Patricia DeMarco Ph.D.

"Live in harmony with nature."

Tag Archives: Environment


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Made In America- Made to Last

Earth Day 2024 – A reflection from Earth Day in 1970

by Patricia DeMarco

This Earth Day 2024 places a spotlight on plastic – a man-made counterpoint to the wonders of the natural world. Plastic brought apparent convenience and inexpensive goods to America, but the consequences resonate for hundreds of years in global pollution from often toxic synthetic materials. The shared sense that the living world has intrinsic value critical to the health of all interconnected living beings gave common ground in the first Earth Day in 1970, but has been eroded and even derided today.

If people are to thrive together on a finite planet, we must adjust our consumption patterns to be more sustainable. We must restore the central value of preserving the health of the environment- air, water and land that support all of the ecosystem services we depend on. Manufacturers accountability legislation has been introduced in the Senate by Senator Jeff Merkley as The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021. We can start by passing this important initiative .

For more information and a fuller argument for Breaking Free From Plastic in our lives, download the full paper:

earth-day-2024-made-in-america-made-to-last-Download

Topics included in the full paper:

Earth Day 1970- a Retrospective

Earth Day 2024 Parallels and Contrasts

There is no longer a national bipartisan consensus for the value of environmental and climate policy.

Three Existential Crises: Global warming, global biodiversity loss; global pollution

Global Pollution- Plastic Everywhere!

System Solutions:

  1. Accelerate the transformation to a renewable energy resource system.
  2. Regenerative agriculture and restorative land use
  3. Circular Materials management from non-fossil feedstocks

Call to Action: Sustainability as a Goal

First, manufacturers must be held accountable: Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act of 2021

Second, Test for health effects before commercial production.

Third, educate chemists, engineers and industrial manufacturers about living systems.

Finally, be an active citizen. We can all act as empowered consumers. Americans discard 33.6 million tons of plastic a year average of 286 pounds of waste per person per year.  Use your consumer power more wisely:

  • Refuse-single-use items
  • Reduce– Buy in bulk, substitute recyclable and non-toxic materials for non-recyclable
  • Reuse– select refillable products; buy recycled materials-replace single-use items with reusable items-exchange toys, clothing, household décor
  • Recycle– know the rules in your area and separate clean items
  • Rot– compost food waste and organic material

Use your voice as an engaged citizen. Advocate for policies that will address these issues directly in your community, in your state legislature and with your Congressional Senators and Representatives. Your vote is your voice, and you have a responsibility as a citizen to hold the people who purport to represent you to account. Apathy is our enemy.

On this Earth Day 2024, I savor the beauty of the world around me now, and I pray again in my old age for the surge of care and concern for the Living Earth and for our future that will override partisan politics and corporate greed.


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2024: A Pivotal Year for Action

This is a pivotal year in many ways, especially in the urgent need to make the policy U-turn from an extractive to a regenerative economy. Without the restructuring of our economy, and indeed our civilization, away from fossil fuel combustion within the next five or six years, the climate tipping point may be irreversibly crossed. 2023 was the hottest year in recorded history, with many regions experiencing unlivable conditions for at least part of this year. https://climate.copernicus.eu/copernicus-2023-hottest-year-record Conditions will only worsen if we continue the slow walk on climate action.

Engaged and informed citizen action has never been more important.

Growing from the Petrochemical Lunch and Learn Series of 2023, we saw great interest in further exploration of environmental-related health harms and how to address and prevent them. I am partnered with the Black Appalachian Coalition (BLAC) and with the Ohio River Valley Institute to dive deeper into the connection between environmental pollution and our health. https://blackappalachiancoalition.org/
Our first sessions of the series are:

  • February 15 – Health Is a Human Right
  • March 21 – Air Pollution: Sources, Health Harms, and Mitigation
  • April 18 – Water is Life
  • May 16 –  The Land Beneath Our Feet

This series of workshops empowers people with information and guidance for action, especially in communities affected by petrochemical and extractive industries. A healthy environment is necessary for healthy people; it is a human right for people to have clean air, water, and access to health care.

