Worth Protecting Book
by Karen Elias
On November 5th, the Guardian published twenty climate photos that, in their words, “made us sit up and take notice.” [You can see them here: ‘It was like an apocalyptic movie’: 20 climate photographs that changed the world | Climate crisis | The Guardian ]
These images – powerful, disturbing, and heartbreaking — take us to the very edge of disaster and ask us not to turn away. A giant iceberg in danger of calving looms so close to a village in Greenland its residents have to be evacuated. A monstrous dust storm, about to engulf New South Wales in Australia, stampedes relentlessly toward a fragile city that has no defense against the oncoming catastrophe.
What becomes clear as we gaze at these images is that the climate crisis is making itself felt in all corners of our world, including here in Pennsylvania where drought, flooding, and heatwaves will continue taking their toll on livestock, farmlands, and human health.
What these photos don’t show is what the oil and gas industry would like us not to see: their responsibility for the climate crisis. Our own state of Pennsylvania is tragically complicit. A new letter from the Clean Air Council (based on findings from the Clean Air Task Force) puts it bluntly: “More Pennsylvanians are exposed to increased cancer risks caused by the oil and gas industry than residents in any other state in the country. Pennsylvania is the second-largest gas producing state, and our gas industry emits upwards of 1.1 million tons of methane annually.”
Members of the Better Path Coalition, a statewide frontline- and grassroots-led coalition working to prompt our government to put people’s interests before those of the fossil fuel and petrochemical industries, are determined to “be the drumbeat in Harrisburg” in 2023, according to group co-founder and coordinator, Karen Feridun. As part of this multifaceted effort, the Coalition has created a book of photographs, called Worth Protecting, which its members will distribute to our new governor, as well as to every state legislator, in January.
The book includes photos from concerned Pennsylvanians across the Commonwealth that give visual form to all that we consider worth protecting from the ravages of the climate crisis, including the vistas we love, the waterways we travel, the pets we hold dear, the gardens we cultivate, and the kids and grandkids we cherish. According to Karen Elias, member of the Coalition and the book’s editor, “it’s our hope that our legislators — across the board — will take a few minutes to look carefully at these images and that they will sit up and take notice. We’d like to believe they will recognize in these images the fragile world we all share and come to understand that the lives of their constituents are impacted in very real ways by the decisions they make in office every single day. The power to protect is in their pen. And we are running out of time.”
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