Keeping on track to a green future
As world leaders meet to forge new agreements that can bring us to a greener world in our communities and beyond, it is imperative that as environmentalists we greatly escalate our efforts to join forces with other key stakeholders to move quickly to that green world.
That means cutting through the fog of false claims and arguments and shining light on the terrible threats to our environment and what needs to be done to counteract them.
Twisting premises and perceptions can obfuscate the issues and options. Some arguing for hydrofracking for natural gas in New York and elsewhere say it will benefit our economy but overlook the economic impact of environmental degradation and cleanup of all aspects of fracking, including development of massive infrastructure to transport gas.
The economic study done in conjunction with NYS’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement neither identified nor considered the myriad of factors that, if the state authorizes hydrofracking, would have great negative impacts for our state’s short- and long-term economy, environment and welfare.
We need a groundswell from the people to say no to hydrofracking in our stat and yes to greatly expanded energy conservation, efficiency and renewable energy in all sectors of our economy.
We all need to join the “Not One Well” campaign so that from now until the governor’s State of the State message at the capital in January our state will resound in thundering words that fracking must not move forward in New York.
Here and around the world it is all too clear that economic benefits limited to a minority at the top of the business pyramid drive decisions to drill for and burn oil and natural gas, mine uranium and operate nuclear power plants. For too long, public subsidies, favorable laws, regulations, and court actions have favored fossil fuel and nuclear energy to the detriment of renewable energy. We, the people, need to shout out loud and fight hard to shift the short-term, business-as-usual outlook to a long-term, sustainable environment and economy.
The recent mid-term elections unfortunately demonstrated the warping impact of huge campaign donations from some wealthy corporations and individuals. Also, the low voter turnout, which went against the public good, will make it harder to move to a greener, sustainable world.
We need to fight for tax incentives for wind and solar energy as well as for energy conservation—not for fossil fuel and nuclear fuels.
We need to overturn the exemptions from the Clean Air and Clean Water acts enacted during the Bush/Cheney era and enact laws and regulations at the federal, state, and local level to promote energy conservation/efficiency and renewables that make economic and environmental sense.
And we need to escalate efforts to reform campaign finance and educate the public about ways to move to a green economy and future.
This Thanksgiving, my family, as usual, enjoyed engaging in some big-issue talks and this time we focused a lot on the aspirations of people around the world and their hope for improved standards of living.
I asked everyone to think about efforts to stop climate change. We talked about how aspirations to reach desirable standards of living vary so greatly around the world and are critical in how our world approaches climate change.
In Third World countries and in developing ones, including India, people’s aspirations are much lower than in the U.S. So how can we shift our aspirations to focus on a sustainable future rather than a hard-driving quest for consumption that destroys human resources as well as the rest of the natural world?