Register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZApcuqqrz0vGdSlxRBjkfkT4FusY64Cpz_2?blm_aid=0#/registration

Personal Focus for 2024:

I have ended my term as an elected official on December 31st 2023., and I have been appointed to the Forest Hills Community Alliance, the community development corporation for Forest HIlls.  To structure and organize my consulting activities,  I have joined The Main Street Associates in Braddock as a Principal Associate.https://www.themainst.org Work here includes developing Community Benefit Plans and Agreements required by grant recipients under the Inflation Reduction Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. I have a focus on the regulatory infrastructure necessary to promote and enable renewable energy systems to thrive in PA. Shifting from a central fossil fueled power station with distant customers must give way to a Distributed Energy System. We are working to build a shared prosperity for our communities.

I continue writing as a Pittsburgh centered author. ReImagine Appalachia- Healing the Land and Empowering the People is In Press now. I have two new writing projects. I am collecting stories and resources to develop the story of the Mon Valley- its past and its future as a journey from the industrial extractive era to the clean manufacturing era. With the passing of my Aunt Rosa, I received the mantle of Matriarch of our Family. With this honor, I will be collecting the multi-generational story of our family from the mountains of Campolieto Campobasso in the Abruzzi region of Italy to the interwoven branches across America.

This will be a year of challenges and trials. Our country seems painfully divided and polarized. But we can come together as a people affirming what is good and true in our culture; learning and sharing with those who bring tradition and wisdom to bear on our common problems, and restore the attribute of treating each person politely with dignity and respect. Without justice, there is no peace. Without compassion, there is no healing. We can build a shared prosperity, a better future, if we work together and respect the laws of Nature as a guide to our way forward.


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The Tipping Point: A Life or Death Decision Point on Global Pollution and Climate Change

Patricia M. DeMarco

September 8, 2018

The summer of 2018 goes down in my life history as the turning point in my fifteen-year fight with cancer.   After being free of any disease from 2001 to 2017, I have faced two cancers in the last two years.   Knowing that I have been living on borrowed time changed the direction of my life. In 2006, I left the corporate world, divorced from a destructive relationship, and came home to my roots as an environmental activist. I vowed to stop trying to be “successful” and wealthy, but to do work that has meaning and purpose for the future. I came home to Pittsburgh, to Rachel Carson, and to a life devoted to preserving the living earth. Now as my strength is waned through a 24 week regimen of chemotherapy, I find that my role has shifted once again from the strong voice, standing with raised fist to one who writes the words, and empowers others to speak.

After a decade of public activism, the message echoes back to me through my students, through my family, and through my community. I see the power of many voices joined in demands for clean air, fresh water and fertile ground. The hopeful vision of a future where people can make better choices for energy, food, and materials emerges one community at a time.

A life and death decision point acts as a catalyst to crystallize priorities. There is no time left to wait for others to act. When you have nothing to lose, there is no point to preserving proper dignity or protocol. And this is exactly the situation of the world we are living in today.  We face a life and death decision point on global warming and global pollution, yet people still act as though the ponderous machinations of due
process will get us to a solution. But the laws of nature proceed without “due process.” Greenhouse gases accumulate; the atmosphere warms; the oceans acidify;  glaciers and ice caps melt; storms intensify. People as well as plants and animals cannot adapt quickly to the intensity or speed of these changes.  But, we can act much more effectively than is the case now if we act together, with common purpose and directed intent.

So in this tortured summer of 2018, I feel my strength wane, but I see the strong voices of my students- Eva Resnik-Day in the Fight for 100% renewable energy; Seth Bush coaching and empowering entrepreneurs and activists; Kacie Stewart taking a role in renewable energy in manufacturing with Epic Metals. I see young colleagues making a huge impact through film and media- Mark Dixon with Blue Lens, LLC documenting the movement and calling others to action; Kirsi Jansa making documentaries and pushing creativity in response to crises and becoming a new citizen activist; Maren Cook holding gatherings to keep the movement together; Matt Mehalik working for clean air through the Breathe Project; Mike Stout documenting the struggle of organized labor and the importance of democratic process through unions; Charlie McCollester, Wanda Guthrie, so, so many others raising the call to action. Jackie Dempsey and the Indivisible Forest Hills movement, mirroring a whole country of people taking politics seriously.

