I made the mistake of watching the presidential debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump on September 10. I had earlier decided that watching it was pointless; there is no question who I am voting for. And I am an early-to-bed kind of guy, so the next day I paid a price for staying up late. But I was lured downstairs by the sound of the television and, once there, was trapped by a voyeuristic inertia: an object on a sofa watching a performance that would be funny if it weren’t deadly serious tends to stay on that sofa. When I finally achieved escape velocity during a commercial break, I trudged upstairs tired and disheartened.
You probably think I’m talking about Trump’s performance, but I was actually more depressed by Harris’. Out of the two major party options, the better choice for the environment actually hyped the Inflation Reduction Act’s (IRA) opening of new fracking leases, as if the only problem with fossil fuel extraction is that we’re not doing enough of it.
The Biden administration usually cites the act as proof that it is doing something about global warming, so I went back just now and checked the debate transcript, since I wasn’t sure if the IRA came up anywhere else. It did not. And climate change was barely mentioned at all. When one of the moderators asked about global warming, Harris acknowledged its existence … and then bragged about record-level oil and gas production.
Obviously these two positions (global warming bad, fossil fuel production good) are not compatible, and we should refrain from congratulating any politician for supporting efficiency and renewable energy if the net result isn’t a swift drop in emissions and fossil fuels left in the ground. The atmosphere awards no points for effort and we shouldn’t applaud half-measures.
That’s true at any scale, from the global — our planet in dire straits — to the local, where meager funding and half-measures endanger the health of our children and the people who educate them. In this issue, Kyle Bagenstose revisits the health hazards of working and studying in our decaying schools. Decades of low budgets that have kept the School District of Philadelphia from renovating and fixing what it should (“deferred maintenance”) have added up to a roughly $7 billion repair bill.
Along with the indignities of attending schools that are falling apart around them, our kids have been subjected to high temperatures in buildings that lack air conditioning, and, in rare but scary cases, to lead and asbestos pollution. Asbestos, in particular, has forced school buildings to close suddenly, disrupting students’ education as they get shuffled to and from backup locations.
The underlying reality hasn’t changed in the past year, but this time around we found Governor Shapiro’s administration touting a win of sorts, with a $1.1 billion increase in total statewide school funding coming from Harrisburg — $100 million of which was dedicated to school repairs — for the entire commonwealth. It’s better than nothing, but it’s nothing to celebrate. Schoolchildren and educators don’t simply deserve more funding. They deserve an environment that won’t make them sick. Anything short of that is inadequate.
Bernard Brown, Managing Editor
