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sandra steingraber
'Find the Courage': 400+ Scientists, Health Providers Implore Schumer, Pelosi to Ditch Manchin Deal
The experts delivered a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) the morning after Manchin (D-W.Va.) unveiled the full text of his Energy Independence and Security Act, which one campaigner called "even more reckless and dangerous than previous drafts."
While according to The Hill, the legislation "is on life support" given Republicans are backing an alternate bill led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), she is also reportedly supportive of Manchin's version and Schumer--who secured the right-wing Democrat's vote for the Inflation Reduction Act by promising to push through permitting reforms--plans to pair the "dirty deal" measure with a funding resolution that must pass this month to avert a government shutdown.
A growing number of progressives in the House and Senate are pushing Democratic leadership to decouple the measures--a demand echoed in the letter, which tells Pelosi and Schumer: "You have the power to untether this wrongheaded legislation from the continuing resolution and prevent it from moving forward. Please find the courage."
The letter was spearheaded by Sandra Steingraber of the Science and Environmental Health Network and circulated with help from the advocacy group Food & Water Watch--whose executive director, Wenonah Hauter, said Wednesday that the Manchin bill "is little more than a shameless handout to the fossil fuel industry--a green light for oil and gas companies to keep on digging, drilling, fracking, and polluting."
"The climate crisis is a public health crisis, with people living on the frontlines of oil and gas extraction suffering the most. Scientists who document the evidence for harm and health professionals who treat the harm are now speaking out with one voice," Steingraber said in a statement.
Initial signatories to the letter were the climate and health leaders Robert Howarth, Katie Huffling, Mark Jacobson, Peter Kalmus, Dr. Philip Landrigan, Michael Mann, Barbara Sattler, Dr. Ted Schettler, and Farhana Sultana.
"Having spent more than 50 years working to protect children against health threats in the environment, I feel compelled to speak out against any political deal that would expose them to decades more pollution from fossil fuels," explained Landrigan, a pediatrician and director of a pair of programs at Boston College.
"Fossil fuel extraction harms prenatal development. Fossil fuel combustion causes prematurity, stillbirth, and asthma in children," the doctor noted. "The single, most effective strategy for protecting our children against these dangers is a rapid transition to clean, renewable energy and away from fossil fuels. The sooner the better."
The letter similarly stresses that fossil fuel projects like the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP), an incomplete fracked gas project in West Virginia and Virginia endorsed in Manchin's bill, "carry enormous risks to public health that include not only diverse widespread health impacts from an overheated climate but also direct harm to those living near them."
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While endangering the health of frontline communities--which, in the United States, disproportionately include low-income workers and people of color--extracting and burning fossil fuels warms the entire planet and causes "extreme heat, catastrophic flooding, widespread drought, rising seas, collapsing ice shelves, and failing crops," the letter highlights.
"We cannot sit by idly and watch our government advance policies that will quite literally fan the flames of the climate crisis, which is already threatening humanity," the experts wrote to Pelosi and Schumer. "You both have spoken eloquently about climate change and the need for bold action. We have heard you affirm the necessity of science for policymaking and the importance of listening to scientists for guidance."
"We are those scientists. And we are the doctors and nurses who take care of those harmed by this unfolding crisis," they continued. "Speaking together, we urge you in the strongest possible terms to reject this attempt to force through legislation that weakens our bedrock environmental laws and fast-tracks ill-conceived fossil fuel ventures."
Meanwhile, climate and environmental justice campaigners on Thursday reiterated their opposition to Manchin's legislation, along with the competing GOP proposal, and demanded a clean energy transition.
"This bill assumes that building more infrastructure is the goal. It's not," said Matt Casale, U.S. PIRG's environment campaigns director. "To ensure clean air, safe drinking water and to tackle climate-warming emissions, we don't just need more infrastructure, we need the right infrastructure."
Several leaders of environmental groups were arrested Thursday at the U.S. Senate office building in Washington, D.C. to show their determination to kill the Manchin deal.
Union of Concerned Scientists president Johanna Chao Kreilick emphasized that "this proposal includes a slew of changes long pushed by polluting industries. It would allow projects to be approved with little to no public input or analysis of how the project could harm public health and the environment."
"Exhibit A: the Mountain Valley Pipeline project," she said, arguing that "scientific assessments and public input should underpin projects, not the profit motives of fossil fuel companies."
Kreilick and others are calling on Congress to instead focus on passing the Environmental Justice for All Act, which is sponsored by House Natural Resources Committee Chair Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who last week led a letter urging Democratic leaders to hold separate votes on the continuing resolution and Manchin's legislation.
"Sen. Manchin's dirty deal is a misguided wreck," declared Erik Schlenker-Goodrich, executive director of the Western Environmental Law Center. "To open new doors to a thriving, just, and equitable renewable energy future, we urge Congress to support a fair and meaningful dialogue with all stakeholders and to pass the Environmental Justice for All Act."
"We simply cannot let ourselves be tied to outdated ideas, advanced by fossil fuel interests, that the systematic sabotage of crucial bedrock environmental safeguards is a solution," he added. "These reckless ideas will merely perpetuate the very problems that underlie the climate crisis we are now living through."
This post has been updated with reporting that Sen. Shelley Moore Capito will support Sen. Joe Manchin's bill.