The human spirit is hard to quench. Re-defining aspirations to value preserving the living Earth as a critical need above profits in a monetary measure alone may take a generation. We have no time for gradual transitions.  A crisis point is upon us, now, in this generation.  We have tools at hand to solve the problems of climate change and global pollution.  There is no longer time to reverse the trajectory toward a hotter drier planet, but action can still be effective to mitigate the worst of the effects and preserve viability for the next generation.  This is not a technology problem- it is an ethical and moral challenge: Do we living today make decisions that preserve the option of life for the next generation? Or do we persist on a path of instant gratification and greed, heedless of known disastrous consequences of our actions?

Energy Transfer Corporation pipeline explodes days after installation in Beaver PA

Protestors arrested at PA Pipeline Task Force meeting

This is the time- our time- to face the existential crises of climate change and global pollution, especially from plastic.  This is our time to take the actions needed to curtail fossil resource extraction and combustion. Climate change and environmental destruction must be on the central political agenda in every election, every race, every town hall.  We who care about the future cannot stand silent while those in power continue to pretend there is a positive outcome for continuing on the fossil path.  We will follow the dinosaurs into extinction if we continue burning their remains. It is time to place priority on the vital functions of the living Earth – the ecosystem services – embedded in the interconnected living systems on the surface of the earth.  Instead of criminalizing those who stand to protect watersheds, wetlands, forests, farmland and refuges, we should be prosecuting those who rip fossil materials – oil, coal, fossil methane- from the depths of the earth. The 1837 laws that gave mineral rights superiority over surface rights continue to subsidize and destroy our life support system. The Pennsylvania laws that demand access to mineral “rights” over the objections and concerns of landowners and citizens, in violation of our own Constitution, need to be overturned.  The federal law and regulations that made exemptions for natural extraction from deep shales legal in spite of environmental harms need to be overturned. It is time to place the health and safety of people and the living planet above the short-term profits of multi-national corporations.

 

Take these three actions today:

  1. Make sure climate and environment issues are in the discussion for every candidate for office.  Demand a position statement- hold them accountable for votes taken against sustainability actions. Find your elected officials here:
    For PA: http://www.legis.state.pa.us/cfdocs/legis/home/findyourlegislator/  
    For federal https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members 
  2. VOTE in every election, every time! work to Get Out The Vote for candidates that stand for climate action and environmental justice. (There are MANY action groups!) Find a local action group here:https://350.org
  3.  Pledge to take action in your personal life to move toward a more sustainable lifestyle. Recruit your family, friends and neighbors to do the same.  Find more suggestions here:   https://www.greenpeace.org/archive-international/en/campaigns/climate-change/Solutions/What-you-can-do/              and here  https://www.lifewithoutplastic.com/store/10_easy_tips_for_living_with_less_plastic#.W6PeWC2ZOL8

I will be working to preserve our Living Earth every day for the rest of my life.  My book, “Pathways to Our Sustainable Future” lays out the argument and tells some stories of success. I hope you will join me and tell me of your own journey.


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International Women’s Day 2018

International Women’s Day 2018
Today my thoughts are centered on my brave beautiful daughter who is just recovering from breast cancer surgery. She has excellent prospects for a full and happy life, but I think of the many women who do not have such excellent care. I also am so thankful that the understanding and treatment are so much more advanced than when Rachel Carson faced a tragic encounter with this disease. In only a few decades the diagnosis of cancer has gone from a stigma and certain death sentence to a treatable condition.
I think of Rachel Carson who wrote much of Silent Spring while in serious suffering from the advanced
stages of breast cancer. She faced not only the lack of technology for diagnosis and treatment but also the difficulties of dealing with a male oriented medical establishment. Her courage in the face of her private and ultimately losing battle with cancer qualifies her as a heroine not only for the environmental movement but also for the millions of women who suffer the affliction of breast cancer.

