This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump prepare for their debate on Tuesday night, those who care about US action on climate change are bracing themselves for disappointment.

They know that at candidate forums and interviews—for presidential and down-ballot candidates alike—climate often doesn’t come up at all. Even worse, the few questions that do get asked are stuck on a controversy that science resolved long ago—is climate change real? As a result, debates provide little enlightenment on the difficult choices political leaders face as the costs of severe weather, heat and wildfire mount, and the clean energy future develops in a US economy caught up in a fossil fuel surge. 

Since his first run for president in 2016, Trump has easily deflected the soft climate questions tossed his way. He declares himself an avid environmentalist—”I believe very strongly in very, very crystal clear clean water and clean air,” he once said—while minimizing the severity of climate change. Virtually all scrutiny of Harris’ climate policy has focused on her once-stated support for a fracking ban, even though there is no legal authority for a US president to enact such a prohibition, and Harris abandoned the stand when she became President Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020.

Ahead of the debate, the Inside Climate News staff came up with questions that challenge the candidates’ past statements on energy policy and more accurately reflect the hard decisions the next president will face as the world’s leading oil and gas producer confronts its role in both aiding and addressing a planetary crisis.

Questions for Trump

1. Private companies have announced more than 300 major new clean energy projects and electric vehicle plants across the country based on the support they’re getting under the Inflation Reduction Act. This private investment is expected to create more than 100,000 jobs; Michigan, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina each have 20 projects or more underway. You’ve said you would end the IRA subsidies. What would you do about the projects in these states that would be put at risk?

Context: The nonprofit group Environmental Entrepreneurs has tracked 334 new clean energy and vehicles project announcements in 40 states since passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, totaling $125 billion in investment, expected to create 109,000 jobs.

2. You take credit for making the United States energy independent during your presidency. But under the Biden/Harris administration, we are even more energy independent by any measure—our energy imports are lower now and our exports are higher; our energy consumption is lower now and production is higher. Aren’t you just promising more of the same? Would you lift the ban on oil imports from Russia, which rose dramatically during your presidency?

Context:

3. You have often said that wind energy is damaging to land, wildlife, and even human health, while making energy more expensive. But wind electricity now provides 10 percent of US electric power, with Texas far and away the leading state for wind farms. What is your plan for wind power as president and would you act to shut down the wind farms now operating?

Context: Wind energy can have impacts on wildlife and the environment, according to the Department of Energy, and federal authorities require developers of projects on federal land and water to analyze potential impacts and minimize them. Oil, gas, and coal development also have wildlife and environmental impacts, with one 2012 study showing that fossil fuel-generated electricity kills nearly 20 times more birds per gigawatt-hour than electricity generated by wind.

4. You have said rising sea levels would create more oceanfront property. But the changes already underway have meant flooding, erosion and damage to homes and businesses both on the coast and inland. With losses mounting and the federal flood insurance program more than $20 billion in debt to taxpayers, should the U.S. government continue to insure the properties most at risk? And if not, what do you think the federal government should do about homes and businesses that can’t get private flood insurance, especially in your home state of Florida?

Context: In his August 12 interview with Elon Musk, Trump asserted that sea level is expected to rise one inch every 400 years, but a comprehensive 2022 study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that sea levels on the US coast are on track to rise 10 inches in the next 30 years. NOAA projects the incidence of flooding in the US will increase tenfold as a result.

5. When you first ran for president, you promised to bring back coal jobs. But eight coal companies went bankrupt during your presidency and the United States lost 12,700 coal jobs—a decline of 25 percent. What is your plan to help coal workers? 

Context: The coal industry has been weakening steadily over more than a decade due to what most economists see as a sectoral decline in the industry due to competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. Eight US coal companies went bankrupt between October 2018 and October 2019. Under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—the main vehicle for President Joe Biden’s climate policy—coal states like Wyoming and West Virginia have been given a competitive advantage in attracting clean energy development projects and associated federal funding in order to address displaced workers.

Questions for Harris

1. As California attorney general, you took legal action against oil companies over oil spills and other pollution, and as a presidential candidate in 2019, you talked about the federal and state litigation against tobacco companies as a model of how to address fossil fuel companies’ role in the climate crisis. Do you believe the Justice Department should join with states taking action against oil companies over climate damages?

