Listening to Science Means Acting on Science: The Scientists’ Letter to President Biden
By Sandra Steingraber,
Senior Scientist
On October 7, I submitted a letter to President Biden signed by 338 U.S. research scientists, including a veritable who’s who of our nation’s top climatologists and public health experts. Among them was Peter Kalmus, a climate scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and associate project scientist at UCLA’s Joint Institute for Regional Earth System Science & Engineering.
In the weeks leading up to the release, as we drafted the letter and worked through its various iterations, Peter and I had multiple, anguished conversations about the value, or non-value, of scientists speaking directly to Presidents of the United States about the urgency of the climate crisis.
It’s not like either one of us is new here. Between us, we could recall multiple such letters in years past and knew that the eloquence and urgency of scientists speaking truth to power had, again and again, failed triggered action of a magnitude that came even close to the addressing the climate crisis in a meaningful way. Why would we think our attempt would be any different?
On November 5, 1965, the president’s own science advisors warned President Lyndon Johnson about the threats faced by the nation from rising carbon dioxide pollution in the atmosphere.
In November 1965, I was just learning how to read.
On January 14, 1981, the President’s Council on Environmental Quality, issued the last of three reports on global warming, commissioned by President Jimmy Carter, that was entirely focused on the scientific evidence detailing the destabilizing effects of carbon dioxide on the climate system.
In January 1981, I was learning for the first time about the climate crisis in my undergraduate environmental studies class. It was shocking to me. And surreal. I recall blurting out to the cashier at the campus store, “The polar ice caps are melting. Did you know that?”
On June 24, 1988, NASA climate scientist James Hansen testified before Congress that climate change had already begun, that the ongoing warming trend was not a natural trend but was caused by a build-up of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere.
In June 1988, I was finishing my Ph.D. in ecology. I covered Hansen’s testimony in a story for the Michigan Daily, expressing my relief, as a young scientist, that finally, finally, government policy would respond to the climate science. Ronald Reagan was the president.
And now, here we are, 33 years later, and the gap between what we scientists know about the climate emergency and what our political leaders are doing about it has never been greater. In spite of lots and lots of letters.
But draft an open letter from the nation’s research scientists to the current president we did, and this time our message was guided not solely by the findings of science but by how we, as scientists, have been radicalized—to use Peter’s word—by the patterns we see in our own data. Our opening sentence:
As U.S. scientists, we write with the utmost alarm about the state of our climate system.
And there was another key difference. The message of our letter, we decided, would be aligned with, and provide solidarity for, the message being delivered the following week by an Indigenous-led civil disobedience campaign, the People vs. Fossil Fuels campaign. This mobilization was making two demands. And these demands exactly reflected the state of the science.
The first was to insist that the President completely halt federally authorized fossil fuel expansion. This would mean banning new federal fossil fuel leasing, fracking, and drilling on public lands and waters. It would also means directing federal agencies to stop issuing permits for fossil fuel pipelines, petrochemical plants, and other infrastructure. And it would mean ending fossil fuel exports and subsidies.
The science clearly shows that all these things would be necessary under any plan that brings U.S. energy policy in alignment with the climate data.
The second was to ask the President to declare a climate emergency, which would give the President the power to reinstate the decades-long ban on crude oil exports and direct a portion of military spending to a rapid construction program of renewable energy projects. And emergency declaration could also provide loan guarantees to advance the deployment of renewable energy.
Again, the trends in the climate data are unequivocal. The fossil fuel party needs to come to an end as rapidly as possible, and a swift, just transition to renewable energy is mandated by the findings of the most recent IPCC report. To these two core demands, we added a third: no false solutions. Industry delay tactics, such as carbon capture and storage, blue hydrogen (which is made from methane) and carbon offsets are all dangerous distractions that waste time and money. We clearly called them out. Listening to science, we said, means acting on science, and acting on science does not mean dressing up fraudulent oil and gas industry schemes, like fracking and carbon capture and storage, and calling them climate solutions.
So, on October 7, I submitted the letter, with its 338 signatures, to President Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain. And very soon after, heard from one of his aides, that the letter had, yes, been received.
