Solutions to Climate Change: Agriculture Mary Wildfire page 5-6
Fact Annual Meeting Keynote Speaker: Yvonka Hall of Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition Saturday, September 30 at 3PM ET Register for this online event here. page 2
Note from FACT Treasurer Ron Prosek page 8
September 2023 Newsletter
Fact: Faith communities together for a sustainable future
Democracy Denied: Oil and Gas Land Management Commission Dr. Randi Pokladnik page 3-4
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FaCT to Facilitate Work of Northeast Ohio Faith Leaders for Sustainability Ron Prosek page 7
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Register for this online event here.
NEOBHC Social Justice Initiatives NEOBHC’s vision is to achieve health parity (equality) in the African American/Black population. To create equity in the African American community addressing the cumulative impact of racial, economic, environmental and social justice inequities in education, employment, housing and health by working to educate, advocate for and empower the community. To achieve these goals, the NEOBHC coordinates: LEAV: Ladies Escaping All Violence MOVE: Men Overcoming Violent Environments The State of Disparities Conference Series Environmental Racism Policing Food Insecurity
Fact Annual Meeting Saturday, September 30 at 3PM ET Register for this online event here. Keynote Speaker: Yvonka Hall Executive Director, Northeast Ohio Black Health Coalition
Democracy Denied: Oil and Gas Land Management Commission Dr. Randi Pokladnik, Environmental Studies Randi is a lifelong resident of Southeast Ohio who has been fighting fracking for nearly 10 years. She earned a BA in Chemistry, and holds an MA and PhD in Environmental Studies. Randi is currently part of the steering committee of Save Ohio Parks from fracking. On Monday, September 18th, about 75 Ohio citizens traveled from all over the state to attend the Oil and Gas Land Management Commission meeting. The meeting was to decide if thousands of acres of public land in Ohio including Salt Fork State Park, Wolf Run State Park, Zepernick Wildlife Area, and Valley Run Wildlife Area, would be open to bidding for oil and gas companies seeking to frack their acreages. Legislation (HB 133) (passed in 2011 under then Governor Kasich) opened up state lands to fracking. However, public outcry against the bill was so intense that Governor Kasich “instituted a de facto moratorium on drilling in these areas by refusing to appoint members to a leasing commission mandated in the bill.” Fast forward to December 2022, when Ohio’s majority Republican legislature fast-tracked HB 507, dubbed the “stuffed chicken bill”, through the lame duck session. In addition to opening state lands to oil and gas development, this bill also declared methane gas to be “green energy.” In a totally undemocratic process, the bill was quickly signed into law without any public comment period. As mandated by the Ohio Revised Code 155.31, Governor DeWine appointed a 5-person oil and gas land management commission. They include: two members with knowledge or experience in the oil and gas industry, and recommended by a statewide organization representing the oil and gas industry; tne member of the public with expertise in finance or real estate; one member representing a statewide environmental or conservation organization. The commission consists of: Ryan Richardson (attorney), Jim McGregor, Matthew Warnock (an energy attorney), Stephen Buehrer (attorney) and Michael Wise (also an attorney, who was not present at the last 2 meetings). Not one member has a background in environmental science, technology, engineering, or the medical field. Yet they are charged with making decisions on whether or not to frack our state parks. At the latest meeting, the commission was met by a very emotional crowd. People held up signs that read “deny” and “fake emails.” Several times members of the crowd yelled out things like “these are our parks” and “don’t frack our water.” The Commission chair, Ryan Richardson, warned the crowd that she would clear the room if the comments were not stopped. At one point Stephen Buehrer, a commission member who represents real estate interests on the commission, responded, “We’re trying to conduct the state’s business here.” It is ironic that these meetings claim to be open to the public. The public is not allowed to comment or ask questions of the commission at any time. Even though citizens are paying for state parks through their taxes, their voices have been silenced throughout this entire process. I have attended four of the OGLMC meetings this year and I can only describe the commission as ineffective and biased. Some of the anger expressed by citizens in attendance was in part due to the way the commission and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources has chosen to ignore falsified email comments that were fraudulently submitted, suggesting that the named person was in favor of fracking the parks. “Dozens of citizens told Jake Zuckerman that their names and addresses were used without their knowledge on public comments supporting drilling for oil and gas in Ohio’s state parks.” Grassroots groups warned ODNR Director Mary Mertz that they had discovered fraudulent emails. Despite evidence of this illegal activity, Mertz chose to do nothing to correct the record. Mertz “defended the decision to neither independently investigate nor remove from the official record, disputed, pro-fracking public comments.” The Attorney General has launched an investigation into the falsified documents. Thousands of Ohioans took time to submit real comments urging the commission to SAVE OHIO PARKS. Many of these comments