April 10,2020 By Dr. Randi Pokladnik at thebargainhunter.com
The world has come to a standstill as countries try to protect
their citizens from the COVID-19 virus spreading across the globe. People have
been asked to adhere to social distancing guidelines, and only essential
businesses are allowed to remain open to prevent further spread of this very
contagious virus.
While the world is preoccupied with this crisis, polluting
industries have used this as an excuse to increase their assault on our
environment. Some government agencies charged with assuring the safety of our
air and water have all but abdicated their responsibilities.
As usual the oil and gas industry has been quick to claim
their industry is an “essential” one. Although the maintenance of existing
energy supplies is critical, new pipeline construction is not. Yet many
pipelines including the Mariner East II in Pennsylvania, the Mountain Valley
Pipeline (MVP) in West Virginia and Virginia, and the Keystone XL Pipeline in
Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska all continue to be constructed.
The Keystone XL Pipeline could carry 830,000 barrels of oil
per day from Alberta through Nebraska to the Gulf Coast in Texas. Farmers,
indigenous communities and ranchers in the USA are resisting its construction.
Oil Change International’s Collin Rees spoke out against the
recent $1.1 billion investment from Alberta, Canada’s government to help
construct the XL tar sands pipeline. “We need billions of dollars invested
directly in vulnerable communities dying from COVID-19, not spent propping up
massive oil companies and unneeded projects that would trample indigenous
rights and exacerbate the climate crisis.”
In the midst of a pandemic where people are being asked to
avoid family funerals and are separated from their loved ones, hundreds of
out-of-state construction workers will move into rural communities in these
regions.
This is especially disturbing in isolated areas that lack
hospitals and medical resources such as indigenous communities and isolated
regions in West Virginia.
Citizens living in communities close to the Shell Plastic
Cracker Plant in Monaca, Pennsylvania have asked Governor Wolf to pause its
construction due to the possible spreading of the COVID-19 virus. They cited a
range of hazards including crowded busses and a lack of hand sanitizer in
portable bathrooms. The site has seen over 7,000 construction workers employed
on the 40-acre tract of land.
Communities in and around these pipelines also are worried
about the spread of the virus from “man-camps.” Out-of-state workers use these
camps to set up temporary housing. The leader of the Yankton Sioux tribe
likened the influx of nonlocal workers to the distribution of infected smallpox
blankets.
The continued construction of pipelines and other oil and gas
projects during a time of a pandemic shows a total disregard for the health and
safety of local communities and also for pipeline workers and their families.
On March 26 the EPA announced a “temporary policy on
environmental enforcement” would occur during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the
results of this policy is “no penalties will be given to entities who fail to
comply with routine monitoring and reporting.” This also includes no reporting
of greenhouse gas emissions and the weakening of transportation sector emission
requirements.
As we struggle with a disease that specifically affects the
lungs, the EPA announced it will weaken 2012 auto pollution standards. This
will make the U.S. one of the worst countries when it comes to fuel efficiency.
According to a Mother Jones article, the reversal means “an increase
of 185,000 premature deaths, 250,000 more asthma attacks, 350,000 other
respiratory problems and an increase of $190 billion in health costs between
now and 2050.”
In a recent article in The Hill, environmentalists said this
policy is a “license to pollute.” Some industries that will greatly benefit
from the lack of monitoring and reporting include chemical plants, oil and gas,
power plants, steel manufacturers, and others who could discharge more
pollutants into the air and waterways of our nation.
Last week I attended a webinar conducted by the Nuclear
Regulatory Commission. The webinar covered new proposed regulations that would
transfer disposal requirements for what the NRC called “very low-level
radioactive wastes” from licensed radioactive disposal sites to any private or
public landfill receiving an exemption.
After a brief PowerPoint presentation, the webinar was open
for questions. There were people present from all over the country and from
various environmental and health organizations. No one was happy about this
proposed rule change.
The wastes that could fall under this VLLRW classification
range from contaminated mops and clothing from nuclear power plants to
irradiated pipes and reactor components. A truckload of wastes could meet the amount
considered to be very low-level radioactive wastes by averaging all the
radiation in the load.
