Haverford College hosts Climate Change Expo
RADNOR » About 100 people came to Haverford College Monday evening for a Climate Change Expo. Various organizations and vendors set up booths and people browsed and discussed topics of interest until six speakers gave brief talks.
Shana Gallagher, organizer for PennEnvironment in Montgomery County, said her organization wrote HB2132, which is sponsored by about 50 legislators, including Rep. Christopher Rabb, D-Philadelphia, Greg Vitali, D-166 of Haverford, to have 100 percent of the state’s energy needs be met with renewable energy by 2050. That includes homes and businesses, as well as government entities.
As it is, Gallagher said, “Pennsylvania is addicted to fossil fuels.” Her organization’s Climate Defenders Campaign, a two-pronged state and federal approach, which has 130,000 or more members who are holding politicians accountable with “citizen-based advocacy.”
Joshua Moses, who teaches anthropology and environmental studies at Haverford College, spoke about his thesis that anxiety leads to inaction on climate change, a force that does “global scale violence against species and human beings.”
People have a good reason to be anxious and fearful, he said.
“Anxiety and fear are political,” he said. “They are frequently seen as individual problems but they are political.”
Meanwhile, “we continue to educate students for a world that no longer exits,” he said. “No one, no one is going to save us from these challenges of climate change. There is no father, mother or person that is going to come and save us … Our institutions are unlikely to act in time that is required.” While it’s understandable that people binge-watch television instead of acting, but that leads to “despair, isolation and anxiety,” he said. The disconnect between “what we know is happening and the responses is like facing an abyss and being told to change a lightbulb.”
He asked the audience to think of their favorite part of the natural world, a plant, an animal, a stone and talk to each other, then call it out. The anxiety people have could become a “powerful political force,” he said. But that anxiety could also drive people to band together and “create the alternative reality.”
Eve Miari, of the Clean Air Council, was more upbeat.
Miari spoke of victories that organizers from groups opposing the Mariner East Pipeline project have had of late. That pipeline would pipe petroleum products from western Pennsylvania through Chester and Delaware Counties and send them overseas, she said.
Miari, of Media, said that she “got up off her couch” and became involved once she realized the pipeline would be near an elementary school. “As a mother and as a teacher, I felt I just simply could not allow that to happen,” she said. “That’s what it took for me to become active.”
She said they wooed the local officials, who were largely Republican, in Middletown by making opposition to the pipeline a public safety issue and emphasizing private property rights. The line would run next to or even underneath houses and nursing homes, as well.
While the petroleum products are liquefied, if a leak happened they revert to gas and are combustible, she said. A study showed that a blast zone from a pipe leak that ignited could extend 1,800 feet or more.
Her group has been successful by “building relations, getting people to understand how this is impacting the lives of residents,” she said. The public safety issues brought out people who never before protested anything, she said.
Other speakers included Bridgeport Mayor Mark Barbee; Chardanay White, NexGen student organizer; Alisa Shargorodsky a trash consultant for Weavers Way co-ops; and Mikhel Harrison with Organizing for Action.
Manning a booth for the Sierra Club, LouAnn Merkle, of Whitemarsh Township, said that organization is pushing for 100 percent clean energy for area towns by 2035 with its Ready for 100 drive. Karen Melton of the Citizen’s Climate Lobby said her group is lobbying to get Congress to act on a bill that would charge a carbon fee on energy production then pay dividends back to people to help them pay for higher energy prices.
A member of Friends of the Earth was on hand circulating a petition to demanding that EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt be fired. And members of the Green Party were circulating nominating petitions for candidates to get names on the ballot.
Ira Josephs, with Green Mountain Energy, was busy signing up people to change their electric provider to his company for “100 percent pollution free” power at a rate of about a half of a cent less per kilowatt hour than PECO.
“It’s the perfect event for us people who want to do something good for the environment,” said Josephs.
Sara Pilling, a Radnor resident, said that the Climate Expo included “good folks” and “important causes.”
“As the prof from Haverford said, ‘we cannot fix this alone,’” said Pilling. These sorts of events are “a good support for those of us working so hard to educate our residents (or) constituents. Facing climate change, and introducing the public to issues and actions, is such an overwhelming issue, we need to know and introduce small steps for the public to respond to.” The Expo “shows the wide variety of actions that can be taken,” she said.