Date: Wednesday, April 19, 2023
Time: 7:00 PM
Location:
UU Church Sanctuary (in the church building)
228 Gougler Ave
Kent, OH 44240
This event is free and open to the curious.
Our Speaker: Ted Auch
Ted has been researching the environmental, social, and economic impacts of oil and gas development including the mechanisms by which oil and gas get from where it is produced to where it is consumed and processed for plastics and export.
He has written on the interaction between energy production and water scarcity, the primacy of regulatory agencies like Ohio’s Department of Natural Resource, data inconsistencies across states with a history of fossil fuel production, and the demographics of natural gas pipeline resistance and support.
His writing has appeared locally in The Cleveland Plain Dealer, Crain’s Cleveland Business, Belt Magazine, and The Warren Tribune Chronicle. Ted’s photography has been published in countless articles and documentaries about the impacts of oil and gas development from The Wall Street Journal to the recent documentary “Hellbent” about the plight of the endangered Hellbender Salamander in Southeastern Ohio.
In recent years, Ted has increased his focus on the role that rail plays in the transport mechanisms for fossil fuels including the economics, labor, and environmental impacts of moving raw commodities and extremely volatile substances by rail.
He is an adjunct faculty at John Carroll University, a member of the NAACP Ohio’s Environmental Justice Advisory Board, the US EPA Environmental Justice Screen Science Advisory Board, and the Midwest Program Director for the FracTracker Alliance, a non-profit collection of researchers, cartographers, and big data analysts working to address the massive information asymmetries that exist between communities and the multinational corporations looking to extract resources by any means necessary.
He received his PhD from the University of Vermont modeling climate impacts on forest processes. Prior to that , he pursued an MS at Virginia Tech identifying best practices for optimizing reforestation on strip-mined lands in Central Appalachia.
Ted and his family reside in Shaker Heights.