“FOR THE FIRST TIME IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD, EVERY HUMAN BEING IS NOW SUBJECTED TO CONTACT WITH DANGEROUS CHEMICALS, FROM THE MOMENT OF CONCEPTION UNTIL DEATH.”
                                                                                                                         RACHEL CARSON

 So many people deal with cancer now. Many have multiple tumors over a lifetime. Some explain the higher incidence of cancer to the longer life span in modern times. Others draw a strong correlation with the chemical stew that penetrates our bodies from birth to death. The average newborn child in America has over 200 synthetic chemicals in his or her body at birth, 79 of which are known mutagens and carcinogens.(1) While scientists continue to explore the causes of cancers, and some are better understood than others, there is a sinister accumulation of man-made materials that play a role in our collective vulnerability.
To make cancer a less prominent feature of our health expectations, we need to reduce the flow of toxic synthetic materials. The entire regulatory system is designed to try to limit the amount of toxics that can be released into the air or water. However, the additive effect of even permitted levels yields millions of pounds of toxic releases a year. (2) A better approach would limit the hazard of products  by design. This is the exciting field of Green Chemistry which can limit the amount of carcinogenic and mutagenic material in the air, water and land by designing materials that are benign and biodegradable by design. Prevention rather than dilution will produce better materials with less impact on the living Earth.

Terry Collins- Theresa Heinz Professor of Green Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University

If we are to take a serious effort to control cancer and endocrine disruption for the next generation, we must begin by redirecting our materials supply chain away from fossil based precursors and toward biologically benign materials. The process of converting fossil based raw material to products and then to trash as quickly as possible is killing the living Earth. And as part of the creatures of the living Earth we are killing ourselves too. Green chemistry and bio-based materials as well as processes to remove and destroy synthetic hydrocarbons from water supplies holds great promise for a much more healthy and sustainable world.(3) Technology will not save us unless we add the Ethical element of choosing to pursue technologies that support and preserve the life support system of the Earth.

 

As I am now facing my fourth tumor, all of independent origin over two decades, I wonder about the many exposures I have experienced in my life.  The technician at the MRI lab sternly telling me to control my breathing said there are many people with multiple tumors as they reach advanced years.  She seemed to think it was a normal thing to accumulate cancers with age.  I do not accept that as normal!  I think of the many years I spent as a child living in a community where every house burned

Pittsburgh 1952

coal for heat, and we played in the coal pile, looking for fossils, and finding many! Of course we were covered in coal dust.  Then, the skies were full of smoke, with cinders actively falling to coat everything with a foul, oily and gritty blackness from the steel mills and coke operations that defined Pittsburgh.  Beyond that, DDT was sprayed on everything from trucks that coursed through the neighborhoods, especially on the compound we lived in in Manilla, Philippines in the ’50s. And, I worked in a biology laboratory as an undergraduate, in times when scintillation fluid was washed down the sink, and I stood over the toluene fumes for hours at a time cleaning the vials. And what of the open air testing of nuclear weapons that filled the air with radioactivity around the globe? Or the teflon frying pans everybody thought was so wonderful? I have reverted to well-used cast iron but nobody alive is immune from the plastics and preservatives and additives in our food.  It is a wonder we survive at all!