referenced peer-reviewed studies on the effects of fracking on both humans and ecosystems. By contrast, other than two sets of form letters, there were fewer than twelve comments in support of fracking our public lands. Nine criteria were to be used when considering fracking in Ohio parks (Ohio Revised Code 155.33). It was quite obvious, however, that economics was far more important to the commission than any environmental damage or effects to the local tourism industry or visitors. The commission spent a great deal of time debating the current amount of royalties being paid by oil and gas companies for state lands. Matthew Warnock said the state legislature, which set royalties at 12.5 percent, set the value too low. The four members present were split over whether restrictions on fracking under parks sought by the Department of Natural Resources should be considered. These restrictions include: no well pads within 1,000 feet of the park boundary, a ban on use of park roads by oil and gas vehicles, rules about water and light pollution, as well as a temporary shutdown of some areas during hunting season. Because the commission could not agree on the ODNR restrictions, the matter was tabled until the next meeting. The chair, Ryan Richardson, repeatedly claimed “I think the statute is very clear about what the scope of our authority is and is not, I don’t think we have the ability to simply say no." But her statement is not accurate. Why were nine specific criteria set for the commission to review if they did not have any recourse other than to say yes to all of the nominations? The relevant statute, ORC 155.33, says the commission can “approve or disapprove” lease nominations on the basis of the nine considerations, including economic benefit, environmental impact, geological impact, impact on visitors, and public comments and objections. The Oil and Gas Land Management Commission is a prime example of “regulatory capture,” a form of corruption of authority that occurs when a political entity, policymaker, or regulator is co-opted to serve the commercial, ideological, or political interests of a minor constituency, such as an industry. The commission is stacked in favor of the oil and gas industry, and the meetings are merely a puppet show with the strings being pulled by oil and gas interests. Citizens, hoping for an authentic process, diligently try to educate the commission on the many reasons why our Ohio Parks should not be fracked. Yet, the commission, statehouse, and Governor DeWine have made it impossible for Ohio’s citizens to participate in a democratic process.
The Agriculture Sector: Solutions to Climate Change Mary Wildfire Mary Wildfire lives on the Hickory Ridge Land Trust in West Virginia with her husband Don. She endeavors to grow more and more of their own food, while continuing her quest to figure out how to save the world. Mary feels that clear, detailed depictions of a positive future are being dangerously neglected. She writes to help us all envision the sustainable, healthy communities that we work to create. Currently Mary’s reviews and commentaries can be found at resilience.org where this article was originally published. Estimates vary widely on the percentage of global greenhouse gas emissions that come from the agricultural sector, but it’s certainly significant. Two factors make this sector especially critical in the battle against climate change. One is the fact that access to adequate food is more important than anything else for people trying to live through the coming hardships, even if many city people seem to overlook it. Food does not arrive in supermarkets by an alchemical transformation of money into food. There is a farm involved, or fishing. The other critical factor is that the transformation we need in agriculture not only has the potential to drastically reduce the emissions of that sector; it actually has the potential to sequester large amounts of additional carbon. Not only that; regenerative farming, also known as agroecology, can safely sequester it and in doing so, actually improve the condition of the soil. Soils rich in carbon are rich in organic matter, which improves the friability of the soil and feeds the microorganisms—and in turn some bigger creatures like worms and bugs—that keep the soil, and the plants, healthy. Healthier plants, in turn, make for better health for the people or animals who eat them. There is no downside here, although there is dispute about how much carbon can actually be sequestered. Real Solutions: Regenerative Agriculture The elements of regenerative agriculture include avoidance of tilling, which disturbs those organisms and leads to erosion—but sometimes on large farms, this means the use of herbicides to replace tillage for weed control, and obviously herbicides don’t benefit those organisms. On smaller farms, weed control can be managed by hand-pulling and the use of mulch. Other elements of regenerative farming include the use of compost, manure and mulch, all of which feed carbon into the soil, and leaving wild areas for plants that feed both pollinators and predator bugs. Growing multiple crops in proximity helps with pest control. Monoculture is responsible for the massive use of pesticides on industrial farms; a thousand acres of a single plant (usually a genetically identical strain of that plant) is an invitation to whichever pests target that plant. Using increasingly heavy doses of pesticide only fosters resistance on the part of the pest. Similarly, ten thousand cows or pigs in one barn or feedlot, up to their hocks in their own manure, are such an invitation to their pests that CAFOs use antibiotics routinely (which may render them less