The Environment

Climate change is real.

As the Earth’s average temperatures continue to rise, our very humanity is threatened by increased drought, severe weather events, sea level rise, acidification of the oceans, increased frequency of wildfires, and disruption of stable agriculture.¹ It becomes imperative then to mitigate the mechanisms that substantially contribute to climate change in the first place – excessive greenhouse gas emissions like methane, hydroflurocarbons (HFCs), and carbon dioxide². 

As US Representative of Pennsylvania’s 13th Congressional district, I pledge to: 

• Reduce our dependence on fossil fuels such as oil, gasoline, coal, and natural gas.
• Expand access to renewable energy sources like solar panels, windmills, geothermal, and hydro power.
• Reduce methane produced by human activity.
• Increase the affordability of electrification for low- to moderate-income households, including through tax incentives.
• Support new nuclear technologies, such as Small Modular Reactors, or Molten Salt Reactors which can safely power high-demand facilities like data centers.
• Preserve our national parks.

One major way we can reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels like oil, gasoline, coal, and natural gas.³ However, it isn’t realistic to give up our vehicles, power grid, or the large data centers that support everything from websites and remote services to product sales, HR systems, and image storage. Whether all of these tools truly improve our lives can be debated, but most people use them because they believe they help. Even so, these technologies come with serious downsides, including pollution, higher costs, and heavy use of resources⁴. Therefore, we must explore ways we can still receive the advantages of transportation, climate-controlled environments, and data processing without furthering the negative impact upon us, or our future generations.

In the home, solar panels, heat pumps, and batteries slash emissions, reduce utility bills, and increase a home’s resilience during power outages⁵. Windmills, geothermal and hydropower are also excellent sources of power that can contribute to the energy needs of a home while lowering costs over time. Farms can also deploy solar panels in coordination with grazing agriculture and some vegetable growing (agrivoltaics)⁶

Businesses can deploy solar panel on their roofs or land, conduct methane leak detection and repair measures, install vapour units to capture and utilise fugitive emissions, and meet efficiency standards for flaring and venting. On the road, electric vehicles (EV)⁷ curtail emissions and on the rails, electric trains outperform the emissions reductions of the EV’s.⁸ On the water, solar panel farms (floatavoltaics) also convert natural sunlight into reliable stored power.⁹

But to mandate any of these positive measures requires federal legislation.

Unfortunately, our current member of Congress, multimillionaire John Joyce, who receives for his political campaign the largest donations from Sheetz, Inc.¹⁰, which is the market leader in all Pennsylvania fuel sales for convenience store chains, is not the representative who can be trusted to address climate change.

In fact, Joyce’s voting record on the environment is incredibly poor¹¹ as he voted against major legislation that protects our earth. Instead, Joyce has voted to:

• repeal clean water safeguards,
• obstruct appliance efficiency standards,
• attack international action on climate,
• violate public land conservation,
• block electric vehicle tax credits,
• promote oil drilling on public land and waters,
• undercut protections for threatened and endangered species,
• bar funding for climate change mitigation groups,
• undermine environmental review for data centers,
• and so much more.

In 2023, he cosponsored the Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act that is akin to the current Stop CARB Act of this year’s Senate, that re-invokes smog into the air we breathe by removing the right of California and other states to mandate electric vehicles in the future. In other words, this licensed physician isn’t simply introducing bad legislation, he’s actively making our country worse, not just for us, but for generations to come.

Please vote for me, Beth Farnham, so I can undo the harm that John Joyce is doing to our precious Earth, and instead, enact legislation for future generations to not just live here, but to thrive.

1. Causes and Effects of Climate Change ↩︎
2. Climate Change for Pennsylvanians ↩︎
3. Fossil Fuel Solutions ↩︎
4. Data Centers and Water Consumption ↩︎
5. Solar Heat Pump Battery Pilot ↩︎
6. Agrivoltaics ↩︎
7. Electric Vehicles Help Combat Climate Change – Here’s Why ↩︎
8. Electric trains are the Powerhouse EVs ↩︎
9. Coming Soon to a Lake Near You – Floating Solar Panels ↩︎
10. Open Secrets – Sheetz, Inc. ↩︎
11. League of Conservation Voters – John Joyce ↩︎