The worst horror of my nightmares is not my own saga of assault by out of control cells, but the thought that my children will suffer from something in my life of chemical exposure and environmental mutagens. This is the motive that propels my purpose and my advocacy for reform.  I have such fears for the next generation as the evidence that the “Fable for Tomorrow” Rachel Carson described in Silent Spring is already upon us.

~~~~~~~~~

  1.  Sara Goodman. “Tests Find More Than 200 Chemicals in Umbilical Cord Blood. Scientific American. December 2, 2009.  Accessed 8 March 2018. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/newborn-babies-chemicals-exposure-bpa/  
  2. US Environmental Protection Agency. Toxic Releases Inventory (TRI) 2016- Executive Summary. Accessed 8 March 2018. https://www.epa.gov/sites/production/files/2018-01/documents/2016_tri_national_analysis_execsumm.pdf
  3. Terry Collins. Green Chemistry. Science and Society.July 27, 2012.  Accessed 8 March 2018. http://scienceandsociety.net/2012/07/27/dr-terry-collins-–-green-chemistry/


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For my Father In Honor of The OG PAT Mission 1944

My father was First Lieutenant Michael A. DeMarco, in the OSS Special Reconnaissance Regiment, Company B under General Donovan in the second World War.  Their mission, coded PAT, parachuted 15 men into the Tarn in France with orders to “harass and destroy the enemy, cut German communications and supply routes and strengthen the resistance movement.”  I have shared my Father’s memoir of that time, and now a broader history of the PAT Mission has been researched by Meredith Wheeler with a Fulbright Scholarship to support her research.  http://www.ossreborn.com/files/OG_PAT_A_Fresh_LookPhotos1.pdf

As I read this history again, the words that send shivers through me to this day are: “Within two weeks, the south Tarn was liberated. Some 4500 Wehrmacht soldiers surrendered to 12 OSS men and a few hundred Resistance fighters‐—most of them poorly‐ armed, under‐trained maquis.” My parents named me Patricia in honor of this mission.  I reflect on this Veteran’s Day on the legacy I carry from these brave people – a call to courage and a cry of hope.

img_3486

Michael and Marcella DeMarco 1995

From my Father comes the tremendous courage to prevail in spite of the odds and obstacles.  In all situations he brought caution, thorough preparation, ingenuity, and determination to the problem. This applied to recreational camping as well as to all domestic enterprises.  So growing up in these conditions was often a challenge as we were constantly being prepared for battle, whether one materialized at once or not.  From my Mother comes the outrageously defiant act of having a child in the wake of the atomic bomb. Her fierce determination to maintain hope and optimism in the face of gloom and disaster infused everyone she touched. I am so tremendously blessed to have such parents and the example of both of their lives of self-sacrifice, service and teaching.

In the aftermath of this election, I feel called in their honor to stand for what is ethically and morally necessary in the face of impending tyranny. As I have been reflecting on the serious implications of Trump’s election, I am torn with several emotions, including outrage that Democrats missed the pleas of the Sanders supporters so badly.  People wanted a change, and Hillary was just too cautiously embedded in mainstream politics to resonate with their frustration.  We are getting a change alright, but in the wrong direction!

Action from the passion of my soul is the only possible response. So, to all my friends and followers, I issue a call to action on three fronts:
1. Hold the people elected to account for the true principles guaranteed to ALL people by the Constitution.  We cannot sit quietly while freedoms and protections for women, minorities, the environment are rolled back or undermined. Democracy is not a spectator sport with events once every four years.  We must organize now and engage with voices and demands for accountability every day.
2. We must prepare to defend our environment, our public lands and wildlife refuges from the assault of “getting rid of regulations that hurt business.”  Standing in front of the bulldozers and saws and mining equipment may be necessary, as demonstrated by the Standing Rock Sioux.  This is our fate for the next two years at least.  Our wild lands and our environment must be labeled: “Protected by the People for Our Children and Their Grandchildren”
3. We must organize and bring forward new leaders.  The most passionate voices are those of the Millennials, but there is no room for them with 18 and 20 year tenured legislators, Congressmen, and Senators.  We have to give voice to the generation whose fate we are determining with the policies adopted now. We have to let them step up and shape the world they will live in.
I take hope that in spite of the bombast and vituperative rhetoric of the campaign, Trump is a pragmatist under it all.  He will be the ONLY world leader who does not support climate action. Peer pressure does work on such people as Trump.  At the federal and international levels, the US may actually lose the leadership position on climate action Obama has crafted, but the many cities, states, businesses, communities and individuals who are committed to sustainability and resilience are not going to stop.  Trump may make the federal supports harder, and the infrastructure more burdensome, but there is no way to stop this now.  We need to keep the positive benefits of moving away from fossil fuels in front of the public eye.  Local jobs, health benefits, long term environmental and economic stability – these things are not going away.
