Executive Director’s Note for September 2026 Networker

As Martin Luther King Jr. said, quoting the abolitionist Theodore Parker, the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice. 

I’ve been thinking about the existential threats that have haunted my life over the many decades I’ve been alive. I can say with some certainty that the current threats—threatening all of humanity and the Earth—are worse than anything I’ve seen in my lifetime. Technology is running amuck, or at least the humans who build and sell the technology are running amuck. Somewhere between AI and climate change, we are now on the map of the future that says, “There be Dragons.”

We’ve been having an internal discussion at SEHN about the fact that everywhere we look, things are worse than they were 35 years ago, in spite of all the work thousands of people have devoted to democracy, public health, and the environment. The underlying thought is, if we keep doing what we are doing and things get worse, shouldn’t we do something different?

Sure, if you can just change tactics and there is a new approach that might work, go for it! However, there are times when this simple utilitarian view fails. Slavery was practiced in the United States for almost 250 years. If the abolitionists had given up after 150 years, where would we be? If change means giving up on justice, or refusing to tell the truth, or siding with the oppressor or polluter, I decline. 

In these dark times, full of existential threats, what is ours to do? And by “ours” I mean SEHN and our fellow travelers (like you!) The words “Bear Witness” come to mind, over and over again, like the refrain of a good work song or a lament. 

The Witness is an archetype that has a set of work requirements—show up, observe, tell the truth. Justice is well-served with a reliable Witness. Our work at SEHN has been to provide the best compilations of science and the best analysis of that science to community groups, policy makers, and journalists. They, in turn, forge that information into policy and decisions that in some cases protect the public from the scourges of air pollution.

I think here of the work Carmi Orenstein has done with Sandra Steingraber to document the devastating public health impacts of fracking. We are pleased to announce that you can now download the second of a series of 9th edition Compendium updates here. This one adds extensive evidence to previous findings on the wide range of detrimental public health impacts of fracking, notably with regard to the risks of adverse birth effects and childhood cancers. You might ask, why keep doing the Compendium if the powers that be ignore the overwhelming evidence that fracking can cause cancer in children? Because the parents of those children and those children themselves desperately need someone to stand with them, to show up, bear witness, and tell the truth. I hope you hear the fire in my voice when I say, we will do all in our power to stop the devastation.

In this issue of the Networker, we want to share with you some of the work we’ve done in the past few months with a focus on water. About a year ago, we looked at the common threat to water by both hyperscale data centers and carbon capture and storage. There were few resources that told us about how much water these industrial facilities might use or how they might pollute water sources. We worked with the lawyer, Dusty Horwitt, to draft a model ordinance that communities can use when faced with the prospect of one of these monstrosities. Please use it freely in your own communities. 

We took the introduction to the model ordinance and turned it into a stand-alone fact sheet which asserts that access to clean water is a human right. You can find that here.

We include in this newsletter another fact sheet about Congressional efforts to undermine the Safe Drinking Water Act by removing some aquifers from consideration when approving CO2 deep injection wells. This move would primarily impact rural aquifers that people depend on for agriculture and watering livestock. It is a bad idea.

Corporations, corrupt politicians, and the kakistocracy are undermining our democracy, selling our children’s health to the highest bidder, and undermining the basic human right of access to clean water. Someday they will look at their map and they will also see dragons. May they see us, breathing the fire of justice. May they realize that they will be held accountable for the debts they are leaving to future generations. And may we be there to witness their downfall.

Carolyn Raffensperger