Sandra Steingraber is the author of Living Downstream and several other books about climate change, ecology, and the links between human health and the environment. She was an Orion columnist for six years. Author photo: Laura Kozlowski.
Sandra Steingraber
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Fracking Democracy
THE EPA’s Hydraulic Fracturing Public Informational Meeting was probably the strangest exhibition of performance art ever to grace the stage of the Broome County Forum Theater in Binghamton, New York. Over Continue reading
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The Whole Fracking Enchilada
I HAVE COME to believe that extracting natural gas from shale using the newish technique called hydrofracking is the environmental issue of our time. And I think you should, too. Saying Continue reading
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Shale Game
WHEN I MOVED MY FAMILY FROM a cabin in the woods outside of Ithaca, New York, into a house in a nearby village, it felt like a faith healing. I could Continue reading
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Ecological Inheritance
FOR SIX CONSECUTIVE SEMESTERS in the early 1990s, I taught a seminar on Charles Darwin to nonscience majors at an urban community college. We read Darwin’s writings closely — often out Continue reading
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The Story About the One
WHEN A WOMAN visits a gynecologist’s office, the receptionist hands her a pen, a clipboard, and a medical intake form. To fill it out, she finds a seat among the waiting Continue reading
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3 Bets
THIRTY YEARS AGO, in between my sophomore and junior years of college, I was diagnosed with bladder cancer. Those are amazing words to write: Thirty years ago I had cancer. I Continue reading
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Sounds Like a Lot to Me
In 1989, I finished graduate school and took a research position at a think tank in San Francisco. During the job interview, the institute’s founders mentioned that the salary was $24,000. Continue reading
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The Big Talk
I WAS GOOGLING MYSELF recently (in an attempt, if you must know, to locate an essay that I had published somewhere), and I managed to misspell my own name. So I Continue reading
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Environmental Amnesia
I WOULD LIKE TO REPORT THAT IT takes two hours to jog around the periphery of the Mall of America, the nation’s largest indoor shopping center in Bloomington, Minnesota. The two Continue reading
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The Fall of a Sparrow
WHERE THEY LIVE They arrive uninvited, poor relations with little to recommend them and no plans to leave. Their motto: this’ll do. A hole or a crevice is fine for them. Continue reading