By: Sam Schmitz, Project Manager, DC Events and Policy, 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
Thank you for the opportunity to testify. My name is Samantha Schmitz, and I am a Project Manager for Moms Clean Air Force, currently living in Washington, DC. I strongly oppose the proposed repeal of the Carbon Rule which is crucial to protecting public health and the environment.
We know that power plants are responsible for roughly a quarter of current climate-warming emissions with over 60% of power generation coming from burning fossil fuels. There is scientific consensus that climate change is being driven by human use of fossil fuels, and we’re seeing the grave impacts of this crisis all around us already.
At the forefront of my mind is the wildfire smoke that created air quality warnings across the Midwest where I grew up a few weeks ago. At that same time, I was visiting San Diego and witnessed a wildfire firsthand for the first time. It was shocking and terrifying to see but unfortunately becoming all the more common. I had never felt the haze of wildfire smoke until two years ago when Canadian smoke blanketed the East Coast. Climate change caused by our emissions, including those from power plants, are a huge contributor to wildfires worsening in intensity and becoming more common. The climate crisis is contributing to worsened air pollution in many ways, including intensifying wildfires; changing weather patterns that lengthen and intensify pollen seasons; more frequent heat waves; and worsened smog, a dangerous form of air pollution that forms more easily on hot days. These factors are a disaster for people with asthma.
I have struggled with severe asthma throughout my entire life and know that I’m not alone as 25 million other people in the U.S. have asthma as well. I’ve had asthma attacks that have ended in hospitalizations that have greatly affected not just me but my entire family. I still remember how upset my parents were when I went to the emergency room and even just at regular doctor’s visits as they watched their small child gasp for air and struggle to breathe on an ongoing basis. And unfortunately, I fear that my asthma will get worse if we don’t combat climate change and cut our emissions now.
Unfortunately, climate change is also an issue of generational injustice. Today’s children will live through at least 3 times as many climate disasters as their grandparents. And as a young person, I’m already feeling these generational impacts and the mental health implications that dirty air and climate change cause, but I can only imagine what my kids and future generations might experience.
With fossil fuel power plants being responsible for such a large share of our climate-warming pollution, it is essential that we take action to curb their emissions so we can avoid the most dire climate consequences.
I’m calling on EPA to live out its commitment to protecting human health and the environment. I strongly oppose the rollback of this crucial rule. Thank you for your time.