MS October 2021 Media Brief Staff Picks

I found the artifacts that I contributed for the October 2021 Media Brief through weekly google news searches using variations of the following keywords: “Philadelphia energy”, “abandoned oil wells”, “lithium mining”, and “energy affordability”. I also receive daily news digests from U.S. Energy News and Northeast Energy News, and chose the artifact titled “GOOGLE PUSHES SUSTAINABILITY, FROM NEW ECO ROUTES TO NEST FEATURES” from the U.S. Energy News digest that I received on October 7th, 2021. I searched for “Philadelphia energy” because I track energy-related news in Philadelphia for another one of my responsibilities as a researcher for the Energy Rights Project. Every few weeks I update “Philadelphia News You Can Use”, which is a PECE essay on energyrights.info which pulls together news reports and other media related to household energy in Philadelphia. The artifact “FRANKFORD HIGH SCHOOL'S NEW LAB AIMS TO PREPARE STUDENTS FOR SOLAR ENERGY JOBS” was relevant for the “Philadelphia News You can Use” PECE essay, and after reading this article I questioned whether this program and other green jobs programs created space for students to learn about energy systems more holistically and what this curriculum could look like, if not. To me, green jobs training programs should go beyond technical training and should educate students on the history of energy, energy transitions and environmental justice, and how energy burdens in Philadelphia. Having a well-informed background of energy markets and regimes, the current positioning of the clean energy industry and its potential to either recreate oppression or mitigate it, and how clean energy access fits into larger systems of oppression will not only connect individuals more deeply with their employment, but will perhaps inspire them to create their own inroads into this industry, with hopefully considerate approaches. 

I specifically searched “abandoned oil wells” after learning about the impact of orphaned oil and gas wells on Dinehtah, the homeland of the Navajo nation, from a presentation at the 2021 Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Conference. There are 3.2 million abandoned oil and gas wells across the United States which pose great environmental and health risks as they leak methane and can contaminate groundwater. This is a consequence of deficient energy policies in states across the U.S. that set bonds for remediating wells far too low, as state governments want to entice less wealthy energy companies to build infrastructure on their land, so they set bonds much lower than the actual cost it takes to plug wells and remediate the land. This was a phenomenon that I was unaware of prior to attending 4S, and I intend on continuing to track the state of orphaned oil and gas well remediation, especially with the passage of Biden’s infrastructure package. 

I chose to search “lithium mining” also in part due to presentations that I listened to at 4S, which contributed to my ongoing concern over the impact of lithium mining on indigneous land in the United States. I chose to contribute the artifact titled “INDIGENOUS TRIBES TRIED TO BLOCK A CAR BATTERY MINE. BUT THE COURTS STOOD IN THE WAY” because it spoke to the legacy of colonial violence being embedded within our legal systems. It traced a history of court rulings over indigenous spiritual sites in the United States and discussed how their spiritual significance is frequently disregarded because there are no overarching legal protections for sacred Indigenous spaces.