Context: In 1998, 52 state and territorial attorneys general signed a massive $200 billion agreement with the nation’s four largest tobacco companies to settle dozens of lawsuits they brought to recover their smoking-related health care costs. The next year, the Justice Department also filed suit against Big Tobacco and after years of legal wrangling and a nine-month trial, a federal judge in 2006 ruled that the manufacturers had violated the federal organized crime law, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. That litigation is ongoing 25 years later, as the industry continues to challenge remedies imposed by the court, which are designed to prohibit it from making false or deceptive claims about tobacco products. 

2. Despite the progress made on clean energy during the Biden administration, the US isn’t on track to hit the Paris climate agreement targets for greenhouse gas reductions. This not only endangers lives and property, it undermines US credibility in persuading other nations, especially China, to reduce their climate pollution. What would you do to change that? 

Context: The Climate Action Tracker, a nonprofit international research organization, projects that US greenhouse gas emissions are on track to be about one-third below 2005 levels by 2030, falling short of the Biden administration’s pledge to cut them in half. Another research organization, the Rhodium Group, reached a similar conclusion, calculating that to meet its Paris target, the United States would have to achieve a 6.9 percent emissions reduction every year from 2024 through 2030, more than triple the 1.9 percent drop seen in 2023. 

3. In 2019, you said that we “have to acknowledge the residual impact of fracking is enormous in terms of the health and safety of communities.” As president, what would you do to protect the health and safety of communities who are exposed to air pollution and water contamination caused by the fracking process?

Context: Almost 2,500 scientific papers have documented negative health impacts from fracking, according to the Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York. They include a 2022 Yale study showing Pennsylvania children who grew up within a mile of a natural gas well were twice as likely as other children to develop the most common form of juvenile leukemia, and a 2023 University of Pittsburgh study showing they were seven times as likely to suffer from lymphoma. The oil and gas industry has maintained high-pressure water fracturing for oil and gas production from underground shale formations is safe, but the industry has had to pay to provide new water supply for residents with contaminated wells. The issue is especially divisive in Pennsylvania, which became the nation’s second-largest natural gas producing state (after Texas) due to fracking, and is a key state in the presidential race.

4. Did you support President Biden’s move to pause further permitting of liquefied natural gas export facilities while the government assesses the potential climate impact? Now that a federal judge has ordered the administration to resume permitting, would you go forward with new LNG projects or seek to overturn the judge’s order?

Conext: Biden’s LNG permitting pause in January put into question the future of at least 17 terminals currently being considered along US coastlines to export natural gas overseas. The move was challenged by a coalition of Republican-led states and in July, a Trump-appointed federal judge ordered the administration to resume permitting LNG terminals. Although the Biden administration is appealing that order, on September 3, it approved a short-term expansion of one existing terminal’s permit to export from the Gulf of Mexico. 

5. Farm work is among the nation’s most dangerous occupations and has become even deadlier due to more intense and frequent heat waves driven by climate change. Nearly half of farmworkers nationwide are undocumented and face even greater risks because they’re afraid to complain about unsafe working conditions. Will you give these workers some form of legal status and implement a federal heat standard that ensures the health and safety of those exposed to dangerous heat conditions at work?

Context: Rising temperatures have prompted questions about whether employers should be required to provide shade, rest periods, and cool water to workers who face health risks because of extreme heat, particularly those who must work outdoors, like farmworkers and construction workers. After the heat-related death of a 38-year-old farmworker in Oregon during the historic 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave, that state put new heat-protection rules in place. But Florida’s legislature and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis approved legislation early this year banning localities from establishing such rules. The Biden administration proposed the first federal worker heat protection standards in July, three years after the president first promised them. It will be up to the next president to decide whether to finalize that plan or abandon it in the face of certain legal challenges from business groups and their political allies.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

As Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump prepare for their debate on Tuesday night, those who care about US action on climate change are bracing themselves for disappointment.

They know that at candidate forums and interviews—for presidential and down-ballot candidates alike—climate often doesn’t come up at all. Even worse, the few questions that do get asked are stuck on a controversy that science resolved long ago—is climate change real? As a result, debates provide little enlightenment on the difficult choices political leaders face as the costs of severe weather, heat and wildfire mount, and the clean energy future develops in a US economy caught up in a fossil fuel surge. 

