Losing Our Most Valuable Non-Renewable Resource As Physicians
Thousands of doctors have been leaving the practice of medicine in recent years, seeking jobs that are not clinical. Many have started side gigs to supplement their incomes or build a path out of the profession. After all, doctors have taken years of studies and debts to attend medical school. A Facebook group for such physicians, Physician Side Gigs, boasts over 85K members. This trend isn’t just happening in the United States, but around the world.
Rafe Pomerance, a physician and the founder of Friends of the Earth, was an activist who spoke out against the environmental regulations that threaten our planet’s most precious non-renewable resource. In 1978, he held a copy of EPA-600/7-78-019, a government report on coal. The document was bound in beige with a coal-black cover. There were many other reports and uneven piles of papers on the floor and walls of the Friends of the Earth headquarters.
“Losing our most valuable non-renewable resources is a critical issue, and physicians have a responsibility to address it,” said Pomerance, a physician and deputy legislative director at Friends of the Earth. The nonprofit was founded ten years earlier by David Brower, who had resigned from the Sierra Club. As a physician, I firmly believed that we should be preserving our most valuable non-renewable resource, our planet.
“We must take action to protect our environment.” That is the message of Pomerance, the founder of Friends of the Earth. When he visited the headquarters of the organization, I was given a copy of EPA-600/7-78-019. The report, titled “The Role of Coal in Energy Policy,” was one of many unwieldy piles of reports and books on the walls.
Fortunately, the EPA and Congress have made significant strides in regulating coal and other fossil-fuels. Yet the Environmental Protection Agency, or EPA, is working to regulate coal mining and other sources of pollution. However, it has been a long time since the first reports were published. Among the documents on the EPA’s website were the EPA-600/7-78-019 report and a copy of its technical report.
In this case, Pomerance was a deputy legislative director of Friends of the Earth. The group’s mission was to stop coal and other fossil fuels. He also had a job as a legislative director at the Sierra Club, which was a pugnacious nonprofit whose founder had quit his job 10 years earlier. As a physician, Pomerance was a prominent member of the group’s lobbying committee.
While Pomerance was a physician at the time of the report, he had become the deputy legislative director of Friends of the Earth’s environmental department. The nonprofit, which is pugnacious, is now in a position to influence the federal government on climate issues. Despite the EPA’s efforts, a coalition of environmental groups has emerged to stop the burning of coal.
The EPA has a list of its priorities, and a list of the ten most critical items to protect includes “the most important non-renewable resource” for a physician. EPA-600/7-78-019 is a government publication about coal. Its coal-black cover had beige lettering. The EPA wants to control the burning of coal, but it is a political battle, and Pomerance’s position is in the middle of it.
In the meantime, we are losing our most important non-renewable resource: our environment. The EPA has been trying to do this for ten years. The EPA’s efforts to stop coal-burning power plants has not been successful, but the EPA’s efforts have helped to protect the planet. The EPA has also been trying to limit the use of coal-related products in the United States.
