately slash the price tag of the generic version of the most commonly prescribed inhaler for children, continuing a pressure campaign that the Vermont Independent and his Democratic colleagues have been waging throughout the year with remarkable results.
Sanders' latest call was directed at GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Prasco Laboratories, which sells the authorized generic of Flovent—an inhaler that GSK pulled from the U.S. market earlier this year.
In March, after the Sanders-led Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee launched an investigation into the high costs of inhalers, GSK announced it would join other companies in capping out-of-pocket costs for its asthma medications at $35 a month.
But GSK's pledge did not extend to Flovent's generic, which currently costs patients up to hundreds of dollars per month. Prasco Laboratories sells the generic product under a deal with GSK.
"Unfortunately, the retail price of this inhaler is between $172 and $313, and many insurance companies are refusing to cover it because the net price is more expensive than the brand-name version of Flovent," Sanders noted in a statement Tuesday. "Facing high prices and a lack of insurance coverage, families throughout the country are having a very difficult time purchasing inhalers for their children."
"The result: Pediatricians have observed a major increase in the number of children with asthma who have been admitted to hospitals," Sanders continued. "There are also reports that more children are dying. That is absolutely unacceptable. No child in America should be sick or die because their parents cannot afford or access the inhalers they need to breathe."
Nearly five million children in the U.S. have asthma, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and an estimated 300 children and young adults in the country die from asthma attacks each year.
CNN reported earlier this year that GSK's decision to pull Flovent off the market in the U.S. put kids in danger of asthma flare-ups and visits to the ER."
Experts and lawmakers have accused GSK of yanking Flovent from the U.S. market to avoid paying significant federal penalties for raising the product's price tag above the rate of inflation.
"Instead of paying Medicaid the rebates it owed in 2024, GSK appears to have used a loophole to preserve its profits from years of exorbitant price increases," Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) wrote in a letter to GSK's chief executive in early May. "GSK replaced both of its brand Flovent inhalers with an identical line of products licensed to a different manufacturer—a company that is conveniently exempt from Medicaid rebates, since it has no existing price history."
"Through your arrangement with Prasco Laboratories," Hassan added, "GSK appears to be circumventing Medicaid rebates to protect decades of profits gained by price gouging patients and public programs."
Sanders said Tuesday that, going forward, the focus of his Senate committee's investigation into inhaler costs and corporate price gouging will be on "the crisis of infants and children with asthma who have been struggling to receive the inhalers they need."
"These companies have a responsibility to make sure that children with asthma in America have access to the inhalers they need," said Sanders. "As the chairman of the HELP Committee, I will continue to do everything I can to make sure that the American people no longer pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs."
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Oakland Ban on Dirty Coal Kills Plan for Massive Export Terminal
Port developers were quietly planning new port facility which would have shipped up to ten million tons of coal out of Oakland each year, increasing national coal exports by 19 percent.
Jun 28, 2016
The City of Oakland, California, took a bold step towards protecting the health of its citizens and the global environment on Monday after city council members voted unanimously to ban the storage and handling of coal and petroleum coke in the city.
The ban, sought by local environmental groups for over a year, is expected to derail plans for a massive export terminal on the city-owned waterfront, the Oakland Bulk and Oversized Terminal (OBOT).
According to the San Francisco chapter of the Sierra Club, the port developers "have been quietly soliciting a partnership with four Utah counties to export up to ten million tons of coal out of Oakland each year. The partnership would make Oakland the largest coal-export facility on the West Coast and increase national coal exports by a whopping 19 percent."
Community members opposed to the planned facility rallied in and outside Monday's overflow hearing. The San Jose Mercury News reports:
Hundreds of people filled the council chambers, spilling into overflow rooms, and offered several hours of commentary frequently punctuated by cheers, applause and outbursts from audience members on both sides of the issue. Following the vote, audience members burst into song, filling the chambers with a chorus singing, "No more coal in Oakland, I'm going to let it shine."
"This is what grassroots organizing looks like," Bruce Nilles, senior campaign director for Sierra Club's Beyond Coal Campaign, declared on social media.
