Promoting Public Health Through Clean Energy & Protecting Our Environment

By Val Arkoosh, MD, MPH

The greatest long-term threat to our national security is climate change and our crumbling energy infrastructure. Yet, Congress continues to ignore science and cave to big energy companies.

While we are making strides to power our country with clean energy, our work is far from done. It's time for Congress to develop an energy agenda that takes a serious look at our impact on climate change and take a leadership role in developing a clean energy economy.

Dirty fuels foster dangerous dependence and intensify climate change. We need policies that reverse this by:

• Halting the expansion of dirty tar sands oil production, including the construction of the Keystone XL and other proposed U.S. regional pipelines that transport tar sands oil.

• Ending tax breaks and closing loopholes for big energy companies that perpetuate our dependence on fossil fuels.

• Supporting a moratorium on controversial hydraulic fracturing methods, a.ka. fracking.

We need Congress to take a leading global role in promoting clean energy, which is why I support:

• Focusing on clean-energy investments including cleaner vehicle standards, infrastructure, fuels, and public transportation.

• Promoting Alternative Energy Portfolio Standards at the federal level to power more of our homes with renewable resources like wind and solar.

We cannot allow the fossil fuel industries to "regulate" themselves. As a physician, I am alarmed by the public health hazards downplayed or concealed by big energy companies. That's why I back commonsense solutions to instill transparency and accountability in the fossil fuel industries, including:

• Removing regulatory immunities in the natural gas industry, like the "Halliburton Loophole" that exempts fracking from EPA oversight.

• Reforming disclosure laws, like the physician's gag order in Pennsylvania, that conceal potential public health concerns stemming from energy production from the general public.

• Funding independent, third-party investigations to close data and research gaps that currently prevent us from understanding the full ramifications of fossil fuels.