Thread by @ssteingraber1

Fellow New Yorkers! The NYS Climate Action Council is wrapping up its process for finalizing the Climate Action Plan. Our kids’ futures hang in the balance. This is my message to you and to the members of the Council. 🧵1/27

2/ In the coming weeks we will learn whether our state government is strong enough to stand up to the #fossilfuel industry, or if it will once again bend to the entrenched and powerful.

3/ Eight years ago I sat in a jail cell for 2 weeks to show that our regulatory system was broken—and despite our victory over #fracking in NYS, the system remains vulnerable to the corrupting influence, disinformation campaigns, and political might of the fossil fuel industry.

4/ We won the crucial victory over fracking, but, since then, the oil and gas industry has managed to spread its toxic products throughout New York in equally sinister but less visible ways.

5/ According to the US Energy Information Administration, since 2014, more than 150,000 new homes in New York State have started burning gas. eia.gov/dnav/ng/hist/n…

6/ This proliferating dependency on fracked gas is thanks in large part to $1.6 billion in giveaways to the oil/gas industry that comes straight from NYS taxpayer pockets and serves to prop up an industry whose days are numbered and whose product is toxic. nrdc.org/experts/marisa…

7/ It doesn’t have to be this way. The Climate Action Council has important tools that can help us stop the spread of the gas system into our homes – which is imperiling our health and swinging a wrecking ball at our climate system.

8/ Of course it’s easy to recognize drill rigs, pipelines, and flare stacks as industrial pollution infrastructure. No one wants to live near it. But here’s the truth: that same industrial system continues to be hooked up to our homes, via gas stoves, furnaces, and water heaters.

9/ Burning gas inside our homes means we breathe in all its toxic pollution. This exposure can demonstrably damage our health. And kids pay the highest price. This is really worth understanding.

10/ Gas stoves release nitrogen oxides, a lung irritant that makes smog. Research shows that children living in homes with a gas stove have 42% increased risk of current asthma and a 24% increased risk of lifetime asthma. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23962958/

11/ Gas stoves also fill the air of our homes with fine particulate matter (PM2.5). Invisible PM2.5 pollution can slip through our lungs’ alveoli and silt up our blood. This exposure is especially bad during pregnancy and is linked to poor birth outcomes. jamanetwork.com/journals/jaman…

12/ Scientists from Stanford, Harvard, and PSE Healthy Energy @PhySciEng are studying pollution from gas stoves. Turns out they’re neither safe nor “clean burning” as the gas industry wants us to believe. cbsnews.com/video/cities-b…

13/ Indeed, Stanford researchers found that gas stoves leak methane ALL THE TIME, even when they’re off. Methane is a fast-acting climate pollutant, so this has major implications for our ability to get emissions under control. washingtonpost.com/climate-enviro…

14/ Harvard and @PhySciEng researchers also found that the natural gas leaking inside homes tested in MA and CA contained hazardous air pollutants including benzene, a carcinogen for which there is no safe level of exposure. Benzene causes leukemia.
nytimes.com/2022/06/28/cli…

15/ Doctors and public health experts across New York signed a statement urging the Climate Action Council to stop the spread, and set code requirements ending on-site combustion of fossil fuels in new buildings over a 2024-2027 timeframe. concernedhealthny.org/2022/10/burnin…

16/ My colleague Dr. Kathleen Nolan elegantly laid out the health dangers and explained why the Climate Action Council is not just setting climate policy – it’s also setting public health policy. timesunion.com/opinion/articl…

17/ In short, step one is to make new buildings all-electric. In doing so, we’ll stop the spread of new gas lines and begin transitioning New York’s building sector off of fossil fuels.

This is a huge but doable task.

18/ I’ve evicted natural gas from my own (not new) home. (Story in thread below.) And while the Inflation Reduction Act now offers super-helpful subsidies on efficient electric appliances, we still need political change to do what I did at scale.

https://twitter.com/ssteingraber1/status/1145100386228940800

19/ Science and law are both working together to show us how to do this huge task. Science clearly shows the emissions limits we can’t surpass. That’s why our 2019 state climate act binds NYS to reduce emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030 and 85% below 1990 levels by 2050.

20/ Given the science, the mandated targets, and federal incentives that hasten the adoption of new, efficient, electric technology, what’s standing in the way of progress? Why can’t we have state policies that science and our own laws demand?

21/ Enter the gas lobby and all of its masquerade parties. New York’s Climate Action Council has become a hot target for the fossil fuel industry, which has stood up front groups of gas lobbyists disguised as grassroots groups of concerned citizens.
lohud.com/story/opinion/…

22/ And then there’s the money. The American Petroleum Institute and its fossil fuel allies have poured more than $15.5 million into the state to weaken the Climate Action Council’s plan.
public-accountability.org/report/fueling…

23/ And then there’s the sheer nonsense. Key to gas industry’s strategy has been the spread of misinformation and the promotion of false solutions like so-called “renewable natural gas” and “hydrogen blending.” static1.squarespace.com/static/58ae35f…

24/ These are terms of art for technologies that are not renewable, not natural, not green, not safe, not realistic, and not affordable. The gas industry uses these to confuse, delay, and distract us from real solutions. nrdc.org/experts/rachel…

25/ The very industry that caused our climate and ecological crisis, and whose business model is threatened by the policies that will save us, is purporting to be part of the solution. We’ve seen–and fallen–for these tricks before.

26/ Recall that fracked gas was sold to politicians and the public as a “clean burning” and “natural.”That deception set the environmental movement back decades. The gas industry raked in billions, exposed us to toxic chemicals in our homes, and continued to heat the planet.

27/ Pretending gas is green cost us precious years. Now there’s is a lot to do in a short time. Hence, the Climate Action Council must hold firm, set an all-electric standard for new buildings, and reject any “hybrid or alternatives fuels pathway,” a giveaway to deadly industry.

FIN.

Bonus for reading to the bottom of this thread: Here’s a portrait of my humble all-electric heat pump that kept me warm while I was composing this manifesto. It works like a champ.