September 2023 Networker: Books, Bans, and Climate Change— No Excuse for Business as Usual |
| Volume 28 (8), September 2023 |
Executive Director’s Note |
| Libraries. Books. Treasures. I’ve been aghast at the book bans that conservative politicians and others are demanding at libraries across the country, my state of Iowa included. Let me whisper into your ear that so far none of the banned books are about the environment. If they were going to ban environmental books, first on the list would probably be the Fracking Science Compendium that SEHN sponsors. Soon to be released, the ninth edition will continue the time-honored tradition of using scientific data to bear witness to the suffering caused by fracking and to challenge the lies and damage perpetrated by the fossil-fuel industry. Previous editions of the Compendium have been used in communities around the world to stop fracking. Whether you read the Compendium or not, you know it is available in case you and your community are faced with fracking or any of its giant tentacles. I tell you this in the spirit of statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s notion of the “antilibrary” which he used to describe the writer Umberto Eco’s 30,000 volume library. Taleb said that Eco recognized that the most valuable books in your library are those you haven’t read yet because they give you a sense of all you do not know. In this issue of the Networker, Carmi Orenstein writes a litany of suffering that has been documented in the Compendium and how politicians have been bought off—so they ignore the cancers, birth defects, and respiratory ailments resulting from fracking. Why do some states and politicians heed the science and why do some ignore it? In her column, Sandra Steingraber addresses the ethical obligation of scientists who do know the meaning of their research. She says,
… the duty to communicate our findings arises from an unspoken social compact between science and civil society. We don’t just set out to discover things about the natural world because they are personally fascinating to us (although don’t get me started about the operatic beauty of photosynthesis). We do the work because science is supposed to make life better. But the benefits of science are only realized if governments deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed listen to the science and, so informed, respond to the results.
Sandra and 400 fellow scientists recently wrote a letter to President Biden reminding him of his obligations to act on what is all but certain regarding climate change. They backed that letter up by turning out in force at the March to End Fossil Fuels in New York on September 17, 2023. There is no excuse to continue business as usual given the science, the books that have been written (and read), the mounting evidence of damage from fracking and its climate impacts. We owe it to future generations to prevent suffering, to use what we do know, and to have a deep respect for all we do not know. We each have a role in this. The scientists have played theirs, now it is up to the politicians, even if they haven’t read the books the scientists have written. Not acting on this knowledge is the equivalent of burning them. Carolyn Raffensperger
Executive Director, SEHN |
Massive Policy Shifts Still Needed as the Ninth Edition Fracking Science Compendium is Released |
| By Carmi Orenstein, Editor |
| “You didn’t need to be a geologist or any other kind of expert to know from the start that hydraulic fracking was fraught with a host of health and safety questions in Pennsylvania.” —Philadelphia Inquirer Editorial Board, September 7, 2023 When news arrived in 2008 that the fossil fuel industry was looking to bring the brutal technique for extracting gas from shale to New York State, many of us in the health community had a similar response. But if no special expertise was needed to foresee the health and safety impacts of fracking if it were introduced in New York, it was clear that a coalition of experts and ordinary New Yorkers was indeed required to bring this foresight home to state policy makers. Conversations among health professionals, engineers, scientists of various specialties, and indeed, geologists, congealed into various efforts to warn the public and inform state regulatory procedures. Since governmental policy—then as now—doesn’t tend to ere on the side of precaution, we sensed a battle ahead. We ran with the idea that scientific and medical expertise and data would make for a powerful stone in the slingshot. This is the context in which Concerned Health Professionals of New York (CHPNY), now part of SEHN, was formed in 2009, and began producing its fracking science Compendium. Frontline communities and statewide campaigners organized, armed with the data we provided, along with regional concerns such as the potential industrialization of rural areas and small towns. Sooner than we imagined, we succeeded in New York State. As the Inquirer Board continued, [Pennsylvania capital] Harrisburg’s embrace of fracking is a shameful study in contrast to what happened when lobbyists came knocking in New York. In 2010, the New York State Assembly approved a temporary moratorium on fracking. Four years later, then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo issued an executive order that banned fracking because of health concerns. State lawmakers in Albany codified the ban in 2020. What did New York know that Pennsylvania lawmakers either didn’t or willfully ignored? It’s painfully clear in 2023 that they did—and continue to—willfully ignore the growing pile of evidence of health harms, much of it based on research conducted in Pennsylvania. Collected in eight—soon to be nine—Compendium editions, this evidence grows ever more extensive and disturbing. We have personally delivered the document to decision-makers in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania’s capital, for more than one edition over the years. Continue Reading |
Prepared Remarks of Testimony for the Colombian Debates on Fracking. |
| By Sandra Steingraber, PhD, SEHN Senior Scientist |