effective in medical emergencies as many are also used by humans). But a small farm with livestock and crops, or multiple different crops, switched around from year to year, doesn’t extend that kind of invitation and thus is much less prone to serious pest attacks. The intact ecosystem with the weeds and trees and bugs and birds, keeps the pest bugs in check. Cover crops to protect the soil against erosion, and often to feed the soil via nitrogen fixing, pulling up nutrients from subsoil, or simply biomass production, are another tool used by regenerative farmers. Ranchers who focus on raising cattle are finding that moving their animals frequently from one paddock to another can create improved soil at the same time the grass feeds their animals. Some large farmers have been able to adopt these practices and improve their yields and their soil, sequestering carbon into the bargain. But often these methods are much more labor-intensive than the chemical- and machine-intensive style of what has come to be called conventional farming. The transition we need is likely to involve a lot more people working on farms. False Solutions: But as with other sectors, there are also false solutions on offer. One of them is corn ethanol, which was supposed to create fuel with lower emissions than fossil fuel; it doesn’t, but lobbyists have kept the subsidies in place anyway, year after year. Another false solution is genetically modified crops, with the newest branded as CRISPR crops. While it’s possible that these techniques could solve a problem in farming, they are poorly studied and likely to introduce unintended results. So far, the vast majority of GMO crops are engineered for resistance to herbicides sold by the same company. This may save the farmer time but it doesn’t improve yields or quality of the crop and leads predictably to enhanced resistance. GMO seeds have done much more for the bottom line of Monsanto than for farmers, much less consumers. There is evidence of harm to health from some of these crops, as well as from the glyphosate typically sprayed on Roundup Ready© crops. The UN IPCC--Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change-- has a couple of new offerings of false solutions in the farming realm: BECCS and Climate Smart Agriculture. BECCS means Bio Energy Carbon Capture and Sequestration. The idea is that crops are grown, or trees cut, to burn for power; then the carbon dioxide is captured and buried. Trouble is, it would take such an enormous amount of land to produce a significant source of feedstock that either the food supply would be decimated, or the lands on which the remnant of wild creatures survive would be lost. Humanity now accounts for 36% of the mass of mammals and our livestock for 60%, leaving only 4% for all wild mammals. Much of this decimation has happened since 1970. This is not sustainable. Continued encroachment on the remaining wild lands is causing the destruction of indigenous peoples and also introducing novel viruses. A similar approach is to burn wood pellets in old coal power plants, as is now being done in the UK and EU; this actually produces even more CO2 than the coal did, but the claim is that since the forest the pellets came from will grow back and sequester carbon again, therefore the emitted carbon doesn’t count. Nor, apparently, does the deforestation in the southeastern US, now supplying most of those pellets, or the trucking to a port and shipping across the ocean. The plants actually receive emission reduction credits for this! Sometimes an intact forest is cut and replaced with a tree plantation, basically a biological desert. There are schemes afoot to use GMO trees, including eucalyptus, which has caused drought problems and replacement of native species in Latin America. A frost-tolerant strain is being developed which could spread this problem to temperate zones, like the southern US. Another forestry-related IPCC initiative is called REDD+, for Reduction of Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. The idea is that Northern governments or private outfits, often corporations in search of credits to “offset” their own emissions, pay governments in the global South to protect their forests, thus avoiding the emissions from deforestation. The problem here is that there may be little evidence that deforestation would have happened, or was avoided; in practice it may mean indigenous people who have lived in and protected the forest for millennia being kicked out…and after a time the forest may be cut anyway. The way to reduce emissions from burning fossil fuels in the North is to reduce the burning of fossil fuels in the North. Climate Smart Agriculture is supposed to refer to any techniques that create the “triple win” of increased productivity, enhanced resilience, and reduced emissions. The problem here is that powerful interests push “solutions” that look suspiciously like the same old industrialized monocultures, now pushed across developing countries, often displacing peasants and subsidizing GMO crops, the glyphosate that goes with them, and expansion of the global mega-industrial food system that has no interest in feeding the hungry. As long as they use no-till, they can claim climate smarts—this is not progress. There are also claims that producing and burying biochar can sequester enormous amounts of carbon, but the scientific evidence for this is scant. The heart of the conflict between real solutions and false ones is no different here than with other sectors. The false solutions in each sector are aimed at maintaining current power relations. The real ones are aimed at rescuing ecosystems and leading to a better world for all humans and other life forms.
