Editor's Note from 2023 January Networker
On NPR’s recent 1A program addressing the electric grid and climate change, Amy Harder, executive editor of Cipher, spoke plainly but chillingly about the “baked-in” decades of climate warming we now face, even if we stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow.
We can and must work to drastically reduce emissions now, even as we and our communities begin to experience the climate calamities that are occurring daily and will persist throughout the lives of multiple generations. Over the past couple years, I’ve noticed with awe as climate action groups take on mutual aid projects during and after climate catastrophes, while continuing their large-picture, future-oriented work. Talk about multi-tasking…
SEHN Science Director Ted Schettler and I just experienced, hundreds of miles apart, the seven recent climate-change influenced “atmospheric rivers” that dumped record rainfall on the state of California. Up north in Marin County, Ted experienced multiple power outages and needed to clear fallen trees in between efforts to do his good work. Further south, while en route home to the location where I was temporarily doing my work, I wondered where three fire engines and an emergency vehicle were heading fast in the driving rain. The next day I found out the personnel aboard had moments later begun a dangerous operation to rescue a mother and daughter who tumbled while in their car into a massive rain-induced sinkhole in Chatsworth.
SEHN’s vision is to fulfill our responsibility to govern ourselves and our communities wisely so that we can create and sustain a just and healthy world now and for future generations.
Although difficult to compare the challenges between eras, this commitment to a just and healthy world for future generations becomes increasingly more difficult to hold and feel confident about, as climate disasters now occur at a brisk pace.
Nevertheless, we persist without hesitation. When I joined SEHN and began routinely hearing its seasoned staff members discuss their work—and collaborating with them!—it became crystal clear to me that this vision informs every SEHN endeavor. Our projects may involve some of the world’s most formidable challenges, but SEHN does not ever turn its back on future generations.
SEHN Fellow Peter Montague, who contributes a future-concerned piece to this edition of the Networker, is a fierce advocate for younger generations (and he applauds and follows the lead of their commitments and actions as they address a grim reality they had no part in creating). Peter explores and uncovers the dark details of current policies, with a focus on one of the newer, and terribly misguided, centerpieces of U.S. climate policy: carbon capture and storage (CCS) “Like radioactive waste,” Peter writes, “CCS and [enhanced oil recovery] will create dangerous, expensive problems for young people to manage and pay for, essentially forever.”
Peter discusses the “outrageous” actions we might consider—maybe a general strike—to force the changes that need to take place now, for future generations. And of course, nothing much really seems outrageous when compared to what can happen if we don’t pull the plug on fossil fuels.
Sandra Steingraber’s column addresses one specific plug that must be pulled in order for today’s kids to literally breathe easier, as well as to stop the terrifying levels of methane emissions from fracking operations that have grave implications for the climate: the ordinary gas stove. As Sandra writes, “The burner tip of a gas stove—the literal terminus of a pipeline that begins at a fracking well—serves as the anchor for new fossil fuel-dependent building construction. The continued desirability of a clicking blue flame in the kitchen helps guarantee the whoosh of a gas furnace kicking on in the basement—and the persistence of a gas distribution pipeline system snaking under the sidewalks of the whole neighborhood.”
As the research on the harms of gas stoves accumulate and wise policymakers speak up, all kinds of pushback is flaring (led, of course, by the fossil fuel industry and its legions of paid spokespeople). SEHN and its program, Concerned Heath Professionals of New York, will hold steady with clear, science-based messaging and action. It is not, after all, outrageous to work for large-scale transition away from a cooking method that has reasonable and even impressive substitutes. That familiar blue flame is cooking future generations, and we can do something about it.
Thank you for being part of our dedicated readership and for your own dedication to future generations. Happy New Year,
Carmi Orenstein, MPH
CHPNY Program Director, SEHN
P.S. As part of our embrace of a new year, we are beginning a regular feature, celebrating some of the extraordinary colleagues from other organizations with whom we work in vibrant coalition. We begin with Jim Walsh, Policy Director for Food and Water Watch. Enjoy!