By: Elizabeth Bechard, Senior Policy Analyst, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: May 9, 2023
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2022-0829
To: Environmental Protection Agency
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Elizabeth Bechard, and I am a Senior Policy Analyst with Moms Clean Air Force. I live in Essex, Vermont, with my partner and seven-year-old twins. I strongly support EPA’s effort to clean up tailpipe pollution from light- and medium-duty vehicles, and ask that you finalize the strongest possible safeguards this year.
Climate pollution from the tailpipes of cars contributes significantly to climate change, and one of the areas I focus on in my work is the intersection between climate change and mental health. A growing body of research finds that the mental health impacts of climate change are significant and only expected to increase. Here in the US, according to recent polling from the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, approximately 1 in 3 of us report feeling angry, afraid, outraged, anxious, and even hopeless about climate change. Approximately two-thirds of us feel worried.
I feel worried and anxious about climate change myself. Back in 2018, when my twins were just two years old, an IPCC report was published with the shocking finding that the world had twelve years left to avert future climate catastrophe. I remember doing the math in my head: in 12 years, my twins would be just 14 years old—just barely starting high school. That same year, Hurricane Florence battered the coast of my home state of North Carolina, where we lived at the time. My mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother grew up and lived in Wilmington, North Carolina, which was devastated by the storm. I remember feeling stricken by grief as images of familiar places in Wilmington made the national news in the aftermath of the hurricane. One of the images I still can’t get out of my mind years later is a photo of the cemetery where we had buried my beloved grandmother just weeks before the hurricane, damaged by flooding and a chaotic mess of trees and branches downed by the storm.
My own experience of climate anxiety and distress in the wake of extreme weather is far from rare. Research suggests that the number of people psychologically affected by disasters like Hurricane Florence can surpass those physically injured by 40 to 1. The mental health impacts of climate change affect our quality of life and the quality of our families’ lives. Research shows that the mental health impacts of climate change are particularly harsh for communities of color, who are hit first and worst by climate stressors. These impacts are among the many reasons we need to act on climate change as if the quality of our future depends on it, because it does.
Stronger pollution standards for light- and medium-duty vehicles are one of the most important tools we can leverage today to fight the climate crisis. Finalizing strong standards as soon as possible is an opportunity we simply cannot miss to safeguard both our physical and mental health, and more importantly, to protect the well-being of our children and future generations. Once again, I support the strongest possible standards for cleaner light- and medium-duty vehicles and ask that you finalize these important protections this year. Thank you for the opportunity to testify.