Before we look toward the new year, let's take a look back at the one we're leaving behind.
At times in the past where things have changed dramatically is they're changing now, it's basically
corresponded to extinction events.
Weather, gas drilling, rebuilding, and an Olympic first. I'm Susan Barnett and it's a look back
at the best of 2012. On 51 percent, the women's perspective.
Back in May, long before anyone had heard of a storm named Sandy, Heidi Cullen talked about the
impact of climate change. She's the chief climatologist at Climate Central, a non-profit
climate science organization in New Jersey. When we spoke, studies showed there was little
public interest in taking action to slow climate change. A super storm may have reversed that trend,
but the question now is if we've waited too long.
One of the things we know really well about climate change is that it piles up in certain extremes.
So when we see record temperatures like the kinds of records that we saw in March,
these are the kinds of things that we expect to see more and more of as we move forward in time.
There's all different kinds of natural climate variability. When people say,
how do we know that this isn't just a cycle? That it is actually a warming trend?
Well, that's a really good scientific question and it's one that we've been studying for a very,
very long time. What we know from the increasing record of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is we
know that we are adding additional carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. So the increasing trend
in carbon dioxide is linked to the increasing trend in temperature and we know through chemical
fingerprinting techniques that about one out of four carbon dioxide molecules in the atmosphere
today were put there by us. And so that test and other scientific tests that we do allow scientists
to say with tremendous confidence that the kinds of warming events that we're experiencing now,
that the increasing temperature that we've seen play out over the past 30 years especially,
that it's us. It is not Mother Nature. It is us. It is not a natural cycle. It is actually a warming trend.
And so the weather extremes are, again, there are going to be a combination of natural
variability of just day to day weather. But piled on top of that is the fact that when we
increase the average temperature of the planet, it increases the likelihood of seeing certain
kinds of extreme weather events. Specifically, we expect heat waves to become more intense,
to last longer, to become more frequent. We expect rainfall events to be heavier and to come a
shorter downpours. We expect to see more intense and more frequent droughts. So when it rains,
it rains harder, but then there's longer dry spells in between. So this warming trend,
this roughly one and a half degrees Fahrenheit of warming that we've caused over the past century,
it manifests itself in the weather. And we have a really good understanding of the physics of certain
types of increases in extreme weather events. And so when you think about climate change,
think about the fact that it's kind of like rolling the dice. And so the dice are now stacked
towards a more specific outcome. We expect to the dice are loaded, basically. We expect to roll
snake eyes more often now as a result of the fact that we're warming up the planet.
And is the fact that we have warmed up the planet and apparently continue to? Is that also
accelerating the warming process? Is it kind of a cumulative effect?
So when you look out over the long period of climate history, and when you look at
at just all of the natural cycles that I was describing, right now the warming trend that we
have seen the single most important part of this warming trend is the speed with which it has
warmed. You know, on her own, you know, Mother Nature doesn't warm quite as quickly as we've seen
over the past 30 years. The rate of change is incredible. We can look back over time and see
other periods of incredible warming. And the part that makes scientists so worried, you know,
is not the fact that it hasn't been warmer in the past. It has. But the fact that at times in
the past where things have changed as dramatically as they're changing now, it's basically corresponded
to extinction events. And so what worries scientists about climate change, the fact that we are
altering our climate system is that it increases our risks. It basically sets up a climate system
that we're not very well adapted to. Heidi Kullen is chief climatologist at Climate Central,
a nonprofit climate science organization in New Jersey. In October, I spoke with Nancy Barton of
Pratt'sville, New York. Pratt'sville is a little town in the Catskill Mountains that nearly got wiped
off the map by a storm named Irene. How one little rural town is working to rebuild after being
wiped out by a flood is a microcosm of a story that's playing out in Japan in Louisiana.