The ability to average together both high- and low-level
radioactive wastes occurs with “irregularly contaminated” fracking wastes.
These wastes can have both high amounts of Radium from technically enhanced
naturally occurring radiation from produced waters, as well as sludge from
drill cuttings.
According to one of the webinar participants, an attorney from
Ohio, ”The NRC will grant a one-time license, calling it an ‘exemption’ for a
local landfill, with no articulated guidelines for what the dumping pit must be
lined with, whether there are any well monitors set up, no firm testing or
other monitoring protocol, no indication whether leachate samples should be
tested and no means of determining whether there is offsite leakage.”
Ohio currently has 38 private or municipally owned landfills,
and any of these could apply for an NRC exemption. Nuclear power plants all
over our country are aging out and looking for places to take their wastes.
These landfills would provide a cheap way around the current expensive
alternatives (see 10 CFR 20.2002).
Most people familiar with landfills can tell you they will
leak. I have seen butter break down a landfill liner in a matter of weeks in a
lab setting. Counting on these landfills to protect our surface and groundwater
from irreparable harm is naïve at best.
The Ohio attorney said, “Improperly disposed of industrial
chemicals leak into area water, and now the NRC wants radioisotopes with
half-lives extending out to tens if not hundreds of thousands of years to be
securely confined in facilities that are nowhere near being up to that
mission.”
Will Ohioans know if their local landfill is accepting these
wastes and if workers are trained in handling these wastes? What will
communities do if underground water sources become contaminated?
We have until April 20 to submit comments to the NRC at www.regulations.gov/document?D=NRC-2020-0065-0001.
People also can contact local officials who deal with solid wastes and let them know we do not want our landfills to become cheap radioactive dumping sites for the nuclear industry.
See many more great articles by Dr. Pokladnik here.
Last Updated: April 29, 2023 by main_y0ke11
A legacy of externalized costs
Letter to the Editor, Marietta Times by Victor Elam, May 6
Externalized costs are costs that are generated by one party who benefits but a third party pays for those costs directly or indirectly. The Mid-Ohio Valley is rife with examples of its residents and its lands paying the price while others reap the rewards, from forest harvest in the early 1900’s followed by oil, coal, gas extraction to industry leaving behind poisoned employees and lands.
One such example occurred in 1999 when an industry near Marietta released harmful chemicals into the Ohio River that killed thousands of fish and at least 990,000 mussels over a 20 mile stretch of the river. The guilty parties paid a 3.25 million dollar penalty for their misdeed yet 30 years later and after great efforts to restore the mussel population, the population has not recovered.
The public often has no opportunity to have a voice when these externalized costs are forced upon them, but there is a proposal submitted to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) that will require a permit and is subject to public comment and it so happens to have potential to affect the same area as the chemical release in 1999. The proposal is to bring well waste by barge to a docking site and pump the waste material from the barge to existing holding tanks where it will then be transferred to trucks and transported to area injection wells for disposal. So here again the residents of the MOV are subjected to risk of contamination from spills or unknown risks resulting from the injection wells to help others profit while we get nothing. If something does go wrong, we will suffer or the environment in which we live will and no amount of money will be able to correct the damage.
I encourage you to provide comment regarding this project to: lrh.usace.army.mil/missions/regulatory/public-notices/article/2142164
Unless an extension is granted, comment is being taken until May 6. In the past public hearings were held for these types of actions but the USACE has elected to forego those hearings and only accept comment online. If you feel that this should be delayed until we can have a proper public hearing please let the Huntington District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers know.
Last Updated: April 29, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Trust the science
Letter to the Editor Marietta Times May 13, 2020 by Aaron Dunbar
“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there always has been,” wrote prominent science fiction author Issac Asimov four decades ago. “The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’”
I don’t know that a more succinct explanation exists for the era in which we live.
How else to make sense of the heavily armed protesters demanding an end to stay-at-home orders during a deadly pandemic? Or a President who casually floats the idea of injecting disinfectants in order to treat the coronavirus, leading to a reported spike in calls to poison control centers throughout the country?
