Yesterday I testified at the Pittsburgh EPA hearing on the Clean Power Plan. Here is my testimony. Testimony EPA Proposed Rule “Carbon Pollution Emission Guidelines for Existing Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units,” Docket Number EPA-HQ-OAR-2013-0602 Nicholas Goodfellow, University of Pittsburgh student August 1, 2014 Good morning, my name is Nicholas Goodfellow, I’m a student at the University of Pittsburgh here in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a board member of the student environmental group Free the Planet and manager for a musician in the entertainment industry. Thank you for this opportunity to speak in front of you today on this plan which proposes the most significant action to address global warming which we now know to life and civilization as we know it. The proposal you’ve set forward is long-awaited and I greet it with as warm a welcome as one might expect from a mother in labor whose spouse finally arrives in the delivery room almost too late. It’s great that you were able to make it, but we could have used you here a little earlier. As of June 2014, for the first time the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide has broken through the 400 Parts Per Million mark. The goal of achieving 350 Parts Per Million, the upper safety limit for atmospheric CO2, feels further and further away. Studies by NASA and the University of Washington looking at the ice sheets of western Antarctica both conclude that the collapse of the Western Antarctica ice sheet is already under way and is unstoppable. The glaciers’ retreat is being driven by climate change and could eventually cause up to 13 feet of sea-level rise at a much faster rate than scientists had anticipated. As a student I’m constantly thinking about my future. I’ll be graduating next spring so I often get the question: “What do you want to do after you graduate?” Of course I have absolutely no idea what I want to do after I graduate and even if I did know what I wanted to do, I would probably have a hard time finding a job. Regardless, when I think of my future and what it will be like when I’m in my 30s or 40s or, dare I say, my fifties — my first thought is about what the world will be like then. Because of climate change Pennsylvania is predicted to have a climate similar to Georgia’s. Parts of my hometown, Washington, DC, are likely to be permanently submerged by rising seas and my family in California may have to abandon their homes because there is no more water. This latter scenario is already taking shape in California. The U.S. Drought Monitor reported yesterday that more than half of the state is now experiencing “exceptional” drought which is only expected to continue. My future is one where I am forced to consider that I will likely face challenges accessing food or water. Climate change poses a threat to food security, national security, water availability… climate change really is a threat to everything we know and my hopes and dreams for a happy, healthy, stable future. These steps you’ve proposed are great — thank you for taking them — but I urge you to keep pushing forward. It may not seem like you have the people behind you at some times, but you do. Public polling has found that: —64% of Americans believe the government should limit greenhouse gas emissions from existing power plants to address climate change and improve public health This is an especially relevant figure for Pittsburgh and the Appalachia region because with our high concentration of coal-fired power plants, we are expected to see the largest decrease in the fine particulate matter that causes asthma, cancer, lung damage, and premature death. At the protests yesterday I noticed that while we might see each other as different, at the end of the day all of us want the same thing. Good, stable jobs and policies that ensure a bright future for our children. Those are the signs that we all were carrying, regardless of which side of the protest we were standing on. The people who we should be angry at are the politicians and industry executives who use their money and power to misinform, deceive, and profit from all of our losses while at the same time pitting us losers, the general public, against one another. Instead of focusing on realistic solutions to the challenges facing communities dependent on coal production, leaders such as West Virginia Governor Earl Ray Tomblin and Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett are playing political games. Both claim to support coal workers and shift the blame from themselves to easy targets like President Obama, when it’s the residents and constituents of their states which are still losing jobs. The fact is, we know how important you are. You have powered America through the good times and the bad and we wouldn’t be the great nation that we are today if it werent for the hard work, sacrifice, and the lives that were lost on the job. What nobody is saying is that we want you to stop powering the nation. You obviously take great pride in your service to the nation, but what would it be like to power the nation with healthy jobs in the renewable energy industry? Thank you again for the opportunity to testify in support of the Clean Power Plan.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 17:24:08 +0000
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