Anthony Ingraffea: Don’t label me an activist
Ingraffea (center) says there’s a line between advocacy and activism. | AP Photo
Anthony Ingraffea doesn’t want people to call him an activist.
Yes, the Cornell engineering professor is one of the researchers who inspired the fervent national debate on the dangers of fracking. He regularly speaks to anti-fracking groups, and he appears in the documentary “Gasland Part II,” which premiered Monday night on HBO.
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Still, Ingraffea says there’s a line between advocacy and activism that he’s been careful not to cross. “I don’t think I need to go there yet,” he said.
He’ll admit, though, that he uses the platform high-profile environmentalists provide to “amplify” his advocacy to compete with the natural gas industry’s advertising and public relations machine. But he’s also never led civil disobedience actions or been arrested as a part of a protest — unlike former NASA scientist Jim Hansen, another famed figure of the climate change movement.
Ingraffea says his involvement falls “somewhere between.”
“It’s not pure advocacy because if it were pure advocacy, I wouldn’t be seen in the company of activists,” he said in an interview with POLITICO. “But I also have to make an ethical and moral judgment about how far I’m willing to take my advocacy.”
To both supporters and opponents of hydraulic fracturing, he’s best known as co-author of the 2011 scientific paper that labeled the methane emissions from shale gas a potentially greater danger for the Earth’s climate than coal.
Time Magazine named Ingraffea and co-author Robert Howarth among 2011’s “People Who Mattered” — along with actor and activist Mark Ruffalo — for escalating fracking to a national environmental issue. He’s been photographed posing with anti-fracking celebrities Ruffalo, Sean Lennon and Yoko Ono. And Ingraffea tagged along with director Josh Fox in June during a press junket for “Gasland Part II.”
He’s also drawn harsh criticism. Critics labeled his 2011 paper “junk science” or misleading — much the same way they attacked Fox’s original Oscar-nominated movie “Gasland.”
Energy in Depth, an industry-backed education organization, isn’t a fan of Ingraffea but says that’s not because of the company he keeps.
“His research hasn’t been criticized or discounted because he’s an activist,” Energy in Depth spokesman Chris Tucker said. “His research has been discounted because it’s been poorly done and demonstrably so.”
Indeed, some of the conclusions of Ingraffea’s study have been contradicted by more recent studies from Carnegie Mellon University and other Cornell researchers. Ingraffea and Howarth have stood by their conclusions.
Without taking sides in the debate, President Barack Obama’s new climate strategy calls for creating a “comprehensive” approach to reducing methane emissions from sources including agriculture, coal mines, landfills and natural gas production. The plan notes that methane “has a global warming potential that is more than 20 times greater than carbon dioxide.”
All the criticism doesn’t bother Ingraffea, he said.
Ingraffea said he welcomes the additional scrutiny of his and Howarth’s conclusions — and, by default, scrutiny of the natural gas industry. One of the major conclusions of their study, he said, is that more study and better data were needed on methane emissions from natural gas.
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