By: Kiya Stanford, Georgia Field Organizer, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: August 21, 2025
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194
To: Environmental Protection Agency
My name is Kiya Stanford, and I am the Georgia State Coordinator for Moms Clean Air Force, a national organization of over 1.5 million moms, dads, and caregivers united to protect children from air pollution and our changing climate. I am speaking to you today to urge the EPA NOT to rescind the Endangerment Finding or vital limits on greenhouse gas pollution for motor vehicles. Revoking these safeguards would upend foundational goals of the EPA, sabotaging critical protections of public health and welfare.
I am originally from Decatur, GA, a suburb of Atlanta, so I am no stranger to the hot weather denoted by the nickname of the city “Hotlanta”. But that name has taken an entirely different meaning to my family and I in the last decade.
We know that climate change is making heat waves longer and more severe, and we know that climate change is amplifying extreme weather events of all kinds and making air pollution worse. I have always been a part of the vulnerable medical population due to congenital heart disease and sensitive to air pollution. Although rare yellow and red air quality meant summer days spent indoors as a child, despite the hot weather often associated with Atlanta, that still only meant a day or two during school breaks in years past. According to the American Lung Association, metro Atlanta registered 5.5 unhealthy days of ground-level ozone pollution per year in 2024; in the year prior, that figure came in at just 1.8 days per year. Without the legal protections outlined in the Endangerment Finding and without critical limits on tailpipe pollution, what will those numbers look like in five years? I worry about what this means for the tens of thousands of children living in Atlanta, and for children across the country.
It is the EPA’s responsibility to protect us from greenhouse gases from tailpipes and other sources. Again, I urge EPA not to rescind the Endangerment Finding or limits on tailpipe pollution for the sake of all of our futures. Uphold the science that we already have agreed upon to be true and keep the Endangerment Finding and limits on motor vehicle pollution intact.
Thank you.