By: Fabiola Bedoya, Arizona Field Organizer, 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
Hola. My name is Fabiola Bedoya, and I am a single mother of an elementary school boy. I am a Field Organizer with Moms Clean Air Force living in Tucson, Arizona—one of the hottest cities in the country. I’m here today because I care deeply about our children's health and their future, and I strongly urge EPA to preserve and enforce strong limits on carbon pollution from new and existing fossil fuel power plants.
Fossil fuel power plants are one of the largest contributors to the carbon pollution that drives climate change, and it is harming our children. As global temperatures rise, the effects of extreme heat on children are becoming more severe and more dangerous.
High temperatures don’t just make kids uncomfortable, they interfere with their ability to learn, grow, and thrive. According to EPA’s own 2023 report on climate change and children's health, extreme heat leads to measurable learning losses in schools. Children cannot concentrate or retain information as well in overheated classrooms, and these losses can translate into billions of dollars in future lost earnings across generations. At just 2 degrees Celsius of global warming, the lost income for each cohort of graduating students could reach nearly $7 billion annually.
But this crisis doesn’t affect all children equally. Kids of color and those from lower-income families are far less likely to attend schools with functioning air conditioning. That means extreme heat is only deepening existing disparities in education, health, and opportunity.
As a mother, I’ve seen how heat limits where my son can safely play. He can’t run around in the park like I did growing up. He comes home with heat exhaustion from simply playing at school. Kids’ small bodies are still developing, and they can't regulate temperature like adults. It’s heartbreaking to know that with every additional degree of heat, children’s hospital emergency visits could go up by over 17,000 visits between May and September each year.
We are allowing fossil fuel pollution to rob our children of their health, their education, and their future.
EPA has a regulatory and moral responsibility to protect our most vulnerable. That means refusing to roll back limits on fossil fuel pollution. We cannot afford to go backward. We need the strongest possible standards to reduce emissions, curb climate change, and protect the next generation from unnecessary harm.
Our children deserve to breathe clean air, to learn in safe classrooms, and to grow up without the constant threat of climate-driven heat damaging their bodies and limiting their futures.
I urge you to stand firm in protecting strong pollution limits on fossil fuel power plants. Our children’s well-being depends on it.