How do you explain Mike Pence’s visit to the Mayo Clinic without wearing a mask? How do you explain Jared Kushner referring to 58,000 dead Americans as a “great success?” How do you explain a political party that brazenly promotes itself as being pro-life, now pushing for the reopening of the country despite explicit warnings from medical professionals, and arguing that the loss of a few million lives is a worthwhile price to pay for a strong economy?
How do you explain the fact that many of the same people witnessing this insanity will (literally) die on the hill of denying any of this? Of insisting they were right all along despite observable reality?
Anyone who’s paid any attention to our nation’s gross mishandling of the climate crisis can hardly be surprised by the turn of events now unfolding in response to COVID-19. As a Vox article from last month astutely pointed out, “One of the strongest and most robust predictors of social distancing behavior is found in attitudes toward another major challenge facing the United States: climate change.”
I really do not know how to lay this out more explicitly:
I do not know more than scientists. Neither do you.
You do not know more than medical professionals. You do not know more than epidemiologists. You do not know more than the international community of climate scientists, who overwhelmingly agree on the reality of anthropogenic climate change, and the unprecedented threat it poses to humanity’s future.
I don’t know better, you don’t know better, and neither does the President, whose cult of ignorance appears endlessly willing to bend objective reality in order to accommodate whatever pseudoscientific delusions happen to pop into his head on any given day.
The only way we can ever hope to grow is by possessing the humility to admit that there are things we simply do not know as individuals. Instead of manufacturing theories from whole cloth based on what we want to hear, perhaps it would be wiser to defer to those who’ve spent their entire lives devoted to studying whatever it is we’re unsure about. Maybe it’s time to stop paying attention to the President and his henchmen, whether on climate change or COVID-19, and to finally start listening to the scientists.
Individual ignorance is one thing. But when huge segments of the population are willing to accept certifiable falsehoods as truth, we all inevitably suffer the consequences.
Last Updated: April 29, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Increasing risk without our consent
Letter to the Editor May 5, 2020 Marietta Times by Rebecca Phillips
Yet again, proposals affecting the health and well-being of everyone in the Mid-Ohio Valley are being made without our input. The Army Corps of Engineers is considering a proposal that would expand a docking facility on Route 7 south of Marietta to allow potentially radioactive drilling wastewater to be offloaded there. No public notice of this proposal appeared in local media, and the Corps will not be holding a public meeting; the online comment period ends on May 6, in just a few days.
Drilling waste contents are not generally made public because of loopholes in US law, but the likely toxins include arsenic, benzene, toluene, and mercury, in addition to a mix of radioactive materials. Much of the wastewater coming our way would be from other states as Ohio’s geology makes it “suitable” for service as a wastewater dumping ground. Some of this out-of-state waste would likely go into injection wells in our county; more of it would be transferred to trucks – as many as 250 per barge – and sent over our roads, through residential neighborhoods and past farms.
Barge accidents and leaks are not unheard-of. The Ohio River provides drinking water to more than five million people and is already considered one of the country’s most polluted bodies of water. Many local water systems already face challenges filtering toxins such as C8: does adding to the risk make sense?
The Corps of Engineers is accepting comments on this permit application until May 6 unless an extension is granted. Please consider submitting a comment and a request for extension at the following web address. Only online comments are being accepted: lrh.usace.army.mil/missions/regulatory/public-notices/article/2142164
Especially in this time of pandemic, people and communities should not be placed at increased risk, and especially not without their informed consent.
Last Updated: April 29, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Residents concerned about wastewater permit
Local News May 5, 2020 Marietta Times by Michele Newbanks,
The public comment period is set to end Wednesday on a permit for a docking facility at Deep Rock Disposal Solutions. The docking facility, which would be located just south of Marietta on Ohio 7, is where local residents are concerned fracking wastewater will be offloaded.
The Independent Petroleum Association of America explains hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, is the process of injecting liquid and materials at high pressure to create small fractures within tight shale formations. This is to stimulate production and extract energy from an underground well after the drilling has ended and the rig and derrick are removed from the site.
Devola resident George Banziger said in an email that he and others are concerned about the project.