In New Jersey and New York, whether the disaster is a hurricane, a tsunami, a volcano, or an earthquake,
Barton lives part-time in Pratt'sville and teaches art at NYU in Manhattan. For her, the devastation
left by Irene uncovered bigger issues in her community. As I started going to the meetings,
you know, after the flood, I realized that there were problems that were from the flood and then
there were problems that pre-existed the flood. One of the problems that came up a lot was that
young people in the town really don't have a place to congregate. There is no public space. I mean,
let alone the fact that there is no health care, there is no community center. There's just no
movie theater. I mean, there's nothing that people in larger cities take for granted.
And so I, being an educator, thought, well, I'm not really good at doing drywall and plumbing,
but I could actually help people to put together a kind of arts-based community center that would be
a kind of hangout for younger people and perhaps older people at LaLike.
Immediately, I got a property owner to give me a rental for a dollar a year for 10 years.
The community, and we did a really wonderful exhibition as part of the MedFest project,
which was like this huge festival, which a lot of people came to and was really wonderful.
So it's a very bittersweet process, you know. We've, people have heard of Pratt's film,
we've never heard of it before. The community is lovely. I've heard of other communities,
you know, where people really didn't get any support from their neighbors or their
their town government. I mean, people here did everything they could to help each other,
but their resources are pretty limited. Nancy Barton is an artist and a teacher and director
of the Pratt's Phil Art Center. The Center's Facebook page is at Pratt's Phil Art Workshops.
2012 was the year that Hydrofracking finally got the nation's attention. Advertisements will tell
you it's the way to American energy independence. Proponents point to the jobs it creates,
and opponents say the impacts from foul drinking water, earthquakes, noise, and air pollution
to towns overrun by a 21st century gold rush just aren't worth it. Pennsylvania resident
Vera Scroggins has watched her rural county transform into what she calls an industrial wasteland.
I'm a 21 year resident of this county, Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania,
and I'm a mother and grandmother, and I moved here 21 years ago from Nassau County,
Long Island, New York with three children and wanted to have a rural environment for my children,
myself, and have clean air, clean water, and a peaceful environment. So I would say I had that
for the most part for about 17 years, and then in 2008 I heard about gas drilling company. A
gas drilling company was coming into our county, Cabot Gas, and they were starting to drill.
I've seen well-sides, gas well-sides as they started from the point of excavation,
and right to the end where they started to produce, and I saw a lot of noise for long periods of time,
weeks, and lots of lights near homes. I saw wells that were one after another were being built on
three to five acres of land that was scraped clean, built up to be flat, all kinds of gravel and
rock placed on it, so nothing really can grow. And then all kinds of drilling going on, the noise
from that, the complaints from people that I started to meet and people I knew, and the impact of
noise pollution, traffic pollution, tremendous amount of traffic with trucks coming in,
with water, with equipment, and it became a frightening experience because I could see that
landscape was changing, the air quality was changing, the sound quality, it was starting to change
from being a rural countryside into an industrial complex. I figured it was going to stop within a
year, but it hasn't. It's now four years, maybe 150 wells or more, endemic alone, a township of
1,400, 1,500 people, 30 square miles, and spreading from there and into most of the county.
And now it's in the Northern part of county where I presently live with my oldest daughter and
two grandchildren, and we have a drill rig that just finished drilling three wells, three thousand
feet from our home, which is part of a lake community, and it's above our lake, we're downhill from it.
And I continue to see and hear about people with water that changes to the point where they can't
use it anymore, and continue to meet families that have water buffaloes and vent stacks for
explosive levels of methane. I continue to see bubbling methane and creeks that were it wasn't
before, according to fishermen who have been there for decades. And I continue to see increasing
conflicts in our county, in our communities and neighborhoods between those who want it, those who
don't, and extreme attentions and polarity that has ripped whatever seemed like a
working, peaceful, rural community into something unrecognizable.
Vera Skragans is an anti-fracking activist, she lives in Pennsylvania.
Coming up, the other side of the fracking debate, plus some thoughts about the future for women,
and a young woman who made Olympic history. If you missed part of this show or want to hear it again,
visit the 51% Archives at WAMC.org. This week's show is number 1224.
Hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, became a national debate in 2012.
