By: Almeta Cooper, National Manager for Health Equity, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: June 14, 2023
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0072
To: Environmental Protection Agency
Good afternoon. My name is Almeta Cooper. I live in Washington, DC, and I am the National Manager for Health Equity for Moms Clean Air Force. We are 1.5 million moms, dads, and caregivers nationally who are united in protecting clean air and our children’s health.
I thank EPA and its staff for inviting public comment and remote testimony to allow members of the public to share our deep concerns about why EPA’s Proposed Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Standards and Guidelines for Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants are necessary and must be adopted this year.
The proposed standards are vital to protecting all families and communities from the climate crisis and dangerous air and climate pollution. We know today that power plants are the source of about one-quarter of the climate pollution in the US. Carbon dioxide, once in the atmosphere, stays there for a very long time—from 300 to 1,000 years. This means that EPA’s immediate goal must be to stop the dumping of more CO2 into our air as quickly as possible.
As EPA moves forward with adopting these standards it’s critical that EPA receives input from and strengthens safeguards for people living, working, and playing in the shadow of fossil fueled power plants, especially those in Black and Brown communities who are disproportionately harmed by air pollution that accelerates climate change and harms our health.
Environmental justice communities near power plants are often also low-income communities that bear the worst impacts of climate change. EPA has the authority and responsibility to address this environmental injustice and must assure that these communities have input and protection against these ongoing health harms.
As an African American woman and because of my lived experiences, I care deeply about environmental, climate and health justice. I worry about the long-lasting impact of the connection between clean air, climate change, and health that is affecting our nation’s most vulnerable populations—our Black, Brown, and low-income communities.
It is my fervid hope that EPA passes the strongest possible standards so that no new power plants come online without complying with strong carbon pollution controls and that the existing coal and gas plants are held accountable for all the carbon pollution these power plants cause.
In closing, I ask EPA’s decision makers to remember that real people, real children with names and families who love them are tied to the numbers and data you hear referenced in these hearings. They are real people who are being harmed right now—not in some distant future by climate pollution caused by power plants.
I urge EPA to adopt the strongest possible standards in the final version of the rule governing Proposed Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Standards and Guidelines for Fossil Fuel-Fired Power Plants because this is the best way to protect our health—especially children, pregnant women, people aged 65+ years old and others with health conditions that put them at risk.
I urge EPA to focus on setting robust, protective public health standards to limit the array of health-harming pollutants, including climate-warming carbon dioxide, dangerous particle pollution, smog-forming nitrogen oxides, and other toxic air pollutants that are billowing daily from the smokestacks of coal and gas fired power plants.
EPA has the authority under the Clean Air Act and the important responsibility on behalf of all of us and the environment to get the regulation of power plants right. EPA has an unprecedented opportunity to do so now. We are too close to fail.