“(We) are very concerned about the health hazards of his proposed facility, the lack of attention to this issue publicly, and the timing of the public comment period – to end May 6,” he said. “It seems that the intention is to offer the comment period just when everyone is consumed with news about the coronavirus.”
Dawn Hewitt of Marietta said the notice was published on the Huntington District, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ website. It requests the authorization to operate a barge offloading facility to transfer traditional well waste to existing upload storage tanks.
“Who looks there?” Hewitt said of the website. “If it was announced, it was announced in the Huntington (W.Va.) newspaper. It wasn’t brought to the attention of people here. They were following the letter of the law, not the spirit of the law.”
Ohio Revised Code notes that all legal advertisements , notices and proclamations shall be printed in a newspaper of general circulation and shall be posted by the publisher of the newspaper on the newspaper’s internet website, if the newspaper has one.
Chuck Minsker, public affairs specialist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, noted the regulatory office said there are no plans to expand the public comment period. He was unaware if the notices had run in any newspapers.
Marietta resident Rebecca Phillips said drilling waste contents could likely include arsenic, benzene, toulene and mercury, as well as radioactive materials.
She said several people she knows have contacted the corps of engineers, but they haven’t heard much beyond the notice on the website.
“What we’ve been told by the corps, is that it is for traditional wastewater by oil and gas wells,” she said. “Anything coming out of the ground has danger of pollutants, even if it’s traditional wastewater.”
Phillips said she is concerned that southern Ohio is becoming a dumping ground.
“We are geologically suited (for wastewater dumping), but the notion of wastewater, we have no rights to know what’s in it,” she explained. “They can take waste water from all over the country and inject it into the ground here.”
She said the area is already getting truck loads of waste, but having a docking facility would add to the current problem.
John Mossor, who applied for Deep Rock’s permit, did not return calls for comment.
Hewitt said there are brine trucks driving through Marietta that are full of “toxic, contaminated water” that’s being pumped into old wells.
“I’m not convinced of the safety of the disposal method,” she said. “I’m concerned we are contaminating our ground water, and bringing in more could be a threat.”
She said there are only a few disposal sites in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but Ohio has thousands.
“I wonder how carefully these waste disposal sites are inspected,” Hewitt said. “This area where this barge is proposed is already contaminated. We should be working to clean things up instead of contaminating it more.”
A call to Darryl Ting, a retired chemical engineer from Marietta who wrote a letter to the corps of engineers about his concerns with the permit, was not returned by press time.
The letter said that Ting also had concerns about the public notification process, as well as concerns about the waste itself, which he believes to be fracking waste.
“The difference is significant,” he said in the letter. “Fracking waste contains as many as 157 chemicals known to be toxic…by a legal loophole, fracking waste is not legally hazardous.”
Ting also said that there is no evidence a process safety review has been made.
Last Updated: April 29, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Climate change and national security
Letter to the Editor Apr 28, 2020 Marietta Times by Aaron Dunbar
“Within a few short centuries, we are returning to the air a significant part of the carbon that was extracted by plants and buried in the sediments during half a billion years Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment. Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years. By the year 2000 the increase in CO2 will be close to 25%. This may be sufficient to produce measurable and perhaps marked changes in climate. The climate changes that may be produced by the increased CO2 content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.”
The above is an excerpt from an official report sent to President Lyndon B. Johnson back in 1965. It’s not as well known as it really should be that every single U.S. President going back to at least Johnson has been warned about the dangers of anthropogenic climate change.
Today the United States Pentagon (hardly fitting the profile of the left-leaning tree huggers accused of peddling a socialist conspiracy by climate change deniers) considers the ongoing climate crisis an imminent threat to the future of our nation.
Said the Department of Defense in a 2015 Congressional memo: “Climate change is an urgent and growing threat to our national security, contributing to increased natural disasters, refugee flows, and conflicts over basic resources such as food and water. These impacts are already occurring, and the scope, scale, and intensity of these impacts are projected to increase over time.”
