Karen Feridun
1,000 signatures reached
To: Governor Josh Shapiro, PA State Legislators
We Need a Rapid Phase Out of Fracking in Pennsylvania
We, the undersigned, call on you to begin a rapid phase out of fracking in Pennsylvania. The climate clock we installed in the Capitol indicates that we have fewer than 5 years to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees C. Records falling as extreme weather conditions become commonplace are cautionary tales of what will come if you fail to act.
Ending fracking is not something that occurs with the flip of a switch. The need for immediate action is made more urgent by the understanding that many things must happen to make the transition to renewable energy as smooth as possible. The inevitable transition will be more abrupt the longer you wait to act. For example, the longer you wait to start preparing the workforce for the transition, you put workers at ever greater risk of simply being displaced when their fracking jobs go away.
The hundreds of thousands of abandoned wells in Pennsylvania must be plugged to stop climate-killing methane from leaking into the atmosphere unchecked. Well plugging can create new jobs that workers who want them can be transitioned into right now with the proper training. It’s a win-win-win for the workers, the people living near abandoned wells, and the planet.
Creating well plugging jobs is just one example. Here are other actions you can take to launch the rapid phase out while protecting communities still exposed to fracking during the transition.
-The state must assess the climate impacts of proposed projects and must make the assessment in an open, transparent, and verifiable process that engages the public.
-The state must substantially grow its renewable capacity.
-The state must reject Carbon Capture and Storage, Hydrogen, LNG exports, Chemical recycling, and all other “climate solutions” that represent nothing more than the next generation of fracking and dirty energy.
-The state must not subsidize fracking or any of the false solutions listed above.
-The state must assess the cumulative impacts of fracking and consult the Compendium of Scientific, Medical, and Media Findings Demonstrating Risks and Harms of Fracking and Associated Gas and Oil Infrastructure
-The Governor must mandate that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and other regulatory agencies and the Attorney General make polluters pay (and stop rewarding polluters with more permits).
-The state must increase bonding requirements by amount but also by requiring ongoing monitoring of well or disposal sites to catch migration of pollution early and require the responsible operator/company to pay for the cleanup.
-The DEP must dramatically improve its enforcement of existing regulations and institute serious consequences for drillers who fail to comply with either administrative or environmental, health, and safety rules.
-The state must not enter into voluntary compliance programs and must terminate the “radical transparency” agreement with CNX.
-The state must address community impacts like those in Dimock and the Woodlands.
-The DEP must commit to protecting overburdened communities.
-The DEP must increase monitoring of groundwater and surface water where there is a high concentration of fracking and related infrastructure and increase monitoring of methane.
-The Department of Health (DOH) should be proactively protecting communities with medical monitoring of those near fracking sites and related infrastructure, including fracking fluid storage and waste sites and locations with incidents of pollution. The agency could use the complaint and investigation lists that DEP maintains as a start or map out the location of all wells/infrastructure to identify hot spots.
Why is this important?
The concept of a ban on fracking in Pennsylvania has been getting a lot of attention in recent weeks. But banning fracking in a place where it has been happening for 20 years is not the same thing as banning it where it has never happened. What must happen here and what will happen is a phase out of fracking. How rapid the phase out is will determine how smoothly the public, workers, and entire communities will be able to make the transition. We're calling on Governor Shapiro and our state legislators to start the rapid phase out now and urging them to take the steps we have listed.
How it will be delivered
We will deliver the petition to the Capitol in January.