In the end, the laws of Nature are not negotiable.  Reality will hit at some point as an undeniable condition. IF we are to survive at all and thrive in this world, we must absolutely preserve the life support system of our Earth- fresh water, clean air, fertile ground and the biodiversity of species that constitute the web of life.  Humans are but one part, but we have dropped a boulder through the fragile web that holds us together. Prepare to stand and fight for what matters.  Plunder and devastation in the name of “good business” may be legal, but it is not right – not for all the living things of Earth that have the right to exist, not for the children of our time or the unborn of future generations.
I remember the lessons of those brave men who jumped into the black night to defend freedom in a strange land, and I prepare for the existential battle for life on Earth.


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Support for the Federal Clean Power Plan

The following testimony was filed in the EPA Hearings in Pittsburgh on the Final Rule for the Federal Clean Power Plan.  There is a move in progress in the U.S. Senate to block this initiative.  If anything, this effort must be strengthened and accelerated, not stopped. Call you Senator TODAY!

RE: Docket ID: EPA-HQ-OAR-2015-0199

Federal Plan Requirements for Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Electric Utility Generating Units Constructed on or before January 8, 2014; Model Trading Rules; Amendments to Framework Regulations.

My name is Patricia M. DeMarco.[i] I reside at 616 Woodside Road in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. I am speaking in trust for my grandchildren, and all the unborn children of the 21st century whose fate is set by the actions we take to address climate change.

The Federal Clean Power Plan presented in this regulation sets out a framework in which to begin curtailing emissions from existing power plants. I recognize the difficult political environment surrounding this effort. It is important to begin the process of curtailing fossil fuel combustion, but the cautious approach offered in the Federal Clean Power Plan will not meet the urgent need we face. There are three areas where more attention must focus going forward to control greenhouse gas emissions from existing electric generating units:

  1. The final target for acceptable emissions by 2030 is too low.
  2. Environmental and social justice issues are not adequately addressed.
  3. The plan does not encourage creative approaches that set the elimination of fossil fuel combustion as a firm goal.
  1. Target is too low.

If the Federal Clean Power Plan for Existing Electric Utility Generation is fully successful, by 2030 emissions from the electricity- generating sector will only be reduced by 32% below the levels in 2005. That will maintain 1.2 billion metric tons per year of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil electricity production.[ii] The World Meteorological Organization reports levels of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, climbing steadily towards the 400-parts-per-million (ppm) level, having hit a new record every year since reliable records began in 1984. Carbon dioxide levels averaged 397.7 ppm in 2014 but briefly breached the 400-ppm threshold in the northern hemisphere in early 2014, and again globally in early 2015.[iii] As carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases continue to accumulate, the production of water vapor in the air accelerates due to warmer conditions, which magnifies the warming effect even more. Warmer temperatures are melting the permafrost releasing tons of trapped methane from the tundra in the Arctic.[iv] The goal of limiting atmospheric carbon dioxide to 350 parts per million no longer appears achievable. The actions contemplated in this regulation are insufficient to the urgency of the situation our children will face.

As a practical matter, the EPA is attempting to retain a minimum disruption of business as usual for the electric utility industry. The final rule states: “Fossil fuels will continue to be a critical component of America’s energy future.”[v] This rule alone will not meet the need to maintain viable climate conditions for the future. A more comprehensive climate policy is required.

  1. Environmental and Social Justice Issues

There are three levels of environmental and social justice issues inherent in the Federal Clean Power Plan. First, the Community Impact Assessment in the Plan shows the burden of pollution continues to fall disproportionately on disadvantaged people within three miles of the target power plants. In Pennsylvania, fifty-one existing electric generation units are targeted in the Clean Power Plan. Within a three mile radius of these plants, 1,853,694 people are exposed to particulates, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, hazardous air pollutants, and heavy metals like mercury, cadmium and lead emitted from coal combustion. One single plant in Pennsylvania affects 447,057 people of whom 61% are minorities, 49% are low income, 18% are below high school education, 6% are children and 12% are elderly. This plant emits pollution levels in the 89th percentile – it has pollutants above the recommended safe levels. The ethical and appropriate decision for this kind of plant is to take it off line, and seek replacements for this power from renewable and non-combustion power sources.

