Commonwealth - Physicians critique National Grid official’s stance

Marcy Reed, of locking out union workers from National Grid fame, wrote a disingenuous article for Commonwealth calling into question Nathan Phillips' Commonwealth article about his hunger strike that highlighted our situation with the DEP. But this counter argument to Reed's article is true and stunning. Many thanks to the doctors of PSR.

Read the full piece here: Commonwealth - Physicians critique National Grid official’s stance (link)

Excerpt: “MARCY REED’S February 15 commentary, “Hunger and the Clean Energy Transition,” is misleading, disingenuous, and self-serving.

Reed, who is the Massachusetts president and executive vice president for US policy and social impact at National Grid, bubbles with praise for gas. She notes that gas combustion produces less carbon dioxide than combustion of coal or oil, which is true. She notes that it costs about half as much to heat a home in New England with gas as with electricity, which is again true. Based on these two facts, Reed argues that gas will help the poor meet their energy needs and that gas will prevent hunger.

But these rosy claims are only a part of the story, and Reed fails to mention other key facts.

First, Reed says nothing about the many hazards that gas poses to human health and well-being. Fracking is linked to contamination of ground and surface water, air pollution, noise and light pollution, radiation releases, ecosystem damage, and earthquakes. Gas transmission and storage result in fires and explosions. No one in Massachusetts can forget the series of pipeline explosions in the Merrimack Valley that caused more than 80 fires and explosions, damaged 131 homes, forced the evacuation of 30,000 people, and killed an 18-year-old boy.” (Commonwealth, 2020)