EPA – Here Are 55 Reasons To Listen Closely
At EPA's listening session regarding carbon pollution controls from existing power plants, Sr. Legislative Representative Sarah Saylor put herself in EPA’s shoes and did some real listening. It turns out the list of what may be lost and what must be protected by such a rule is not as short as we sometimes make it
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At the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s listening session regarding carbon pollution controls from existing power plants, I put myself in EPA’s shoes and did some real listening. It turns out the list of what may be lost and what must be protected by such a rule is not as short as we sometimes make it in the name of expediency.
Hundreds of people spoke in Washington, D.C., and thousands have spoken at the 10 other listening sessions the EPA is conducting across the country. Below are just 55 reasons*—one for every state and territory in our nation—for the EPA to take bold strides when it comes to limiting carbon pollution:
- Protect our children and future generations
- Protect the hungry and the homeless
- Be good global neighbors
- Save honeybees
- Protect plant and animal life
- Relieve those with asthma and other lung diseases
- Make the moral and ethical choice
- Pay our debt to coal miners and coal mining communities
- Save mountaintops
- Reduce coal-related illnesses
- Empower those who disproportionately suffer from direct impacts of pollution
- Provide justice for communities of color
- Provide justice for the economically and socially disadvantaged
- Help those without access to adequate healthcare
- Address the costs of inaction
- Reduce the cost of extreme weather, drought, wildfire and infestation
- Embolden states like California that have taken action
- Protect forests
- Help those who live wherever coal is burned
- Watch out for Charlie, and other brothers and sisters in the Arctic
- Give relief to Pittsburgh asthmatics
- Help rural communities
- Lookout for Lucy and Liddy [sic]
- Provide justice for Latinos and other minorities
- Spare those in the path of storms like el derecho
- Make amends with those who have little to do with creating the problem
- Provide for Katie and Brendan and their future children so they might enjoy hiking at Great Falls, VA, someday
- Relieve suffering for kids who breathe smog
- Spare Norfolk, VA, from flooding
- Spare those who cannot protect themselves from polluters/pollution
- Keep the Unitarian Church school from flooding
- Return the ice, skating and Jeep rides to the lake in Wisconsin
- Look out for Brooklyn, NY, and NJ
- Spare the 1,700 places in the U.S. at risk due to sea level rise
- Avoid the tragedy of the commons (the air)
- Learn to provide power [energy] without the human cost
- Eliminate the externalities from which polluters profit
- Empower the Environmental Protection Agency
- Protect those from whom we borrow the Earth
- Help a friend from Chesapeake with asthma
- Keep 7 million kids in the U.S. with asthma from getting sicker
- Embolden Mom’s Clean Air Force and protect the kids for whom they advocate
- Erase Washington, D.C.’s failing ozone score
- Reduce global food security threats
- Provide justice for those without a voice in this decision
- Save $1,100 per taxpayer on climate-related disasters
- Answer more than 3.2 million comments in favor of a carbon pollution standard
- Minimize the risks from severe weather events like microbursts
- Reduce the greatest threat ever to humanity
- Meet our obligation to future generations
- Recover lost cultures and species that may otherwise be lost
- Respond to the scientific imperative
- Employ renewable energy
- Provide justice for a 73-year-old woman from Virginia with asthma who has been choking on lies, greed and pollution from a power plant 2 miles from her home
- Prevent the early loss of loved ones
* In the order in which they were presented at the listening session held Thursday, Nov. 7 at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C.
From 2001 to 2019, Sarah was on Earthjustice's Policy & Legislation team, working on Capitol Hill at the intersection of agricultural policy and climate policy and promoting a food system that is more resilient and just.