The second social justice issue pertains to the workers in the fossil fuels industries. 80,000 coal miners, 147,000 oil and gas field workers face declining employment opportunities as part of the transition to a non-fossil future. It is essential to proactively protect the future of these workers.[vi] The corporate behavior towards workers has not been encouraging to date, as companies such as Peabody Coal have off-loaded retirees and laid off workers with their pension and health benefit obligations, to shell corporations like Patriot Coal, which soon declares bankruptcy, leaving the workers to an uncertain fate.[vii] This behavior may be legal within the laws of corporate finance, but it is wrong. Federal subsidies of $18 to $35 billion per year flow to large multinational corporations for oil, gas and coal exploration, development and production.[viii] These funds could be used to address the social justice needs of displaced fossil fuel workers.

The third environmental justice issue is the unattended remediation and restoration of the land. When the continued production of fossil fuels is no longer a priority, companies will have even less incentive to restore land, watersheds or ecosystem services disrupted by extraction and production activities. As they have done for years, they will walk away taking their profits and investing in the next big thing, leaving the remains of their resource extraction to be addressed as public obligations. In Pennsylvania alone over 3,000 miles of streams have been permanently degraded from mining.[ix] More watersheds and lands are becoming affected by Marcellus and Utica shale drilling and production activities. The profits come in short term bursts to private companies, but the environmental impact may lag by years, even decades, and the cost of remediation falls to the public. Withdrawing from fossil fuel extraction must include remediation and restoration to the extent possible. Mountain tops removed for coal extraction remain as scars on the land, looking more like moonscapes than forested, rolling hills formerly sheltering homes and towns. We must build a future that respects and restores the land. On April 22, 2010, the world’s Peoples Conference on Climate Change adopted a Universal Declaration for the Rights of Mother Earth. It declares in part: “Article 3. respect, protect, conserve and where necessary, restore the integrity, of the vital ecological cycles, processes and balances of Mother Earth”[x] The United States should join the 126 nation signatories to this declaration. The time of brute resource extraction without restoration and protection of the living systems of the earth is overdue to end.

  1. The lost opportunity to challenge innovation.

The Federal Clean Power Plan appears to displace fossil fuels as slowly as possible, rather than as rapidly as possible. There is no aspirational goal of eliminating fossil fuel combustion by 2030 or even by 2050. There is no commitment to enable the maximum possible contributions from renewable resources and energy demand reduction by efficiency improvements. In fact, major impediments to using non-combustion technologies remain embedded in the energy system. For example, constructing a passive solar, zero net energy house in Pittsburgh requires 22 variances from existing zoning regulations.[xi] Subsidies to fossil fuel development and exploitation remain, while investment mechanisms for either renewable resource development or abatement of fossil fuel environmental effects are variable, and relatively limited. In 2014, US taxpayers were subsidizing fossil fuel exploration and production alone by $18.5 billion a year, an increase of 45% from 2009.[xii] An “All of the above” energy policy will not achieve the goal of eliminating fossil fuel combustion by 2050 to control life-threatening changes in the climate.

Using existing commercial technologies, it is possible for the United States to reach an electricity generation carbon dioxide emissions target of 750 million metric tons per year by 2050 at a cost of less than 1% of the annual Gross Domestic Product. According to a study completed in November 2014 for two national laboratories, deep de-carbonization requires three fundamental changes in the U.S. energy system: (1) highly efficient end use of energy in buildings, transportation, and industry; (2) de-carbonization of electricity and other fuels; and (3) fuel switching of end uses to electricity and other low-carbon supplies.[xiii] “All of these changes are needed, across all sectors of the economy, to meet the target of an 80% GHG reduction below 1990 levels by 2050. Energy system changes on the scale described in this analysis imply significant opportunities for technology innovation and investment in all areas of the U.S. energy economy. Establishing regulatory and market institutions that can support this innovation and investment is critical. Both areas— technology innovation and institutional development—are U.S. strengths, and place the U.S. in a strong leadership and competitive position in a low carbon world.”[xiv]

