Dear President Biden,


With dedication and unlimited love for our people, we are healthcare workers and public health workers on the frontline of our country’s multiple compounding health crises. Pandemic surges are now met with catastrophic flooding, hurricanes and wildfires. The health of the people is in grave condition, and with bold action, we can shift the imperiled direction in which we are headed.

We urge you to safeguard public health by removing Line 3’s presidential permit and instructing Assistant Secretary Jaime Pinkham to revoke the Army Corps of Engineers' Clean Water Act Section 404 permit. We must stop investing in infrastructure that harms public health. This intervention would have immediate impacts on the wellbeing of our Indigenous communities through safeguarding their food and water, and longterm impacts on the health of our people and the entire planet. The US has been remiss in meeting our greenhouse gas emission goals, in the face of rising global temperatures. The resistance to pipelines led by our nation’s Indigenous people have been effective at cutting those rates down by 25%. Let’s join with their forward thinking and immediately stop advancing projects that harm us.

It is time to build resilient systems that can withstand the climate events and other shocks coming our way. Our current infrastructure cannot hold in the face of the extreme weather we are now encountering with increasing frequency. We must redirect our time, energy, resources and efforts now to advance clean energy and clean jobs, to secure the health of the people now and the possibility of health for our children and grandchildren.

Healthcare workers are experiencing record levels of burnout, in part because we do not see proactive movements by our political leaders to guard the public's health. We are left overwhelmed by the sheer volume of people with preventable illness. This year alone, hundreds have died in the US from excess heat, and more have died in historic flooding. California has seen unprecedented fire behavior with fires crossing the entire Sierra Nevada, spreading faster and more unpredictably. Eight of the 10 largest California wildfires were in the last 4 years. Wildfire smoke increases Covid transmission and disease severity. Our hospitals are full and buckling under the pressure. We cannot continue like this. We desperately need our political leaders thinking as upstream as possible to affect meaningful change.

Please show us your unwavering commitment to the health of the people and to the wellbeing of healthcare workers by shutting down the Line 3 pipeline and committing fully to clean jobs and clean energy that will not damage our food, water and climate. We must rebuild our country and our economy, putting the health of the people at the forefront of our nation’s consciousness.


Respectfully,

Rupa Marya, MD
Associate Professor of Medicine
University of California, San Francisco
Do No Harm Coalition, Co-Founder

Kyle Lakatos, MSc
Medical Student
Association of Native American Medical Students
University of California, San Francisco

Robert M. Gould, MD
President
San Francisco Bay Physicians for Social Responsibility