By: Karin Stein, Iowa field organizer, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: December 1, 2021
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2021-0317
To: Environmental Protection Agency
Good evening. I am Karin Stein, Iowa Organizer for Moms Clean Air Force. As you have heard, we are a nation-wide organization of over a million members fighting to protect children from air pollution and the climate crisis.
I am speaking to you from Costa Rica today. What I say today will at first not sound like it relates to the topic at hand, but please hear me out.
I had to come to Costa Rica unexpectedly last Saturday, because my sister had a horrific car accident and is on life support. She lost a lot of blood, and her body has received severe trauma. If she pulls through, she will need assistance for a long time.
The domino effects of her accident will be felt long into the future. They will affect her son’s plans, and my life and my brother’s life as we take on the responsibilities she had on the farm and with our watershed and rainforest conservation foundation here in Costa Rica. The financial consequences of this accident will be huge and will affect her ability to make retirement plans and pay for her son’s studies. The trauma to her and the others involved will stay with them all forever.
My sister is responsible for the accident that luckily only caused minor injuries to the others involved. She fell asleep at the wheel. She should have acted on the fact that she was tired. In order to keep herself and others safe, and for the love for her son, she should not have embarked upon the long drive from the farm back to San José. But the usual pressures of life made her go against her better judgment.
As you hear what I am reading, do you hear the parallels between what is playing out in my sister’s life and what we are doing to the planet with regard to methane and other carbon pollutants? We continue to go against our collective better judgment. The pressures of commercial life are pushing us. We have been asleep at the wheel for a long time. We continue to put ourselves and others in danger. We are failing to act for the love of our children. The domino effects of our judgment lapses will have traumatic and devastating consequences for a long time to come.
Do you see the parallels?
I am a trained scientist but am not here to repeat what you already know about the horrific potency of methane as a greenhouse gas, or the severe health consequences of carbon pollution from flaring. What I am here to ask is something I will first say in Spanish:
Estoy acá para pedirles que implementen las mayores medidas de seguridad posibles en cuanto a los escapes de metano y la contaminación de aire ancilar, porque demasiadas veces los más afectados por el cambio climático y la contaminación son los que menos tienen acceso a la información necesaria, y los que menos sienten que tienen el poder de cambiar las cosas.
I said: “I am here to ask that you implement the strongest safeguards possible with regard to methane emissions and related pollution, because too many times those most affected by climate change and pollution are those who have the least access to the necessary information, or who least feel they have the power to change anything.”
I spoke in Spanish, because many of the most affected are people of color, and many of them don’t speak English well and deserve protection as fellow humans, and also because they contribute every day to the very wheels of the economy that makes them ill.
Even in the midst of my sister’s life hanging by a thread, the topic of methane pollution is so important that I am taking the time, and I thank you for listening.
I support the proposed EPA methane rules and urge you to finalize the strongest and most comprehensive methane rules to protect children’s health from all sources of oil and gas methane pollution, including routine flaring and small wells.
I have three grown daughters who feel they don’t want to bring children into this world because of climate change and government inaction on it. For the love of my daughters, for the love of all of our children, let’s do the right thing. Let’s stop falling asleep at the wheel and bleeding this planet. The climate crisis is a self-inflicted injury, and we’re not giving it the life support it needs. The planet is hanging by a thread.
Thank you.