Since his first run for president in 2016, Trump has easily deflected the soft climate questions tossed his way. He declares himself an avid environmentalist—”I believe very strongly in very, very crystal clear clean water and clean air,” he once said—while minimizing the severity of climate change. Virtually all scrutiny of Harris’ climate policy has focused on her once-stated support for a fracking ban, even though there is no legal authority for a US president to enact such a prohibition, and Harris abandoned the stand when she became President Joe Biden’s running mate in 2020.

Ahead of the debate, the Inside Climate News staff came up with questions that challenge the candidates’ past statements on energy policy and more accurately reflect the hard decisions the next president will face as the world’s leading oil and gas producer confronts its role in both aiding and addressing a planetary crisis.

Questions for Trump

1. Private companies have announced more than 300 major new clean energy projects and electric vehicle plants across the country based on the support they’re getting under the Inflation Reduction Act. This private investment is expected to create more than 100,000 jobs; Michigan, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, and North Carolina each have 20 projects or more underway. You’ve said you would end the IRA subsidies. What would you do about the projects in these states that would be put at risk?

Context: The nonprofit group Environmental Entrepreneurs has tracked 334 new clean energy and vehicles project announcements in 40 states since passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, totaling $125 billion in investment, expected to create 109,000 jobs.

2. You take credit for making the United States energy independent during your presidency. But under the Biden/Harris administration, we are even more energy independent by any measure—our energy imports are lower now and our exports are higher; our energy consumption is lower now and production is higher. Aren’t you just promising more of the same? Would you lift the ban on oil imports from Russia, which rose dramatically during your presidency?

Context:

3. You have often said that wind energy is damaging to land, wildlife, and even human health, while making energy more expensive. But wind electricity now provides 10 percent of US electric power, with Texas far and away the leading state for wind farms. What is your plan for wind power as president and would you act to shut down the wind farms now operating?

Context: Wind energy can have impacts on wildlife and the environment, according to the Department of Energy, and federal authorities require developers of projects on federal land and water to analyze potential impacts and minimize them. Oil, gas, and coal development also have wildlife and environmental impacts, with one 2012 study showing that fossil fuel-generated electricity kills nearly 20 times more birds per gigawatt-hour than electricity generated by wind.

4. You have said rising sea levels would create more oceanfront property. But the changes already underway have meant flooding, erosion and damage to homes and businesses both on the coast and inland. With losses mounting and the federal flood insurance program more than $20 billion in debt to taxpayers, should the U.S. government continue to insure the properties most at risk? And if not, what do you think the federal government should do about homes and businesses that can’t get private flood insurance, especially in your home state of Florida?

Context: In his August 12 interview with Elon Musk, Trump asserted that sea level is expected to rise one inch every 400 years, but a comprehensive 2022 study by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that sea levels on the US coast are on track to rise 10 inches in the next 30 years. NOAA projects the incidence of flooding in the US will increase tenfold as a result.

5. When you first ran for president, you promised to bring back coal jobs. But eight coal companies went bankrupt during your presidency and the United States lost 12,700 coal jobs—a decline of 25 percent. What is your plan to help coal workers? 

Context: The coal industry has been weakening steadily over more than a decade due to what most economists see as a sectoral decline in the industry due to competition from cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. Eight US coal companies went bankrupt between October 2018 and October 2019. Under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act—the main vehicle for President Joe Biden’s climate policy—coal states like Wyoming and West Virginia have been given a competitive advantage in attracting clean energy development projects and associated federal funding in order to address displaced workers.

Questions for Harris

1. As California attorney general, you took legal action against oil companies over oil spills and other pollution, and as a presidential candidate in 2019, you talked about the federal and state litigation against tobacco companies as a model of how to address fossil fuel companies’ role in the climate crisis. Do you believe the Justice Department should join with states taking action against oil companies over climate damages?

Context: In 1998, 52 state and territorial attorneys general signed a massive $200 billion agreement with the nation’s four largest tobacco companies to settle dozens of lawsuits they brought to recover their smoking-related health care costs. The next year, the Justice Department also filed suit against Big Tobacco and after years of legal wrangling and a nine-month trial, a federal judge in 2006 ruled that the manufacturers had violated the federal organized crime law, the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. That litigation is ongoing 25 years later, as the industry continues to challenge remedies imposed by the court, which are designed to prohibit it from making false or deceptive claims about tobacco products. 