Investing in clean energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the United States would add more than one million jobs by 2030 and nearly two million by 2050. By reducing emissions 80% below 1990 levels by 2050, the United States would also increase GDP by up to $290 billion and raise household incomes.[xv] Gains in construction, manufacturing, and other sectors outweigh losses in fossil-fuel industries resulting in a net-gain of employment across the nation.[xvi] A strong commitment to eliminating fossil fuel combustion, with a just transition for workers, rather than slowly ramping down by “market forces” will be more likely to reach a meaningful goal for controlling climate change and will enhance economic viability during the transition.

Americans have demonstrated time and time again the ability to rise to meet a challenge. What is totally lacking in this Federal Clean Power Plan is the inspiration to reach for a new solution. This plan tinkers and tweaks the existing flawed and inefficient electricity generation system, retaining as much of the historic infrastructure and equipment as possible, with no intention to eliminate fossil fuel combustion as the end point. Our children deserve better! Think of the conditions we are imposing on the next generation, conditions we cannot even imagine because the earth has not experienced them for millions of years, if ever. Preventing the worst of the effects of climate change is our obligation to the children of the 21st century. We should set a challenge goal of zero fossil fuel combustion by 2050, and align all systems, the creativity of the American people, and the full might and weight of government resources to achieve that goal.

When President Kennedy challenged us to set foot on the moon, the goal seemed impossible. But the challenge inspired a generation. The technologies spun from that effort yielded results that transformed the world. Our survival as a species is no less of a challenge. There is no supply line to planet Earth but the stream of energy from our sun. It falls on us in a super-abundance to our daily needs. We have only to meet the challenge of organizing our energy systems to use it. Call on the ingenuity and entrepreneurship of our nation rather than stall, suppress and regiment innovation to preserve the systems of the past.

Sources and Citations

[i] Patricia M. DeMarco, Ph. D. full Curriculum Vitae is at www.patriciademarco.com

[ii] Carbon Dioxide Emissions from Energy Industry in 2005 Report #:DOE/EIA-0573 (2009)Release Date: February, 2011 http://www.eia.gov/environment/emissions/ghg_report/pdf/tbl6.pdf

(5,996.4 million metric tons in 2005 reduced by 32% = 1,918.8 million metric tons)

[iii] World Meteorological Organization of the United Nations. Bulletin November 6, 2015. “Greenhouse Gas Concentrations Hit Yet Another Record.” https://www.wmo.int/media/content/greenhouse-gas-concentrations-hit-yet-another-record Accessed November 9, 2015.

[iv] Kevin Schaefer. Methane and Frozen Ground. National Snow and Ice Data Center. https://nsidc.org/cryosphere/frozenground/methane.html Accessed November 10, 2015.

[v] Federal Clean Power Plan Fact Sheet. http://www2.epa.gov/cleanpowerplan/fact-sheet-overview-clean-power-plan

[vi] Jeremy Brecher. “How to Promote a Just Transition and Break Out of the Jobs vs. Environment Trap.” Dollars & Sense. November/December 2015. Pages 20-24.

[vii] Matt Jarmesky and Peg Brickley. “Patriot Coal Again Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy.” Wall Street Journal. May 12, 2015. http://www.wsj.com/articles/patriot-coal-files-for-chapter-11-bankruptcyagain-1431435830 Accessed November 10, 2015.

[viii] ICF International. Economic Analysis of U.S. Decarbonization Pathways. November 5, 2015. http://nextgenamerica.org/news-reports/new-report-transition-to-clean-energy-will-create-millions-of-jobs-increase-gdp-and-raise-household-incomes/ Accessed November 10, 2015.

[ix] U.S. Geological Survey. Pennsylvania Water Science Center. “Restoration of Stream Water Degraded by Acid Mine Drainage.” http://pa.water.usgs.gov/projects/energy/amd/restoration.php Accessed November 10 2015.

[x] World People’s Conference on Climate Change. “Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth” Cochabamba, Bolivia. April 22, 2010. http://therightsofnature.org/universal-declaration/ Accessed November 10, 2015.

[xi] Lucyerna DeBabaro personal communication. Cite Solarize Allegheny

[xii] Oil Change International. July 2014. “Cashing In on an All –of –the Above: U. S. Fossil Fuel Production Subsidies under Obama 2009 to 2014. Page 7.   http://priceofoil.org/2014/07/09/cashing-in-on-all-of-the-above-u-s-fossil-fuel-production-subsidies-under-obama/

[xiii] Energy and Environmental Economics, Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. U.S. 2050 Report: Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States. November 2014. Page xv. http://deepdecarbonization.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/US_DDPP_Report_Final.pdf Accessed November 10, 2015.

[xiv] Energy and Environmental Economics, Lawrence Berkley National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. U.S. 2050 Report: Pathways to Deep Decarbonization in the United States. November 2014. http://deepdecarbonization.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/US_DDPP_Report_Final.pdf Accessed November 10, 2015.

[xv] ICF International. Economic Analysis of U.S. Decarbonization Pathways. November 5, 2015. http://nextgenamerica.org/news-reports/new-report-transition-to-clean-energy-will-create-millions-of-jobs-increase-gdp-and-raise-household-incomes/ Accessed November 10, 2015.

[xvi] ICF International. Economic Analysis of U.S. Decarbonization Pathways. November 5, 2015. http://nextgenamerica.org/news-reports/new-report-transition-to-clean-energy-will-create-millions-of-jobs-increase-gdp-and-raise-household-incomes/ Accessed November 10, 2015.