Executive Director's Note from January 2024 Networker

I woke up this morning with a fierce refrain of these words, “Not On My Watch.” I startled myself! What was my watch? Who was I shielding? What danger was I watching for? 

The first known use of the words “not on my watch” was in 1911. The chief detective of San Francisco’s police was on the night shift when he heard that a man was about to commit suicide. He refused to let that man die while he was on duty.

The prompt for my fierceness this morning was knowledge of a family in trouble in my town: they were out of food and their car was going to be repossessed. I consider the most dangerous people to be parents who can’t feed their children. A mom or dad will do anything to care for a child.

Of course, the daily watch I am assigned is environmental: care for the Earth, communities, and future generations. I carry out this sacred responsibility through my work with the Science and Environmental Health Network, side by side with the other SEHN staff members and colleagues in many other organizations.

The scientists on our staff are skilled sentinels and can accurately assess looming and emergent threats to climate, water, and public health, given our history with fracking, pipelines, and toxic chemicals. In this issue of The Networker, you will read the reports of some of those watches. We are sounding the warnings on fracking 2.0 and its relationship to the latest ploy of the fossil fuel industry, carbon capture and storage.

Guardians and sentinels are most effective as part of a team. We need others to take their turns on watch. We need the tools to do our work. I hope you can see where this is leading—a thank you to you for supporting SEHN. We need the money to support the sentinels and many of you, our readers and colleagues, gave generously in response to our end-of-year request. We are all so grateful.

This is what we offer in return for your participation in this work—whether it is a financial gift to SEHN or being a guardian in other fields—we will be faithful to our assignment and to the best of our ability, we will prevent the preventable suffering caused by environmental destruction. 

Carolyn Raffensperger, Executive Director