Aug 29, 2020 The Parkersburg News and Sentinel: Sarah Cross

This letter is in response to the July 25 op-ed article in the Parkersburg News and Sentinel, “Thank you for Backing the Great American Outdoors Act.”

I could not agree more with the authors — the Great American Outdoors Act is an investment in the people and we owe much gratitude to Senator Manchin and Senator Capito for co-sponsoring the bill, as well as Representative Miller for voting in favor of the law. I’m excited to see this legislation pass, as I, too, believe it promotes better access to the outdoors, supports economic development, and addresses societal challenges.

While it was not mentioned in the article, one of these relevant societal challenges is climate change. The Great American Outdoors Act will promote the protection of forests and waterbodies, which will, in turn, help mitigate climate change by storing and removing carbon through a process known as “carbon sequestration.” Essentially, by protecting natural outdoor spaces and resources, we are combating climate change. The more carbon that is stored and removed through natural processes, the less carbon dioxide will reach the atmosphere. This is considered a “natural solution” to climate change and helps slow down the depletion of the ozone layer.

Ultimately, reducing our dependency on fossil fuels is not enough to slow down the negative effects of climate change, such as incredibly severe storms, dangerous temperature fluctuations, and air pollution. However, academic literature suggests natural solutions can provide over one-third of cost-effective climate change mitigation needed by 2030! The House Select Committee on the Climate Crisis has also stated the need for natural climate solutions in a recent report called “Solving the Climate Crisis.” Let’s hold our representatives accountable to this action plan and thank those who have helped along the way.

Aug 22, 2020 The Parkersburg News and Sentinel by Aaron Dunbar

I was recently watching a video on the 2020 Presidential Election (I believe it was a clip from Rising with Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti) in which the hosts discussed President Trump’s tactic during the 2018 midterms of using the so-called “migrant caravan” to scare on-the-fence constituents into voting Republican. It was speculated that, given his current poor approval ratings, he may attempt to utilize a similar scare tactic heading into November.

It couldn’t have been more than a day or two after watching this that I noticed a letter in the News and Sentinel, published on Aug. 15, warning of “central American migrant caravans” being “lured to overwhelm our southern border,” and declaring that re-electing Trump was the only way to stop them.

I honestly have no polite words with which to address the widespread scapegoating and demonization of immigrants in this country. But what about the migrants in this particular situation?

During the debates about how we should address these poor and desperate people traveling to our borders, how often did we bother discussing the root causes of their displacement? For instance, how often did we talk about the CIA coups that destabilized many Central American countries and killed hundreds of thousands of people, eventually leading to the modern conditions forcing migrants to flee their homelands? And what about climate change?

I’ve been taken to task for tying the migrant caravan to the issue of the climate crisis. But the simple fact is, the failure of crops caused by drought was a driving force behind the caravan’s very existence, on top of already violent and dangerous conditions.

Climate change-related drought has similarly been cited as a factor in the Syrian civil war, which famously led to its own influx of refugees, as well as then-candidate Trump’s racist call for a ban on Muslims from entering the U.S.

Some U.N. forecasts place the number of people displaced by climate change at one billion by the year 2050. So at some point, conservatives are going to have to come to terms with the fact that their love of endless wars and their refusal to address climate change are both key drivers behind the very influx of refugees they so vehemently despise. If you’re truly so terrified of big scary foreigners entering our country, then maybe the solution is for us to begin acting like responsible global citizens.

Aug 8, 2020 in The Parkersburg News and Sentinel by Eric Engle

On July 23, Congressman David McKinley (District 1-WV) penned an op-ed titled “Learning Lesson on Energy Security” in the Parkersburg News and Sentinel. The Congressman claims in the piece that we cannot afford to rely on precious metals and rare earth materials from overseas countries like China, Russia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for the production of electric car batteries, solar panels and wind turbines. I guess the Congressman assesses risks and what we can and cannot afford a little differently than the global climate science community and environmental scientists.

Where the Congressman is worried about the stability of governments in countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo and things like the water use involved in extracting lithium, I’m comparing those concerns to the massive global climate destabilization being caused by the CO2 and methane emissions of coal and oil and gas and the fact that “clean coal” technology is not even remotely the success the Congressman claims. Carbon capture and storage currently cannot be scaled to anywhere near the level of the problem (30 to 40 gigatons — a gigaton is a billion metric tons — of C02 emissions annually) and is prohibitively expensive. Nuclear, another recommendation for focus from the Congressman, is also prohibitively expensive and so-called “new age” nuclear, with less danger of meltdowns and less waste is, like carbon capture and storage, years or even decades from being practical, cost-efficient and scalable.

Since when has the Congressman and his party really been concerned about water usage? The Congressman mentions that it takes 500,000 gallons of water to obtain 1 ton of lithium, but the Congressman fails to mention the enormous amounts of water it takes to extract and use coal, oil and gas (especially with hydraulic fracturing) and the enormous amounts of waste that come from the use of these fuel sources. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that total water used for coal mining in the United States ranges from 70 million to 260 million gallons a day. Scientific American estimates that fracking uses 9.6 million gallons of water per well and puts farming and drinking sources at risk.

The Congressman mentions use of hydrogen as a clean energy source. I agree, we should absolutely be exploring and investing in hydrogen use, especially for high energy processes like steel and cement-making, that way we could even leave metallurgical coal in the ground.

A long-standing narrative suggests that the federal government is the reason for the export of American manufacturing and our reliance on foreign goods, but what this narrative deliberately misses is that corporations and industries are even more to blame. Cheap labor, even more lax environmental oversight, poor public health oversight, even less corporate taxation, it all means that these industries and corporations choose to produce overseas. The Congressman and his party act as though that means we should devalue American labor, fail to protect our environment and public health and fail to fairly tax hugely profitable industries and corporations. When you think of it that way, “business friendly” doesn’t sound nearly as good, does it? Isolationism doesn’t solve these problems and it doesn’t solve a global climate crisis or global environmental degradation. When it comes to securing our energy future in a clean, efficient, healthy way, perhaps it is the Congressman who is in need of a lesson.