By: Emily Petrucci, Pennsylvania Field Organizer
Date: October 1, 2026
About: Docket # EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124-2920
To: EPA
My name is Emily Petrucci, and I’m a Pennsylvania field organizer for Moms Clean Air Force, an organization working to protect children & families from the harmful effects of air pollution and climate change. My husband and I live in the Philadelphia suburbs with our two daughters. I strongly oppose the EPA’s actions to roll back climate pollution limits from power plants, including the proposal to erase the Clean Air Act’s responsibility to limit climate pollution from the power sector. These limits are essential to protecting families from harmful emissions that contribute to global warming and endanger the health of children and people everywhere.
As an organizer for Moms Clean Air Force, this attack against climate protections goes against everything we fight for. At a critical time when data centers are driving a major increase in electricity demand in my state of PA and nationwide, the Trump/Zeldin EPA is weakening protections against pollution from the power plants that may be used to meet that demand. In combination with the devasting rollback of the Endangerment Finding earlier this year, this EPA has made clear that its interest is not in protecting children and families from air pollution, extreme weather, extreme heat, or drought. This EPA aims to line the pockets of the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our health and safety. While the EPA touts the savings industry will enjoy from this rollback, it refuses to recognize the net health harms of over $1 trillion and climate-related harms of over $1.7 trillion by 2047. Young children, pregnant women, the elderly, people with disabilities, people in low-income communities, and people of color are at increased risk.
As a mother of two, aunt to eight, and former educator, I am furious. You would have to try very hard to pretend not to notice the escalating effects of climate change that we are already seeing. Just in my family’s experience alone, we have had a car crushed & totaled during a rare storm that caused wind speeds equivalent to an EF-1 tornado, we’ve had air quality warnings canceling outdoor play & events, and heat extremes forced my daughter to bring her summer campers inside to play on many sunny days this summer. Power plants are responsible for about a quarter of the climate-heating pollution in the United States. Moms want progress, not rollbacks! We want clean, renewable energy and storage to reduce harmful pollution, address climate change, and protect children’s health, not permission to pollute! EPA must protect the integrity of the Clean Air Act, requiring life-saving limits on climate pollution from power plants. We know that climate pollution heats the planet, supercharges dangerous weather, increases respiratory, heat, and cardiovascular illnesses, and the Trump/Zeldin EPA knows this too!
The EPA has a moral responsibility to act now to protect the planet for our children and future generations. This rollback is shameful denialism of the established science of global warming. The EPA is abandoning its core mission-to protect human health and the environment.
Thank you for the opportunity to testify today.