And one week later, I traveled to Washington D.C. and was arrested at the White House while reading excerpts from the letter from with another of my fellow scientist signatories, Boston University ecologist Nathan Phillips, our two bodies serving as exclamation points to the sentences of our communique.
We intend to keep this going. We are not done. This letter, whose full text appears below, is a living document, and Peter Kalmus and I seek further signatures from U.S. research scientists.
If that’s you, we invite your consideration.
If you know a research scientist, please send the letter along to them.
That sign-on form is here.
With thanks to Food and Water Watch and Center for Biological Diversity for guidance and providing our letter media outreach and a home on the web.
An Open Letter from U.S. Scientists Imploring President Biden to End the Fossil Fuel Era
October 7, 2021
President Joseph R. Biden Jr.
1600 Pennsylvania Ave, N.W.
Washington, DC 20001
Dear President Biden,
As U.S. scientists, we write with the utmost alarm about the state of our climate system. As overwhelming evidence shows, the reality of our situation is now so dire that only a rapid phase-out of fossil fuel extraction and combustion can fend off the worst consequences of the climate crisis.
In this time of peril, we call on you to fulfill your campaign pledge to listen to science, take bold action to lead the nation back from the brink of runaway climate chaos, and lead the world in a rapid transition away from fossil fuels. We urge you to:
Completely stop federally authorized fossil fuel expansion by banning new federal fossil fuel leasing, fracking, and drilling on public lands and waters; directing federal agencies to stop issuing permits for fossil fuel infrastructure projects from pipelines to petrochemical plants; and ending fossil fuel exports and subsidies;
Declare a climate emergency to reinstate the decades-long ban on crude oil exports, direct a portion of military spending to a rapid construction program of renewable energy projects, and provide loan guarantees to advance a rapid, just buildout of clean renewable energy;
Abandon industry delay tactics including carbon capture and storage, blue hydrogen, and carbon offsets, that impede the rapid transition to renewable energy and allow the fossil-fuel era to continue. These industry schemes are dangerous distractions.
The people of the United States are already experiencing intensifying climate disasters caused primarily by extracting, transporting, and burning fossil fuels, and the types of disasters we are living through now are certain to get worse – much worse – without emergency action. Black, Brown, Indigenous and impoverished frontline communities bear the brunt of climate disasters and other fossil fuel industry harms, including air and water pollution that increase the risk of respiratory illnesses, pre-term births, cancer, and premature death.
Unfortunately, despite your campaign pledge to “listen to science” and your declaration that climate change represents an “existential threat,” your approach to fossil fuels is inconsistent with the kind of rapid transition away from fossil fuels this emergency demands. Indeed, in its first six months, your administration has taken several steps to continue advancing fossil fuel extraction and use. These include:
Continuing to approve fracking and drilling permits on federal lands, despite your campaign pledge to ban new oil and gas permitting on public lands and waters;
Supporting multiple tar sands oil and oil pipelines, including the Dakota Access and Enbridge Line 3 pipelines, despite your power to halt both of these climate-destructive projects;
Appealing a court order in order to allow fracking in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest;
Advancing a proposal for oil and gas exploration near Dinosaur National Monument in eastern Utah and in the Gulf of Mexico;
Backing a Trump-era project in Alaska that will produce over 100,000 barrels of oil a day for 30 years;
Supporting public subsidizes for fossil fuels through fossil hydrogen, CCS, and LNG exports;
Pressuring OPEC to boost oil production;
Backing offset schemes that would allow the fossil fuel industry to justify continuing emissions because of claimed emissions reductions elsewhere in the economy.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres has declared the newest findings of the recent IPCC report a code red for humanity. We urge you to convene world leaders around a shared vision for moving humanity off fossil fuels and avoiding carbon offset schemes and fossil-fuel industry delay tactics.
Our chances for avoiding irreversible and uncontrollable climate chaos diminish daily. We implore you, on behalf of and for the love of all life on Earth, to respond to the greatest threat ever to face our species and lead the transition away from fossil fuels that humanity desperately needs.
Sincerely,
Scientists joining this letter do so in their individual capacities and not on behalf of the institutions with which they are affiliated.