By: Karin Stein, Iowa Field Organizer
Date: October 1, 2026
About: Docket # EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0124-2920
To: EPA
Hello, my name is Karin Stein. I live in Central Iowa, and I am the Iowa Coordinator for Moms Clean Air Force, a national organization that fights every day to protect our children from air pollution and the climate crisis. I strongly oppose EPA’s proposal to repeal the greenhouse gas finding for the power sector and call on EPA to fulfill its responsibility to limit climate pollution from the power sector.
Fossil fueled power plants are responsible for almost one-quarter of the climate pollution generated by the U.S. I think about the climate crisis regularly, almost every day. Almost every day one reads about yet another climate extreme disaster in the U.S. and around the world. I am often filled with anguish when I think about what my daughters' lives will be like when I am no longer here to help. Will they lose their homes? Will they have enough to eat? Will new diseases and more frequent pandemics rob them of their lives’ potential? Will they watch their loved ones die from the consequences of climate change? Will governments be unable to manage the chaos that could ensue from major, relentless climate disasters? These are no longer topics for science fiction movies. You and I know that these could easily become real-life scenarios in future decades.
I watch how the climate crisis affects all the places where I have lived and where I have loved ones, mostly in Latin America and here in the United States. I am seeing every day the impacts of the climate pollution that is heating up our planet and supercharging extreme weather. My brother and sister are struggling on our family farm in Costa Rica, in good part because of climate change. My cousin in Colombia is experiencing the same problem on his farm.
In Iowa, we keep experiencing ever-increasing, severe storms and extreme rain fall. In mid-May 2025, when Minnesota is usually cold and wet, wildfires were raging in the state and 9 million people in adjacent areas were under a red flag advisory for extreme fire danger. 2024 was a record-breaking year for tornadoes in Iowa. In 2023, we had a severe hail storm that once again caused millions of dollars in damage in my area. My house was spared the worst, but we had to replace our roof, which was new. Our insurance covered most of that expense, but insurance companies are beginning to withdraw coverage from high-risk areas.
I have lived in the same house for 40 years, and I have observed the intensity and pace of natural disasters in our area increase markedly in the last eight years. I know struggling farm families who have still not fully recovered economically after the massive 2020 derecho storm destroyed their buildings and cornfields and caused an estimated 11 billion dollars in economic damage, because they have gotten hit again and again by other weather extremes since then.
Major insurance companies declaring they will no longer insure new property in California because of climate change. When will this happen in Iowa? It is a matter of time, and we’ll be left to our own devices to deal with the fallout of climate disasters. We desperately need regulatory protections that make us safer, fast.
I call on EPA to protect the health and climate safety of current and future generations by maintaining its authority to limit climate pollution from the power sector. Please withdraw this dangerous proposal.
Thank you.