Q&A: Anti-Fracking Activist Sandra Steingraber on Scientists’ Moral Obligation to Speak Out
By Liza Gross
For many, a cancer diagnosis is a deeply personal, private matter. But when Sandra Steingraber confronted a diagnosis of cancer that is rarely found in young women as a college biology student more than 40 years ago, it set her on a life-long mission to document the intimate connection between human and environmental health and hold polluters to account.
Related Knowledge Center: Climate science
What began as a theory in the 1890s — that industrial emissions of carbon dioxide could increase global temperatures — had progressed to a scientific fact a century later. Scientists across a range of disciplines are studying the impact of the still-growing concentration of carbon dioxide and other so-called “greenhouse gases” in the atmosphere as they call for industrial and governmental policies to slow, then halt, the warming of the planet.