By: Sasha Tenenbaum, Senior Manager for Media and Public Engagement, Moms Clean Air Force
Date: June 13, 2023
About: Environmental Protection Agency Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2023-0072
To: Environmental Protection Agency
Thank you for inviting me to speak at EPA’s public hearing on the agency’s new carbon pollution standards. I’m delighted to have this opportunity to testify. My name is Sasha Tenenbaum, and I am the Senior Manager for Media and Public Engagement at Moms Clean Air Force. I live in Washington, DC, with my family.
Moms Clean Air Force is a national organization of over a million and a half mothers, fathers, and caregivers—all united to protect our children’s health and well-being by making sure that our rules and laws governing clean air, toxic chemicals, and the climate are as strong as they can be.
I strongly support EPA’s proposal to limit carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants, which are responsible for almost one-quarter of the climate pollution generated by the US.
And I am calling on EPA to finalize the strongest possible standards as quickly as possible to help protect our families from harmful air pollution that contributes to climate change and impacts health. At the same time, EPA must strengthen community input and safeguards in the final version of this rule.
This is not my first time asking the agency to cut carbon pollution. It was almost nine years ago—on July 29, 2014—that I first testified before the agency in favor of cutting carbon pollution from the power sector.
A lot has changed in nine years.
There is much more carbon in the atmosphere. The relentless release of carbon from smokestacks has had real-life consequences—all of which remind us what is at stake if we don’t limit our pollution.
On a personal level, my family has since added a second child to our brood. We lost a beloved grandmother who overcame being displaced by Superstorm Sandy at the age of 98, an example of resilience and recovery in the face of climate calamity.
With two children now, I am doubly invested in the future—mine, theirs, and ours.
But I must say, it’s getting hard out there for a mom. Where I live, the people and places I love are all impacted. No one is safe—because climate impacts everyone—and everything.
One week ago, I got a lungful of climate change. I could feel, breathe, and taste the bad air caused by the raging Canadian wildfires—all 400 of them—with 100 burning out of control at the time of writing this testimony.
Family life changed abruptly. School recess: cancelled. Bike-to-school day: cancelled. Swim lesson: cancelled. Trash collection: cancelled. Parking enforcement: cancelled. (OK, we’ll take that one!)
But in all seriousness, our family strapped on masks for three days in a row as we stepped outside, praying that this would be the last air quality emergency, but fearing that it would surely happen again.
Yet we know better. We have parents in Oregon who regularly pack bags in the event that forest fires chase them out of their home. They can spend days on high alert.
This is our collective new normal. But it doesn’t mean we can or should be resigned to it. On the contrary. We can summon the courage to act as if our home is on fire. Because it is. Just this past week, top scientists ran a health check on the Earth. To be exact, 40 international scientists assessed the planet’s capacity to provide a safe future (based on eight Earth system boundaries: climate, air pollution, agricultural nitrogen and phosphorus surpluses, groundwater supply, surface water, natural ecosystem area, and the functional integrity of human-modified ecosystems) and published their results in the journal Nature. It wasn’t pretty. The planet’s health—on which civilization depends—is in peril, and thus, so are we.
It’s precisely why we need our federal agencies to hear our calls to take bold measures and protect our human health. We can’t let another nine years go by—not in this decisive decade in which every decision counts, every fraction of a degree counts, and every deadline counts.
In summary, I support EPA’s proposal to limit carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants and ask that EPA finalize these standards as quickly as possible. Thank you for hearing my testimony.