While our attention is focused on COVID-19, and rightly so, Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Geologic Energy Management team (CalGEM) quietly green-lighted 24 new fracking permits. These were the first fracking permits the state has issued in nine months and include permits to Aera Energy for oil well stimulation in Kern County.
Fracking pollutes our air with toxic emissions, contaminates our groundwater, and pushes us faster toward the economic and health disaster that is climate change. Moreover, a Harvard study released on April 5 ( here ) has found that Coronavirus patients in areas with high levels of air pollution are more likely to die from the infection than patients in parts of the country with lower pollution levels.
This risk falls disproportionately on vulnerable populations, many of whom live close to the sites where fossil fuel activities take place. These communities also tend to have limited access to good healthcare, and therefore experience an even greater threat when the virus takes hold. This is an issue of basic human rights: Access to decent health care and a livable climate should be a given for all of us. Instead, the Governor has permitted new fracking that will only intensify the toxic burden of pollution on communities that are already the most threatened by COVID 19.