Recall the much-demonized “migrant caravan” traveling north from South America throughout the past couple of years. Above the raucous political noise about whether or not these desperate individuals should be allowed entry into the United States, there were also smatterings of articles here and there about the underlying causes of the migration. Among these reasons were widespread drought and crop failure, theorized to have been a direct effect of anthropogenic climate change.
Africa and the Middle East, meanwhile, both areas of the world already fraught with tension, are likely to experience massive escalations in conflict as a result of rising global temperatures. Studies have already found, for instance, that the devastating civil war in Syria was likely sparked in part by the migration of farmers from rural areas into cities, due again to drought fueled by global warming.
These instances are only going to multiply and get worse until we begin to take meaningful action on climate change, and it’s a mistake to believe that we as Americans can remain insulated from the conflict for long.
For more information on how you can get involved in the effort for meaningful climate solutions, reach out to the Citizens’ Climate Lobby Marietta Chapter.
Last Updated: April 29, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Save our earth
Letter to the Editor Apr 24, 2020 Marietta Times by Margaret Meeker
Last year at this time I submitted a letter concerning Earth Day which was started 50 years ago under a Republican administration. As we approach Earth Day, April 22, 2020 we need to ask, what have we as a country done to reduce carbon dioxide in the last year? Nothing. The present administration in Washington, D.C. has done a great job of dismantling everything the Obama administration did to reduce our emissions. Now the Trump administration is fighting with the state of California about regulations for auto emissions.
Since 2019 we have witnessed the worst fires in Australia. Now fires are burning in Russia near the site of the worst nuclear disaster at Chernobyl that occurred on Saturday 26 April 1986. I can’t remember which news channel reported this. The fires and wind are now carrying radiation into the surrounding areas. Also, I have not seen any statistics on how Russia is handling the coronavirus pandemic.
Is the pandemic tied to the climate crisis? Well, yes, some places are seeing bluer skies due to lack of auto and plane travel. That would change quickly if all rush to return to “normal”. But now the use of plastic bags and containers has grown due to shopping without cloth bags and more carry out from restaurants.
The lessons we could learn from this virus is that we must listen to scientists, we must act quickly as our earth is not well. In an article published by Beth Gardiner, she says, the virus teaches us that we must act with great urgency to save the planet. Maybe, our ‘new normal” will be working from home, teleconferencing rather than continental/intercontinental travel, using public transportation vs individual cars, only traveling for essentials, living with less vs more, respecting the beautiful outdoors, raising our food, enjoying the ones who live in our homes, helping neighbors, making sure all have food, clothing, and shelter as well as health care and sufficient income to live regardless where we live or the color of our skin.
As we stay home to protect our neighbors, may we think of ways we can save the earth.
One way is to elect government officials who will listen to scientists, act quickly for the good of all people, and protect our air, water, food, etc.
Last Updated: April 29, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Using pandemic to avoid regulations
April 10,2020 By Dr. Randi Pokladnik at thebargainhunter.com
The world has come to a standstill as countries try to protect their citizens from the COVID-19 virus spreading across the globe. People have been asked to adhere to social distancing guidelines, and only essential businesses are allowed to remain open to prevent further spread of this very contagious virus.
While the world is preoccupied with this crisis, polluting industries have used this as an excuse to increase their assault on our environment. Some government agencies charged with assuring the safety of our air and water have all but abdicated their responsibilities.
As usual the oil and gas industry has been quick to claim their industry is an “essential” one. Although the maintenance of existing energy supplies is critical, new pipeline construction is not. Yet many pipelines including the Mariner East II in Pennsylvania, the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) in West Virginia and Virginia, and the Keystone XL Pipeline in Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska all continue to be constructed.
The Keystone XL Pipeline could carry 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Alberta through Nebraska to the Gulf Coast in Texas. Farmers, indigenous communities and ranchers in the USA are resisting its construction.
Oil Change International’s Collin Rees spoke out against the recent $1.1 billion investment from Alberta, Canada’s government to help construct the XL tar sands pipeline. “We need billions of dollars invested directly in vulnerable communities dying from COVID-19, not spent propping up massive oil companies and unneeded projects that would trample indigenous rights and exacerbate the climate crisis.”