Already well-established in Texas, Pennsylvania, and several other states,
there's a heated battle going on over the effort to drill in the state of New York.
Opponents argue that the environmental impacts are too risky. The documentary film Gas Land offered
a dramatic illustration with a sink that spewed flames instead of water. But there is another side
to the issue. Dairy farmer Jennifer Huntington argues fracking could help save family farms.
She's gone to court to try to win the right to allow fracking on her property in rural New York.
I feel that the more threat to agriculture in this area is going to be housing and housing development.
Not drilling. I've lost seven acres, five to seven acres made into a land that we farm for 40
some odd years, rented. It's now a parking lot for brewery. I've lost 40 acres again of land that
we farm for 40 some odd years because the man was not able. The only way he could get his money
out of the property was to sell it for housing. That to me is a much, much greater threat to the green
in this community in this area than drilling. When you are done drilling, you have something that's
they call it a Christmas tree that's what eight-foot-high, six-eight-foot-high, below
site distance of almost everything. And I can still farm around it once you plant a house.
In my field, I am done farming. But I do not see any, any, consist any, any problem with farming,
agriculture and drilling. They had problems in Pennsylvania and New York State will have learned
from what has happened down there. I know one thing they dislike hearing is that nothing is perfect.
There's always a risk to everything you do. I think the risk for the drilling is
excessively small. I have heard also of folks that their calves have died, their abortions,
all sorts of weird things. I have not heard one incident from a large well-managed farm that has
had an issue. What is it meant for you personally to have taken this stand? I know it's a very emotional
issue. It is very difficult. You end up, people that you used to talk to don't talk to,
I removed my daughter from school because of various things going on there. They're heading
in an area that I didn't particularly, especially along the organic line that I didn't agree with.
In fact, that was just something I had forgotten. The school board was actually going to take a
resolution and state that there would be no drilling on school property. I said, this school is
supposed to be a place, a safe place for all people with all sorts of beliefs. If the school takes
a very public stand against drilling, you have children that are going to the school here
whose family believes differently. You're really a community divided.
Yes. We really need to start talking because we all love this area. We all want the same
things for this area. We just see different ways of going about it.
Jennifer Huntington's family owns a dairy farm in Middelfield, New York.
2012 was called by some the year of the strong women in film, films like Brave, Snow White and the
Huntsman and the Hunger Games featured some gritty heroines. But there was no woman on a major
party ticket for the White House this year and Kim Gandy, vice president at the Feminist
Majority Foundation and former president of NAL, the National Organization for Women, noticed.
This discrimination against women today is a lot more undercover than it was when I was coming
into the workforce. Sometimes it doesn't start until a little later in a number of fields,
women coming out of college, for example, earn fairly similar wages to their male cohorts,
who graduated at the same time. However, the pay gap starts almost right away within a year or two
after college. There starts to be a significant pay gap and it continues to widen throughout
their careers. For women without college degrees, the pay gap starts much earlier.
I don't even think having a woman president is the answer. There have been women prime ministers
in other countries and frankly it makes some difference in the treatment of women, but it didn't
make people all of a sudden say, oh, there's a woman president. Now it's okay for us to have a
woman in CEO or senior partner. It's going to be gradual, but the law is a leading edge in this.
When we change the laws, it does force changes in behavior and once those changes happen,
then people start to come along. Once companies were forced to hire women by the
equal employment laws in 1972, a lot of stereotypes about women started to go out the window,
but that didn't begin to happen until the law required it. So sometimes we have to force change
and then the understanding follows. Kim Gandy is vice president and general counsel at the
Feminist Majority Foundation and former president of now, the National Organization for Women.
There was a first for women in 2012. Clarissa Shields became the first American woman to win a
boxing gold medal at the London Olympic Games. She was the youngest on her team and she went
home to Flint, Michigan, a champion. I've been boxing since I was 11. My record is 19 and oh,
yeah, undefeated. I have this dream. I'm going to England London and it's the finals in the Olympics.