2. Despite the progress made on clean energy during the Biden administration, the US isn’t on track to hit the Paris climate agreement targets for greenhouse gas reductions. This not only endangers lives and property, it undermines US credibility in persuading other nations, especially China, to reduce their climate pollution. What would you do to change that? 

Context: The Climate Action Tracker, a nonprofit international research organization, projects that US greenhouse gas emissions are on track to be about one-third below 2005 levels by 2030, falling short of the Biden administration’s pledge to cut them in half. Another research organization, the Rhodium Group, reached a similar conclusion, calculating that to meet its Paris target, the United States would have to achieve a 6.9 percent emissions reduction every year from 2024 through 2030, more than triple the 1.9 percent drop seen in 2023. 

3. In 2019, you said that we “have to acknowledge the residual impact of fracking is enormous in terms of the health and safety of communities.” As president, what would you do to protect the health and safety of communities who are exposed to air pollution and water contamination caused by the fracking process?

Context: Almost 2,500 scientific papers have documented negative health impacts from fracking, according to the Physicians for Social Responsibility and Concerned Health Professionals of New York. They include a 2022 Yale study showing Pennsylvania children who grew up within a mile of a natural gas well were twice as likely as other children to develop the most common form of juvenile leukemia, and a 2023 University of Pittsburgh study showing they were seven times as likely to suffer from lymphoma. The oil and gas industry has maintained high-pressure water fracturing for oil and gas production from underground shale formations is safe, but the industry has had to pay to provide new water supply for residents with contaminated wells. The issue is especially divisive in Pennsylvania, which became the nation’s second-largest natural gas producing state (after Texas) due to fracking, and is a key state in the presidential race.

4. Did you support President Biden’s move to pause further permitting of liquefied natural gas export facilities while the government assesses the potential climate impact? Now that a federal judge has ordered the administration to resume permitting, would you go forward with new LNG projects or seek to overturn the judge’s order?

Conext: Biden’s LNG permitting pause in January put into question the future of at least 17 terminals currently being considered along US coastlines to export natural gas overseas. The move was challenged by a coalition of Republican-led states and in July, a Trump-appointed federal judge ordered the administration to resume permitting LNG terminals. Although the Biden administration is appealing that order, on September 3, it approved a short-term expansion of one existing terminal’s permit to export from the Gulf of Mexico. 

5. Farm work is among the nation’s most dangerous occupations and has become even deadlier due to more intense and frequent heat waves driven by climate change. Nearly half of farmworkers nationwide are undocumented and face even greater risks because they’re afraid to complain about unsafe working conditions. Will you give these workers some form of legal status and implement a federal heat standard that ensures the health and safety of those exposed to dangerous heat conditions at work?

Context: Rising temperatures have prompted questions about whether employers should be required to provide shade, rest periods, and cool water to workers who face health risks because of extreme heat, particularly those who must work outdoors, like farmworkers and construction workers. After the heat-related death of a 38-year-old farmworker in Oregon during the historic 2021 Pacific Northwest heat wave, that state put new heat-protection rules in place. But Florida’s legislature and Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis approved legislation early this year banning localities from establishing such rules. The Biden administration proposed the first federal worker heat protection standards in July, three years after the president first promised them. It will be up to the next president to decide whether to finalize that plan or abandon it in the face of certain legal challenges from business groups and their political allies.

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board called Norfolk Southern’s conduct during the board’s investigation of the 2023 train derailment in East Palestine “unconscionable” at a meeting this week to finalize the NTSB’s findings.

Jennifer Homendy, the NTSB chair, said at the close of the eight-hour session that Norfolk Southern “demonstrated complete disregard” for the rules and regulations put in place to protect the integrity of the investigation. She described the company’s behavior at various times as unprecedented, reprehensive, unethical, and inappropriate. 

When representatives from Norfolk Southern met with her and NTSB staff near the end of the investigation, she said, the company told them this was “an opportunity to close a chapter” and “allow the community to move on.” 

According to Homendy, Norfolk Southern then issued a “threat” that they would “use every avenue and opportunity to vigorously defend their decision-making” in the media and at future hearings. 

“It is not our role to defend Norfolk Southern. We are here to protect the American people and the traveling public,” she said. Calling the agency “the gold standard” for accident investigation, Homendy said the agency is “impervious to anything but the truth.”