| Hello! My name is Sandra Steingraber, and I am speaking to you from New York. I am a PhD biologist, and I work as a senior scientist at the Science and Environmental Health Network. I am also a co-founder of Concerned Health Professionals of New York. Our group formed ten years ago when fracking was proposed for New York State, and our governor needed to decide whether to permit fracking or prohibit fracking. We scientists began to compile the medical and scientific findings on the risks and harms of fracking into a Compendium. At the same time, our state’s Department of Health also began to review the evidence for harm. Both groups asked two questions. One: Is fracking harmful to public health and the climate? Two: And, if it is harmful, can we devise rules and regulations that would make it safe, or are the dangers unavoidable? In December 2014, both groups—the government scientists plus the independent scientists in my group—had reached the same conclusion: fracking injures the health of people who live nearby both because of water and air pollution, and current technologies could not make fracking safe enough to allow it. Fracking was banned in New York State. At that time, 400 studies in the peer-reviewed scientific literature showed the evidence for harm. Now, nine years later, there are almost 2,500 such studies. In other words, today we have six times as much evidence for harm as when we banned fracking in New York in 2014. Altogether, the new studies plus the old studies show that our governor made the right decision. As Colombia studies fracking, we scientists here in New York hope that our research will be useful to you. Since our own fracking ban, we have continued to update our fracking science compendium each year because so many other nations are wondering what to do about fracking. Continue Reading and Watch Video |
The RePercussion Section: Tigers Abroad—Scientists Call for an End to Fossil Fuels on the Streets of New York |
| By Sandra Steingraber, SEHN senior scientist |
| Ask a question. Make observations. Make a hypothesis. Collect data. Analyze data. Make a conclusion. Communicate results. I first learned the seven steps of the scientific method in Mr. Huey’s fifth grade classroom, along with an introduction to inductive and deductive reasoning, hypothesis formation, experimentation, objectivity, and importance of changing your beliefs about how the world works in light of new evidence. I was gleefully all in. None of this lined up with the Sunday School lessons and sermons in my Very Serious Church where I was being groomed to develop an unshakeable faith in things unseen, ignore contradictions, and evangelize others to do the same. I started a fossil collection during the same summer I went to Rapture camp. Years later, I revisited the steps of the scientific method in a PhD-level biology seminar and studied their historical origins. It turns out they are not as pure, immutable, or uncontested as Mr. Huey had implied. There was Occam’s Razor and the importance of parsimony. There were Karl Popper’s admonitions about the pitfalls of too much inductive speculation. And then there was Thomas Kuhn with his theory on paradigm shifts and discontent over Popper’s falsificationism. And then came statistician George E.P. Box who tried to put it all in perspective, saying, “since all models are wrong the scientist must be alert to what is importantly wrong. It is inappropriate to be concerned about mice when there are tigers abroad.” These arguments were philosophically exciting to me. But despite all the debate about how science should be practiced that has played out over centuries, few have questioned the value of its final step: communicating results. Within the scientific community, the idea that science is a public act enjoys broad, long-standing acceptance. Science isn’t done until you share with the world your data, your methods, and your conclusions. Go tell it on the mountain. Continue Reading |
Nearly 400 Scientists Tell Biden to 'Embrace Demands of the March to End Fossil Fuels'
“'We scientists heard the president loud and clear when he pledged two years ago to 'listen to the science' on climate. Yet now we're watching our nation's greenhouse gas emissions spiral out of control while White House policy becomes increasingly unaligned with reality,' Sandra Steingraber—an initial signatory of the letter and a senior scientist at The Science and Environmental Health Network—said in a statement.” The Ocean Is Telling Us
3 chemicals account for most accidents
“Ammonia is very corrosive and very reactive with human tissues. If it's breathed in because it's in the air, it's highly damaging and irritating to the lungs. It can cause real damage.” SEHN Science Director Ted Schettler, MD, was quoted in this Axios piece on the three chemicals that account for the majority of chemical accidents reported to the EPA. Advocates Demand Stronger Pipeline Safety Rules
“Communities across the country are facing an onslaught of new pipeline proposals. Unlike the old oil and gas pipelines, CO2 and hydrogen pipelines pose unique and extraordinary hazards to public health and the environment but are vastly under-regulated. PHMSA must be authorized and given a strong mandate to guarantee public safety rather than follow its old formula of guaranteeing the profitability of the fossil fuel industry.” SEHN executive director Carolyn Raffensperger was quoted in a press release regarding a new letter to House and Senate leaders signed by SEHN and over 130 other organizations. There were several environmental health-related research publications co-authored by SEHN Board members this month:
Disparities in joint exposure to environmental and social stressors in urban households in Greater Boston
“Disparities in Joint Exposure to Environmental and Social Stressors in Urban Households in Greater Boston,” co-authored by Madeleine K. Scammell, Department of Environmental Health, Boston University School of Public Health Evaluating Neighborhood-Level Differences in Hair Product Safety by Environmental Working Group Ratings among Retailers in Boston, Massachusetts
“Evaluating Neighborhood-Level Differences in Hair Product Safety by Environmental Working Group Ratings among Retailers in Boston, Massachusetts,” co-authored by Bhavna Shamasunder, Department of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental College The Imperative of Equitable Protection: Structural Racism and Oil Drilling in Los Angeles
“The Imperative Of Equitable Protection: Structural Racism And Oil Drilling In Los Angeles,” co-authored by Bhavna Shamasunder, Department of Urban and Environmental Policy, Occidental College |
|