In the midst of a pandemic where people are being asked to avoid family funerals and are separated from their loved ones, hundreds of out-of-state construction workers will move into rural communities in these regions.
This is especially disturbing in isolated areas that lack hospitals and medical resources such as indigenous communities and isolated regions in West Virginia.
Citizens living in communities close to the Shell Plastic Cracker Plant in Monaca, Pennsylvania have asked Governor Wolf to pause its construction due to the possible spreading of the COVID-19 virus. They cited a range of hazards including crowded busses and a lack of hand sanitizer in portable bathrooms. The site has seen over 7,000 construction workers employed on the 40-acre tract of land.
Communities in and around these pipelines also are worried about the spread of the virus from “man-camps.” Out-of-state workers use these camps to set up temporary housing. The leader of the Yankton Sioux tribe likened the influx of nonlocal workers to the distribution of infected smallpox blankets.
The continued construction of pipelines and other oil and gas projects during a time of a pandemic shows a total disregard for the health and safety of local communities and also for pipeline workers and their families.
On March 26 the EPA announced a “temporary policy on environmental enforcement” would occur during the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the results of this policy is “no penalties will be given to entities who fail to comply with routine monitoring and reporting.” This also includes no reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and the weakening of transportation sector emission requirements.
As we struggle with a disease that specifically affects the lungs, the EPA announced it will weaken 2012 auto pollution standards. This will make the U.S. one of the worst countries when it comes to fuel efficiency.
According to a Mother Jones article, the reversal means “an increase of 185,000 premature deaths, 250,000 more asthma attacks, 350,000 other respiratory problems and an increase of $190 billion in health costs between now and 2050.”
In a recent article in The Hill, environmentalists said this policy is a “license to pollute.” Some industries that will greatly benefit from the lack of monitoring and reporting include chemical plants, oil and gas, power plants, steel manufacturers, and others who could discharge more pollutants into the air and waterways of our nation.
Last week I attended a webinar conducted by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The webinar covered new proposed regulations that would transfer disposal requirements for what the NRC called “very low-level radioactive wastes” from licensed radioactive disposal sites to any private or public landfill receiving an exemption.
After a brief PowerPoint presentation, the webinar was open for questions. There were people present from all over the country and from various environmental and health organizations. No one was happy about this proposed rule change.
The wastes that could fall under this VLLRW classification range from contaminated mops and clothing from nuclear power plants to irradiated pipes and reactor components. A truckload of wastes could meet the amount considered to be very low-level radioactive wastes by averaging all the radiation in the load.
The ability to average together both high- and low-level radioactive wastes occurs with “irregularly contaminated” fracking wastes. These wastes can have both high amounts of Radium from technically enhanced naturally occurring radiation from produced waters, as well as sludge from drill cuttings.
According to one of the webinar participants, an attorney from Ohio, ”The NRC will grant a one-time license, calling it an ‘exemption’ for a local landfill, with no articulated guidelines for what the dumping pit must be lined with, whether there are any well monitors set up, no firm testing or other monitoring protocol, no indication whether leachate samples should be tested and no means of determining whether there is offsite leakage.”
Ohio currently has 38 private or municipally owned landfills, and any of these could apply for an NRC exemption. Nuclear power plants all over our country are aging out and looking for places to take their wastes. These landfills would provide a cheap way around the current expensive alternatives (see 10 CFR 20.2002).
Most people familiar with landfills can tell you they will leak. I have seen butter break down a landfill liner in a matter of weeks in a lab setting. Counting on these landfills to protect our surface and groundwater from irreparable harm is naïve at best.
The Ohio attorney said, “Improperly disposed of industrial chemicals leak into area water, and now the NRC wants radioisotopes with half-lives extending out to tens if not hundreds of thousands of years to be securely confined in facilities that are nowhere near being up to that mission.”
Will Ohioans know if their local landfill is accepting these wastes and if workers are trained in handling these wastes? What will communities do if underground water sources become contaminated?
We have until April 20 to submit comments to the NRC at www.regulations.gov/document?D=NRC-2020-0065-0001.