New Report Details Fracking's 'Widespread and Severe Harm' to Health and Climate
Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York (CHPNY) released the eighth edition of their Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking, a comprehensive examination of the state of the hydraulic fracturing industry and its impacts.
"The scientific evidence reveals conclusively that fracking causes widespread and severe harm to people and the climate," Sandra Steingraber, CHPNY co-founder and compendium co-author, said in a statement.
"For over 10 years, individual studies have demonstrated impacts in multiple areas, including toxic air pollution, water contamination, radioactive releases, earthquakes, methane emissions, and much more," she added. "The compendium takes stock of all the science together, which shows that continuing and expanding fracking brings with it a grave cost."
The report reveals that:
- Global expansion of fracking and liquefied natural gas (LNG) is fueling the climate crisis, driving the current surge in global levels of methane, a greenhouse gas that is up to 87 times more potent than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period and which has contributed 40% of all global warming to date;
- LNG is even worse for the climate, as the process of liquefying the gas requires tremendous amounts of energy;
- Carbon capture and storage (CCS) fails to mitigate the dangers of fracking, as it does not actually capture methane emissions but instead makes local air pollution from fracking infrastructure worse;
- Drilling, fracking, storing, transporting, and disposing of oil and gas cause serious harm to human health, including respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular disease, and impairments to infant and maternal health; and
- Fracking is an injustice, as toxic air pollution, water contamination, and other impacts disproportionately affect communities of color and low-income communities.
According to the publication:
In sum, the vast body of scientific studies now published on hydraulic fracturing in the peer-reviewed scientific literature confirms that the climate and public health risks from fracking are real and the range of environmental harms wide. Our examination uncovered no evidence that fracking can be practiced in a manner that does not threaten human health directly or without imperiling climate stability upon which human health depends.
"People, nurses, and doctors across the United States have been pointing to harms from drilling and fracking for well over a decade," said Barbara Gottlieb, environment and health program director at Physicians for Social Responsibility. "Now there is clear and overwhelming scientific evidence showing that fracking makes people sick, degrades the environment, and imperils the climate."
"From a public health perspective and a climate perspective, stopping fracking is imperative," she stressed.
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Dr. Kathleen Nolan of Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York, said, "States and countries that have banned fracking are leading the way to a stable and healthy climate future, preventing poisonous fracking chemicals from causing birth defects, cancer, heart disease, asthma and pneumonia, diseases of other organs and tissues, and early death."
"Banning fracking also prevents induced earthquakes and greatly reduces emissions of methane, carbon dioxide, toxic gases, and particulate matter into our atmosphere," she added. "We know what must be done: Now we must do it--and do it quickly."
Scientists to Biden: World Needs 'Rapid Transition From Fossil Fuels to Renewable Energy'
Biologist Sandra Steingraber--who is leading the effort with Peter Kalmus, Robert Howarth, Michael Mann, and Mark Jacobson in conjunction with Food & Water Watch--shared a link to the letter on Twitter Wednesday and urged fellow scientists to add their signatures.
"We say the White House call for more drilling and fracking is a climate calamity," Steingraber said. "Sign with us!"
The letter--which its initiators plan to present to the president next month after collecting "a critical mass" of signatures--follows a similar message from October and comes as Biden works to ramp up U.S. gas shipments to Europe in response to Russian President Vladimir Putin's war on Ukraine.
Kalmus, who also shared the document Wednesday, tweeted that "the president's fossil fuel expansion takes us deeper into climate catastrophe."
The scientists' effort aligns with recent remarks from climate campaigners and other experts, who have argued since the war began last month that European nations' attempts to reduce their reliance on Russian fossil fuels--a key source of revenue for Putin's government--show the importance of a swift global shift to clean energy.
"Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm recently said 'we are on war footing' in calling for increased oil and gas production," the scientists' letter states, referencing the U.S. official's speech at a Houston conference earlier this month. "This is backwards thinking. Instead of fossil fuels, we must apply that level of urgency to building a renewable energy economy."
"Rather than working to increase oil and gas production," the letter adds, "we urge you to use your executive authority to redirect these massive investments, mobilize the country, and rally the global community around a program of energy security through a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy."
Recalling that when Biden ran for president, he pledged to listen to science, the five experts wrote that "as scientists who look at data every day, we implore you to keep this promise and listen to what the scientific community is saying about fossil fuels and the climate crisis."
They specifically pointed to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report released last month, which features "a series of dire warnings about the unfolding climate catastrophe," including that "the scientific evidence is overwhelming that we must act now--we simply do not have time to waste."
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"Already millions of Americans and even more across the world are being impacted by extreme weather, drought, flooding, sea level rise, and wildfires," the letter notes. "The IPCC report highlights millions being impacted by climate change-induced food insecurity and water scarcity."
The letter warns that "these problems will only accelerate as we continue our reliance on fossil fuels. And, this is on top of the significant health and environmental justice impacts that power plants, export facilities, and other fossil fuel infrastructure have on neighboring communities."
"The United States, Europe, and the rest of the world desperately need energy independence," the document declares, "but allowing more drilling and fracking, approving more pipelines, and expanding export facilities not only fail to address short-term energy needs, they lock us into decades of reliance on fossil fuels and ensure runaway climate chaos for the long run."
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