Agriculture: Solutions to Climate Change, cont
FaCT to Facilitate Work of Northeast Ohio Faith Leaders for Sustainability by Ron Prosek Last week I had the privilege of meeting with Northeast Ohio Faith Leaders for Sustainability. The meeting included several people from FaCT, myself, Nancy King-Smith, and Bob Kloos. Lakewood Councilman, Tom Bullock, also participated as did several leaders from the Cleveland Area Dayenu Circle (eight Greater Cleveland Jewish congregations), including Mimi Plevin-Foust and Margy Weinberg. Judy Slivka, a leader from Westside Creation Care (six West Side Christian congregations), and Kim Anderson, the Ohio-Pennsylvania representative of a Christian Evangelical creation care organization also participated. Among these leaders were a recently retired rabbi, Ehid Lader, and her husband, Harry, and Bob Kloos, pastor of the Community of St. Peter where the meeting was held as well as our own Judy Comeau-Hart, member of the Community of St. Peter and our FaCT development consultant. Many ideas and experiences were shared. This included ideas of actions we could take together to initiate and support sustainable practices at our places of worship and among our congregants. One idea discussed was a composting system that involved a company that provides composting bins and collects the compost. Composting is is an important way to sequester methane-producing food waste by using the waste as fertilizer to produce more food. Over a 20-year period, methane is 80 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Of course, some congregations and congregation members may wish to use the compost for their own gardens, which accomplishes the same sequestering of methane. A number of congregations have now had experience with the installation of solar panels on their roofs or over their parking areas. This is valuable experience that can be shared and expanded. A number of additional ideas were discussed. One of the things I was sure to share with the meeting was FaCT’s Marketing Committee’s plan to revamp our website with the help of our very talented web developer Mark Goode. I explained that the new website would be very engaging and dynamic. Toward the end of the meeting the question was raised as to how we could coordinate and publicize our coordinated efforts. A vote was taken, and FaCT was chosen unanimously to use our website to publicize and coordinate these activities. We look forward to working with our new FaCT allies, the Northeast Ohio Faith Leaders for Sustainability. This leadership group will be meeting again on October 24 at Noon at the Coffee Café in Ohio City.
From the Treasurer Ron Prosek For FaCT Fiscal Year 2023 ends September 30. But there is still one very important event that will occur in the closing months of calendar year 2023, and that is our Annual Fund Campaign. Like most 501 c3 tax-exempt public charities, FaCT raises most of its constituent-donated funds in this annual appeal. Last year we received $16,000 in our Annual Fund Campaign, surpassing our Fund goal by about $2,000. Thank you for your generosity! This year, we have set an even more ambitious goal of $27,000. That’s $13,000 more than last year’s goal of $14,000, an almost doubling of last year’s target. Why so much more? The reason is that FaCT is doing so much more and planning to do so much more. These plans include continuing and expanding our brine spreading education program to more and more faith communities in Ohio and beyond. We must get people of faith up to speed and involved in opposing the dangerous practice of spreading toxic and radioactive brine on roads in Ohio and beyond. We will also be launching our climate change education program for faith communities in Fiscal 2024. After this horrendous summer of massive climate change-induced tragedies, we all understand the “urgency of now.” Humanity must wake up! The Annual Fund Campaign will be reaching out to you by mail if we have your address and via email as well. Please consider the importance of our work — engaging people of faith in the work of environmental justice, in the work of transforming our civilization to a consciousness of our absolute dependence on the integrity of the natural world that sustains all living things. If any group can move the world to this kind of enlightenment, it is you, people of faith, people who are part of a faith community that lives out its spiritual mission by ministering to the earth and to her people. With this in mind, please give as generously as you can in this special once-a-year appeal. FaCT absolutely depends on your support. Please, let’s make it happen! There is much work to be done, and together we can do it. Thank you. FaCT is a 501c3 charitable organization under IRS rules. All donations to FaCT are tax-deductible.