People also can contact local officials who deal with solid wastes and let them know we do not want our landfills to become cheap radioactive dumping sites for the nuclear industry.
See many more great articles by Dr. Pokladnik here.
Last Updated: April 29, 2023 by main_y0ke11
A call for war time mobilization
Apr 12, 2020 By Eric Engle Letter to the Editor Parkersburg News and Sentinel
In a column dated March 30, Mike Myer writes about the need for greater preparedness when addressing ever-evolving pathogens. I agree with Mike that we must be more prepared for microbial threats like the COVID-19 Coronavirus. Where Mike and I disagree is regarding his comments on climate change. Mike writes, “And how much have we spent — both through government and out of our own pocketbooks because of federal mandates — on climate change?” Mike continues, “Still, climate change isn’t going to kill 50 million of us in a year.” The answer to Mike’s question is “not nearly enough” and my response to Mike’s assertion is “think again!”
The United States, especially under the Trump administration, has not done nearly enough to address anthropogenic (human-caused) global climate change. Trump began by responding to this coronavirus the way he has consistently responded to the climate crisis, with allegations of it all being a partisan, ideologically motivated hoax. To the extent Trump and his administration have taken either threat seriously, it is only to say, “we’ve got it all under control” or “the problem is not nearly as bad as it seems.” We quickly found out how wrong Trump and his administration were on COVID-19, but climate change poses a far more complex, albeit equally urgent, threat.
Intolerable heatwaves, massive wildfires, expansive droughts in some areas – with massive precipitation and flooding events in others (both recurring more frequently and severely) — stronger hurricanes caused by warmer ocean surface temperatures, land and see ice melt, rising seas, ocean acidification and deoxygenation, and, yes, a substantially greater threat from vector-borne diseases like COVID-19 in a warmer and wetter world are just some of the effects of global climate change. The results are and will be enormous economic turmoil that makes this COVID-19 pandemic seem like child’s play. Mass migration issues, an increase in global conflicts as crops fail and global food and potable water supplies diminish (salt water will infiltrate fresh water supplies and some fresh water supplies will simply dry up), and islands and coastlines disappearing beneath the waves are and will be just some of the consequences of our inaction.
What we need to learn from this pandemic is not limited to better addressing threatening and ever-changing microorganisms (though this is critical, as is dealing with antibiotic resistance). What we need is a Green New Deal and we need it now! We need wartime mobilization. As I write this the CDC reports 140,904 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. and 2,405 confirmed deaths. West Virginia currently has 124 confirmed cases and 1 confirmed death. By the time this is printed no doubt these numbers will be much higher. Some of these lives could have been saved and some of those made ill spared with proper preparation and mobilization. Will ideological opposition and science rejection result in the same continued mishandling of the global climate crisis? At Mid-Ohio Valley Climate Action, we’re fighting to keep that from happening. Join us today.
Last Updated: April 29, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Exploited, indeed
Apr 12, 2020 By Aaron Dunbar Letter to the Editor Parkersburg News and Sentinel
A couple of weeks back I submitted a letter to the News and Sentinel, discussing the lessons we should be learning from the COVID-19 pandemic, and what they can teach us about our response to climate change.
I anticipated that this might not sit well with some readers, and sure enough, I faced a small amount of online backlash from commenters, who accused me of exploiting a crisis in pursuit of my own personal goals.
I would not be writing about this publicly, except that I doubt that these online commenters were alone in their opinion. And I actually do agree that the crisis we now face is being exploited, by those with shortsighted self-interest in mind.
On Thursday, March 26 for instance, Trump’s EPA announced that it would indefinitely suspend the enforcement of environmental laws throughout the duration of the coronavirus outbreak, essentially giving the fossil fuel industry free rein to regulate itself (or not) for the foreseeable future.
Meanwhile in Canada, the Wet’suwet’en First Nation has spent months trying to prevent an illegal natural gas pipeline from being built on their land. The fight against said pipeline essentially bled straight into the coronavirus outbreak, and Coastal Gaslink, the company responsible for the pipeline, has reportedly taken advantage of public distraction to try and push through construction, putting Indigenous communities in danger as they fail to properly screen outside workers for health risks.