The vote came three days after city staff released a long-anticipated report that recommended the ban based on its findings that OBOT "would pose a serious health risk to both workers at the planned terminal and West Oakland residents, who already suffer from high levels of asthma and other respiratory illnesses," the Mercury News reports.
The ordinance, which requires a second vote on July 19th to become finalized, was proposed by Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf and Councilman Dan Kalb, who argued that such projects pollute the air and pose serious risks to workers and community members. While the new rule specifically pertains to future projects, the council voted unanimously on a resolution to apply the ordinance to OBOT.
The proposed terminal had sparked a fierce local debate, which developers and other project supporters framed as a choice between local jobs and the environment.
Following the vote, councilmember Rebecca Kaplan deemed it "a proud day for democracy."
"I think this vote proves that we understand the importance of protecting the health and safety of our community," Kaplan said. "It also shows that we were able to push back against the lies from the industry that were so deceptive."
"When I heard about the possibility of coal coming through this port, I just had a really bad feeling come over me," said Derrick Muhammad, an International Longshore Workers Union representative. "Oakland families are already worried about asthma and other sickness because of highways and port activities. It's not right to ask them to take on the worry and risk of nine million tons of coal passing through their neighborhoods on trains each year."
"Allowing coal exports through Oakland not only harms the community and the environment but is also inconsistent with the progressive climate goals set by the City of Oakland and the State of California," added Irene Gutierrez, an attorney with Earthjustice.
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Taking Out the Trash Burners
The fight against a dirty incinerator in Baltimore is an inspiration for all of us.
Oct 21, 2015
Having scored one big victory for jobs and the environment, a group of Baltimore activists is trying to take things to the next level. Curtis Bay, their heavily polluted Baltimore neighborhood, had been bracing for a $1 billion garbage incinerator that would have lowered Maryland's already poor air quality.
Energy Answers, the company that won approval six years ago to build this boondoggle, tried to greenwash the burner, falsely claiming that it would generate "clean" power. However, the incinerator would have emitted dangerous levels of mercury, lead, dioxins, and other substances linked to neurological problems, cancer, and asthma—all within a mile of local schools.
That's why a youth-led organization, Free Your Voice, joined with environmental groups in a campaign against the incinerator in favor of real solutions for dignified jobs and authentically green initiatives. Free Your Voice grew out of a human rights group called United Workers, founded in 2002 by homeless day laborers.
Earlier this year, community groups persuaded local school systems, the Baltimore City government, and 19 other key institutions to cancel their plans to purchase electricity from the dirty burner. That dealt a crippling blow to the incinerator. Baltimore will be better off without it.
Burning trash is hazardous to any community's economy, environment, and public health, so I've been joining community groups to fight incinerators my entire adult life -- from this country to South Africa, India, and the Philippines.
Still, the Maryland Department of the Environment hasn't yet declared the project dead -- even though Energy Answers has failed to do anything on the land for more than 18 months, violating its permit's terms. Free Your Voice is now calling upon the environmental agency to cancel the company's permit officially.
While Energy Answers holds the 97-acre site hostage, people from the emboldened Curtis Bay community are coming up with their own solutions. Among the ideas that Free Your Voice and its allies are proposing are a community-owned solar farm and an eco-industrial park that would host recycling, reuse, and composting companies. Recycling is better for the environment than burning trash, and our discarded possessions and it creates 10 to 20 times more jobs per ton of material processed.
Nationally, most of our trash ends up in landfills that leach toxins into the soil and water, or goes into incinerators that release toxic fumes -- often in inner-city neighborhoods. The result is an assault on public health, increased greenhouse gas emissions, and a tremendous waste of materials that could have been reused.
Just imagine what would happen if the Baltimore story were repeated nationwide. According to a Tellus Institute study, the United States could create over a million jobs by 2030 by transforming how we manage our waste.
Instead of destroying resources in incinerators and landfills, we could conserve them through recycling and composting. Many of the industry's jobs could shift from large private corporations to municipal unions. This transformation would aid the environment, public health, equity, and racial justice all in one shot.
When the people of Baltimore got organized, they won the incinerator fight. Now, they're building bridges between movements that too often are pitted against one another, particularly workers and environmentalists. It's an inspiration to other groups to do the same thing across Maryland and the whole country.
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