By: Danielle Berkowitz-Sklar, Project Manager, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: July 8, 2025
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124-0001
To: Environmental Protection Agency
My name is Danielle Berkowitz-Sklar, and I serve as the Project Manager for Moms Clean Air Force National Events and our Latino community program, EcoMadres. We are a community of almost 1.5 million parents and caregivers fighting to protect the health of children from air pollution and climate change.
If our environment is not healthy, neither are we. Our well-being and survival is deeply connected to the planet’s. That’s why I’m here to strongly oppose EPA’s proposal to roll back the Carbon Rule. Families need strong climate pollution standards to protect us from the growing dangers of global warming and the dirty air from polluting facilities.
Between Florida, California and Costa Rica - all places I call home - I’ve seen the impacts of climate change firsthand.
In Costa Rica, I had the privilege of growing up close to nature and becoming involved in conservation efforts at a young age. Alongside my siblings, I founded an environmental non-profit to engage youth in protecting vulnerable ecosystems through community- and science-based initiatives. Through this work, I witnessed the devastating effects of our changing climate, one example being coral bleaching. This phenomenon, which is caused by rising ocean temperatures and other alterations, is becoming so frequent and severe that it exceeds the reef’s natural ability to recover. Witnessing the vibrant coral reefs transform into pale and lifeless structures was life-changing for me. But, coral bleaching not only robs these ecosystems of their beauty - it puts coastal protection, biodiversity, and the livelihoods of local communities at stake.
In California, my brothers, one of whom is asthmatic, and parents had to evacuate for a short period of time due to the 2019 wildfires. We know that climate pollution is heating the planet and exacerbating conditions that are favorable to wildfires. California already suffers from the worst air pollution in the country, and intensifying, prolonged wildfires are making it worse.
On the opposite coast, in my birthplace of Miami Beach, my grandparents, who have very serious health issues and insufficient care as it is, now worry about ever-intensifying floods and hurricanes regularly.
No matter where you are, you are not exempt from the detrimental impacts of climate change. It is everywhere.
As we know, fossil fuel power plants contribute 25% of US greenhouse gas emissions, which are accelerating climate change, intensifying weather disasters and altering the land and ocean extraordinary rates.
People’s well-being and health are suffering because of it, and vulnerable populations bear a disproportionate burden due to existing socioeconomic struggles and lower capacities to adapt to these impacts.
Because of their smaller, developing bodies and their inability to regulate body temperatures like adults, children in the U.S. are more vulnerable to heat-related illness and the cognitive impacts of extreme heat, to name a few examples.
Outdoor workers in the US are 35x more likely than the general population to die of extreme heat, and 80% of farmworkers in this country identify as Hispanic.
Black Americans are 1.5-2x as likely to die from extreme heat than white Americans.
If we don’t curb emissions now, the people who contribute least to the climate crisis will continue to suffer the most. The moment is now to change these devastating statistics and hold polluters accountable. The EPA has the duty to uphold climate pollution protections for power plants. Our health and well-being, and that of future generations, depends on it.