In a statement responding to Homendy’s remarks, Norfolk Southern said their communications with the NTSB were “always motivated by a desire to ensure they had all the relevant information for their independent evaluation and by a shared commitment to advance rail safety.”

During the meeting in East Palestine, investigators presented their findings and evidence and responded to questioning from the board. Investigators said the probable cause of the derailment was a defective wheel bearing on one of the train cars and explained that warning detection systems failed to convey the seriousness of the issue to rail operators in time. 

A fire started and spread during the derailment because of hazardous material released from a breached tank car. The agency also voted on and published 31 new recommendations for safety improvements related to the rail industry, emergency response, and firefighter training. 

The controversial “vent and burn” of five train cars carrying the toxic chemical vinyl chloride, which occurred three days after the derailment, was unnecessary, the investigation concluded. The vent and burn released 115,000 gallons of vinyl chloride into the environment; a new study has shown that at least 16 states were potentially affected by the plume. In the months since, some residents in Ohio and Pennsylvania who live near the derailment site have developed health symptoms and chronic conditions like asthma, persistent coughing, nosebleeds, rashes, and hair loss. 

The decision to conduct the vent and burn rather than pursuing alternative methods of disposal was “based on incomplete and misleading information provided by Norfolk Southern,” the agency said. Investigators said Norfolk Southern withheld critical data and context about the state of the train cars carrying vinyl chloride from the governor of Ohio and first responders on the scene. That data showed the temperature of the cars was decreasing and not dramatically rising as it would have been if an explosion were imminent. 

In a statement from June 25, Norfolk Southern defended the vent and burn as “the only option to protect the community from a potential catastrophic explosion.” 

The rail company said “several factors” indicated “the strong possibility” of an uncontrolled explosion and said it had not withheld important information provided to them by Oxy Vinyls, the manufacturer that owned the cars and vinyl chloride.

On June 21, Norfolk Southern announced it will create a “vent and burn work group” to “assess current practices and existing protocols” around the use of this method.

Mike Schade, a campaign director at Toxic-Free Future, a nonprofit focused on chemical pollutants, called the new details about the vent and burn “a huge slap in the face to the community.” He said the environmental health disaster created by the derailment and fire was “multiplied by 1,000” by the vent and burn, which he compared to “setting off a bomb.” 

Schade said the derailment and its wide-ranging impacts highlighted the need to ban vinyl chloride in the United States. “Vinyl chloride is a dinosaur chemical. We’ve known about its dangers going back to the 1960s and 1970s,” he said. “How many more communities or workers have to be harmed before policies are enacted to phase out and ban this hazardous chemical?”

Lesley Pacey, senior environmental officer at the Government Accountability Project, which has worked with whistleblowers to shed light on the government response to the derailment, said there needs to be more accountability for Norfolk Southern’s actions after the derailment to prevent this from happening again.

Pacey urged the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice to reconsider their proposed settlement deal with Norfolk Southern in light of the new evidence. The settlement was announced at the end of May, well before the NTSB’s investigation was finished, which Pacey said was “strange timing.”

Pacey praised Homendy and the NTSB for their work and the “sense of humanity and concern” for affected residents and first responders they brought to the investigation. 

“The NTSB has done an amazing job of investigating this and doing what this government agency is designed to do,” she said. “I wish I could say that about all of our government agencies, but that does give me some hope.”

Jami Wallace, an East Palestine resident, was relocated to the town of East Liverpool, Ohio, because her home was contaminated after the derailment. Wallace, who has suffered from respiratory and gastrointestinal symptoms since, said the NTSB’s transparency, honesty, and commitment to community involvement were commendable and “the first time we’ve gotten that from a government agency.” 

Local government officials, the EPA, and the lawyers leading a class-action lawsuit related to the derailment have all failed to truly hold Norfolk Southern accountable, she said, and have left sick and displaced residents like her family without the resources and care they need most. 

Residents must opt in or out of the class-action lawsuit by July 1, which many feel is not enough time to weigh the complex legal, financial, and medical ramifications of joining the settlement. The original opt-out date was the day before NTSB’s board meeting, a scheduling choice that Wallace and others believe was not a coincidence. 

“They took my hometown. They took my pride in my country. Those are the things that money can’t buy.” 

