Written by Jack McDonald
When I was 19, I testified in front of the EPA. I spoke about my personal experience living on the Barnett Shale where the fracking boom originated, but I also spoke about the looming threat of climate change that weighs on my entire generation. Based on Energy Information Agency data, the U.S. is still producing more than 4.75 billion barrels of oil a year. Global atmospheric CO2 is the highest it has been since NOAA began tracking it in the 1960s. The sea level continues to rise at an alarming rate. Climate change still looms. I am now 22. My friends have graduated high school, and many have graduated from college. As we begin to enter the workforce, the future feels like it is crashing towards us. In that context, it’s hard not to think about climate change.
When I was in elementary school, my family lived on the Barnett Shale. When fracking began to take off, my town was in the middle of it. As wells popped up around town and people began to get sick, my family moved. We were privileged to have the opportunity to do so but that wasn’t the case for many other people. Even before fracking came into my life, I was interested in environmental issues. For me that started with animals. Like many older Gen Zs, I remember waiting each month for the new issue of Zoobooks so I could learn about a new animal. When I was in elementary school, I learned about the critically endangered silverback gorilla and set up a lemonade stand to collect money for the Jane Goodall Foundation. To me, at 7 years old, the worst environmental villains were poachers who killed animals for profit. After we moved away and as I grew up, my environmental interest took a new direction. I wanted to learn about the circumstances that led to my family moving. I learned about the energy companies and policy makers that had designed an environmental system that protected profits over people. I learned about bills like HB 40 passed by the Texas legislature to strip communities of their right to self govern because towns were starting to resist oil and gas. It became clear to me that as bad as poachers are, the environmental villains that will define my generation are those that are willing to sacrifice our future for their profit.
Seven-year-old Jack set up a lemonade stand to collect money for the critically endangered silverback gorilla.
As I learned, my career aspirations crystalized. I am currently an undergraduate at the University of Chicago where I am majoring in environmental science and public policy. After I graduate, I plan to pursue a law degree. I want to use that law degree to help craft the policies we need to empower towns like mine to defend themselves from the fossil fuel juggernaut. I also want to craft policies to let us move beyond the fossil fuel industry.
Unfortunately, education takes time, and climate change is here now. Even without a law degree, I believe that there are opportunities for young people to have a say in the course of public policy. I began working in the environmental movement with Sharon and Miguel in earnest four years ago, first with an organization called Earthworks, and now with Oilfield Witness. At Earthworks, I conducted 
fieldwork with Miguel and Sharon in the Permian Basin, the most productive and most intensely polluting oil field in the United States. Now I am working with Miguel and Sharon at Oilfield Witness. I have seen firsthand the damage that oil and gas facilities can do to the people and environments around them. I’ve visited wells releasing so much toxic hydrogen sulfide that it made me nauseous just being near them. I’ve combed through OSHA reports detailing the deaths of oilfield workers who would still be alive if the company they worked for followed the law. I’ve helped document and report methane pouring out of equipment only to have regulators let it continue. I’ve researched enforcement statistics and found that the regulators that control oil and gas in Texas often fail to enforce the already lacking environmental regulations. It is clear that the guardrails are off. Too often polluters are unchecked.
That work has been both illuminating and frustrating. I am doing my best to make a difference, but I am not a decision maker. Unfortunately, the critical decisions that will dictate my generation’s future are being made right now by people who will not live to see the worst of the consequences of their actions, so we have to hope that they have the compassion to make the hard choices. The average age of a CEO in the energy industry is 57. The average congressman is 58. The former CEO of Tellurian, the company that pioneered liquid natural gas in the United States, embodies the difficulty of persuading these decision makers:
“As a company, I couldn’t care less about the climate. Of course I care, OK? But my responsibility is not to care about the climate. My job is to make a product that people need and sell it to them at the cheapest possible price to me.” ~Charif Souki
When the latest EDF studies show EPA emission estimates are understated by 4X because operators are chronically failing to report their emissions, the system is failing us. This has climate implications of course, but with those emissions come a slew of carcinogens and other dangerous compounds. These compounds like the hydrogen sulfide I mentioned earlier are responsible for the health toll that those living near oil and gas infrastructure experience. Even if climate change is too distant for those in power to act on, seeing oilfield workers and local residents dying and getting sick should galvanize some action, but it has not.
Gen Z is entering the workforce. We will climb the corporate ladder. Some of us will be elected to office. We will eventually become the decision makers, but climate change is here now. Every reduction in emissions buys us more time to make the critical decisions. Those in power need to give us that time. They need to do everything they can to reduce emissions immediately. The current climate situation should be code red. New permitting should halt. New monitors should be deployed. Violators should be issued fines as large as possible under existing regulations. This is a moment for decisive action and while I hope it will come, I know even if it does there will still be work to do.
