| Dear Friends, “Forecaring” is the beautiful, simple translation of the German word “Vorsorgeprinzip,” the German concept that ultimately became the Precautionary Principle. Following the Wingspread Conference on the Precautionary Principle in January of 1998, the staff of SEHN was sitting together exploring the ethical foundation of precaution. Our multi-lingual communications director at the time, Nancy Myers, went back to the very origins of the German concept. Nancy described the idea of forecaring as preparing for a difficult future. I certainly understood forecaring when I lived in North Dakota where the weather guaranteed diligence in preparing for winter. I woke up after the recent election knowing that our future will be very difficult. Our work in service of public health and the environment will be blocked at every turn at the federal level and in many states. The incoming federal administration has vowed to block climate action. Appointees are on record trashing public health and climate science and federal agencies under their direction will probably remove environmental data from governmental websites as they did before. They are planning on running roughshod over local communities in order to give the fossil fuel industry free rein, more subsidies, and no rules. These are strong headwinds. But we at SEHN are preparing for this difficult future. We invite you to share in this work by giving a financial gift. How will we use your donations? We will use art to convey science. Art moves the heart as much as the mind and can bring people together in different ways than charts and graphs and decimal points (although we will still use those!) We know data and science will be undermined by this administration, particularly if it contradicts the demands of the fossil fuel industry. Our senior scientist, Sandra Steingraber has taken on a new title, Writer in Residence, and she will be writing a book and essays that convey what we know about the threats to the Earth through her gorgeous, lyrical prose. We will elevate the public health case in our work since health concerns are one of the most potent ways community groups bring about environmentally sane policy. Our science director, physician Ted Schettler, has long served as the doctor on call for frontline organizations that are facing toxic chemical threats or disasters. His role will be even more important when the federal environmental agencies are corrupted, shrunk, and weaponized. We will use public health information to shift markets, including when we take the data directly to the customer, as our Carmi Orenstein has done with her work in communities explaining the public health impacts of residential gas-fired appliances. Public health data cuts across a lot of other noise, and when the hard news is coupled with practical solutions, the local level is a powerful site for change. Next month she’ll be taking this information to an audience of New York State elected officials. We will focus on water because the patchwork of water law makes it more subject to regional control. It is harder for the federal government to preempt local and state water protections. Water is under unique threats given the rise in AI, cryptocurrency, industrial animal agriculture, and carbon capture and sequestration. We are preparing new strategies to protect water, particularly in light of the incoming administration’s callous disregard for the needs of people and ecosystems for clean, abundant water. I co-lead a water defense working group that is hip-deep in developing a strategy to protect water during the energy transition. It will take all of our skill and wilyness to develop new coalitions, foresee the looming threats, and amass the information and new approaches to water quality and water accessibility. We are on it! As I write this, we at SEHN are mobilizing all of our resources, skill, vision and energy to devote to protecting the Earth and public health in the face of what is to come if the new president fulfills even a fraction of his anti-environmental agenda. Future generations depend on us to take a stand and to do the work. Will you join us? Your financial donation will help us stand with grassroots communities in their fights to defend their land and water. It will help us provide information to decision-makers who still have the power to act on behalf of public health and the environment. It will help us scan the horizon and be prepared for new and emerging threats, as we did with carbon capture and storage. It will help us practice forecaring. Thank you for all you are doing. Thank you for being fellow travelers. Thank you for standing with us. |