“It feels like this can’t be reality, like we’re living in the Twilight Zone,” Wallace said. “You couldn’t make up the stuff that’s going on here. And nobody cares. I just don’t understand how all this is happening, and people aren’t outraged.” 

She said East Palestine had been changed by the derailment in ways she could never have foreseen in 2023. Norfolk Southern’s spending in the small town and surrounding areas divided residents against each other, and some people were afraid to speak out about their symptoms or illnesses for fear of retaliation or ridicule from their neighbors. 

“They took my hometown. They took my pride in my country. Those are the things that money can’t buy,” Wallace said. In some ways, hearing Homendy call out Norfolk Southern so publicly came as a relief. 

Some affected residents reacted to the findings and Homendy’s statement with anger and dismay, while others saw the investigation as further proof of conclusions they’d already drawn.

“Many findings shared today are not a revelation but a confirmation of Norfolk Southern’s gross negligence,” said Misti Allison, another East Palestine resident who has become a public advocate for those affected by the derailment.“This NTSB report will be cemented in history and provides the sense of justice that my community desperately craves.” 

Allison said it was “haunting” to consider that the derailment and vent and burn were “100 percent preventable.”

Other safety issues raised by investigators revolved around the emergency response and a lack of timely information provided to responders about the contents of the tank cars on the train. 

The first 911 call about the derailment came in at 8:56 p.m., but the incident commander was not informed about the presence of vinyl chloride until after 10 p.m., and NTSB found that placards meant to identify the cars’ hazardous contents had melted or become otherwise illegible during the fire. 

Because of this delay, first responders and the public were exposed to greater risk. Residents living within one mile were evacuated starting at 11 p.m.

Many of the earliest first responders on the scene were volunteer firefighters who did not have adequate training to deal with hazardous materials like vinyl chloride, which is highly flammable and classified as a “known human carcinogen” if inhaled, touched or swallowed. At least one of those firefighters was a teenager at the time of the derailment. The NTSB recommended the state of Ohio update its training requirements for volunteer firefighters so that they would be better prepared for fires like the one in East Palestine.

During the meeting, Homendy often appeared incensed by Norfolk Southern’s conduct. She referred to an earlier Norfolk Southern press release she said blamed first responders for not consulting with Oxy Vinyls about the vent and burn. NTSB investigators said the incident commander initially did not even know Oxy Vinyls was on the scene. 

“Disgusting that anyone would say that,” she said of the press release’s insinuation of fault on the part of first responders. Local officials were working with “limited information in a very chaotic situation,” she said, and they had “done nothing wrong.” 

Later, she shared a photograph of the huge toxic plume released into the atmosphere by the vent and burn and read out a Norfolk Southern employee’s cavalier response to the picture at the time: “That’s cool.” 

“It’s not cool, it’s bone-chilling,” Pacey said, reacting to this exchange. “It takes your breath away. Because you know what’s going to happen. It’s going to kill people. Not today, but it’s going to kill people.”

Norfolk Southern said it takes its “responsibility to East Palestine and the surrounding community seriously” and pointed to its investments in environmental remediation and the municipal water system.   

Allison spoke about the need for Norfolk Southern to be held accountable, to implement common sense safety improvements on the rails and to fully cover health monitoring and medical treatment for impacted residents. “While we appreciate the apologies of the train executives, ‘sorry’ isn’t good enough,” she said. “We need action.” 

“Mothers will stop at nothing to protect their children. I am in this for the long haul, and I am committed to ensuring the East Palestine community receives all the resources we desperately need to recover and thrive,” Allison said, “and for this horrific and preventable accident to be a catalyst for meaningful change.”

On stage at the board meeting, Homendy shared a message similar to Allison’s. “We can’t change the past,” she said. “What we can do is work to ensure this never happens again.”

A year and a half after this nightmare began, Wallace feels an obligation to warn others that what happened in East Palestine “can happen anywhere.” She wants Americans outside of Ohio and western Pennsylvania to know that the aftermath of the derailment is setting a precedent for the ways that future environmental disasters in the United States will be handled—and that they, too, could someday be at risk, unlikely as that possibility might seem. It was once unlikely to her. “In 47 years, I never once thought, ‘What if a train full of chemicals derails in my community?’” she said.

“These railroad tracks run throughout our country. People need to open their eyes,” she said. “This is not political. It’s not a red issue or blue issue. It’s an issue of human lives.”