I can hear that announcement. I mean, they're going to say like,
in the first woman Olympian at 165 pounds is Clarissa Shields. Clarissa Shields.
In my dream, I'm just looking around and I'm just thinking to myself, like, how did I get here?
Right now I'm sleeping on the couch at my aunt's house. I just moved in. Why do I live with my aunt?
Well, my mom, you know, she has her own problems, you know, more bad days than good days.
It just wasn't helping me with my boxing. So I just had to move out. I think it's the time
and everybody life where no matter if you got good parents or bad parents, it's your time to decide
if you want to go left or if you want to go right. The first boxing, my goal was to have 10 kids
before I was 26. I want to have a big old family. For those who didn't know, my dad was a boxing.
They said he was real good. They used to call him Cannonball. I had a career as a underground fighter.
We go from state to state here in their fighting guys, I fought in barns, closed army bonkers.
You understand what I'm saying? You know, we used dirty fighters, you know. You fought until one of
y'all couldn't stand them. You know, I'm like, you know, totally. You know, I one time could have turned pro,
I think, but I started winding up in and out of prison. And when I came home from prison,
that was the first time I seen since she was two. You remember the first time we ever had with a
boxing? Yeah. One day we was riding in my van, I think it was and we was kicking it. I told
the story about the fact that I used to fight and that none of my children or no one else in my family
had picked up the torch and it came with boxing. So I was like, okay, maybe you can kind of like
live your dream through me a little bit. And about a week later, you know, and you asked me
could you box? And my answer was head on toe. You remember the exact words that you said, you say
boxing is a man sport. That made me so, it made me so mad.
Clarissa's conversation with her dad continues and we'll come back to it. I just want to stop here
for a moment because that message you can't has been repeated so many times to so many of the boxers
we've met. Why you want to get your pretty face hit? Women can't box, they're not aggressive,
they can't take punches like that. What if you get hit at the chest or something? Women is for
taking a house, cooking, cleaning. You're too pretty to box. You're too skinny to be boxing.
It's not ladylike. I like proving people wrong. I take joy in it actually. People can say
that right to the face, oh women should be boxing. It doesn't faze anyone bad. I'm like, well, we do.
Clarissa Shields has this way of saying whatever that is so dismissive like she just unheard what she
didn't want to hear. That's kind of what she did when her dad told her boxing was a man sport.
That was a showman in statement. Did a girl can't do it? Here's the rest of their conversation.
And you should have took it that way. So, you know, you was right. And I've been at it ever since
I'm still proving people wrong. You've been on. I just think little mama, you are awesome.
Hello, this Clarissa again. Get ready, rest. Hurry up. Okay, hold on. Coach,
can you explain to me what's going on right now, Mr. Jason Crutchfield? Coach Crutchfield?
You're going to spar with them two guys right there. Come on, y'all get ready. Ready.
That's a good shot there. Come on, rest. Let's go. Stay into it. Sloppy, don't get sloppy. Keep
yourself together. Welcome. Welcome. Welcome, remember that border down to the gym. She was 11 years old.
11. And he told me as we say, hey, my daughter won a box. But we, after that, I noticed how she was
punching the grass of it fast in her fighter, her hunger. Man, Coach always wants a champion.
That's why we coach. We want to help the kids and stuff like that, but the first thing is to have
a champion. Now look, I think I got one. I just never thought it was going to be a girl.
Thanks to WNYC Radio and the public radio exchange for permission to use excerpts from Go For It,
Life Lessons from Girl Boxers. You can hear the entire program, see photos and learn more about
Women Box Project by visiting WomenBox.com. That's our show for this week. Thanks to Katie
Britain for production assistance. Our theme music is by Kevin Bartlett. This show is a national
production of Northeast Public Radio. Our executive producer is Dr. Ellen Shartock.
If you'd like to hear this show again or visit the 51% Archives, go to our website at wamc.org.
Thanks so much for joining us in 2012 and we wish you a very happy new year. We'll be back next
week with another edition of 51% the Women's Perspective.
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