Also throughout the past few weeks, Kentucky, South Carolina, and West Virginia have all passed controversial legislation designed to stifle peaceful protest against fossil fuel infrastructure, using the mass disarray of the coronavirus outbreak as cover. It’s worth noting that such legislation, drafted by the fossil fuel industry in response to the Keystone XL Pipeline protests at Standing Rock, has been sweeping across U.S. states like its own form of infectious disease. As with the Wet’suwet’en, Standing Rock infamously entailed the Great Sioux Nation fighting back against an unwanted pipeline on their land, and even featured a shared villain with the Wet’suwet’en struggle- TransCanada, otherwise known as TC Energy.
Are you beginning to notice a pattern here?
This is only a handful of examples I’ve picked up on over the past week or so. I’m sure there will be even more out there by the time this letter makes it to print.
At the end of the day, I couldn’t agree more that the crisis we now face is being exploited. But I don’t believe for a second that this is being done by climate activists, who are seizing this moment to try and wake people up to the existential dangers of climate change.
Instead, this crisis is being exploited by the same bad faith actors who’ve preyed on society since the inception of their industry. Who’ve lied for decades about the climate crisis, who’ve taken advantage of their employees, put them at risk, and stolen their healthcare and pensions, and who’ve leveled poor communities for the sake of greed.
All of us need to look out for one another in these difficult times. And those moneyed interests who would seize this crisis to inflict further suffering upon humanity should be absolutely ashamed of themselves.
Last Updated: April 29, 2023 by main_y0ke11
Whether it’s coronavirus or climate crisis, think globally and act locally now
Mar 23, 2020 By Adeline Bailey Letter to the Editor in the Marietta Times
Currently, reports of the spread of the coronavirus fill the news.
COVID-19 started far from the U.S., but now Ohio health officials and public health departments here in our valley “out of an abundance of caution” are taking steps to prevent an outbreak. As individuals we’re urged to practice good hand-washing, contact our local health care providers, stay home if we’re feeling ill, limit unnecessary travel, make plans in case day-to-day activities are disrupted, and take special precautions if we’re part of a vulnerable population group. Our local, state, and federal government departments are preparing tests to identify, isolate, and treat those already affected, and they are working on ways to help with the economic challenges that the pandemic could cause.
I’m grateful for this organized response to COVID-19. It gives me hope that realizing we are part of a global community impacted by something that has no respect for national borders might help us understand that we need to work together in taking action against climate change.
The ways we are dealing with the virus can instruct the ways we can deal with the climate crisis. As individuals, we can change the ways we heat our homes and produce our foods; get our electricity from renewable energy sources like wind and solar; drive electric cars; recycle, and reduce waste and pollution. Mariettans can ask local government to encourage buying from local farmers and merchants and reward businesses that help reduce the city’s carbon footprint and energy emissions. We can encourage local government to add solar panels to more municipal buildings, to develop more projects that make the city a desirable place to live and work, and build resilience against the extreme weather events and other impacts that climate change may bring to future generations of Mariettans.
We have an opportunity to come together to discuss what we’d like Marietta to look like in 10, or 20, or 50 years. City officials and citizens alike can share their views at a Sustainable Marietta Forum hosted by the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Unitarian Universalist Society. The three-day event is free, and anyone interested can register in advance at tinyurl.com/sustainable-marietta-forum. Following the Governor’s restrictions on large group gatherings, the planning group has postponed this event. In the meantime, they are working on creating a virtual forum for continuing the discussion on sustainabity.
While local action is important, it’s imperative that we also ask our national government to help us succeed in protecting our future. One effective and practical way to deal with this problem in the U.S. is for the government to collect a fee on carbon that increases over time, to impose it on coal before it ships from the mine and on oil and natural gas before they are piped from the well. Legislation before the House of Representatives (H.R. 763) stipulates returning the fee in equal monthly payments to all households. This carbon fee and dividend model is supported by U.S. economists and former chairs of the Federal Reserve, and by Citizens’ Climate Lobby. For more information about the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act: energyinnovationact.org.
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