Support EPA’s Efforts to Reduce Carbon Emissions

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is proposing to use the Clean Air Act to require the heaviest polluters to reduce their emissions of carbon dioxide.  The polluters that would be affected are new (or modified) huge factories and coal-fired power plants.  Requiring them to control their own pollution is fair and highly beneficial to health:  It will help protect us from the worst consequences of global warming, while reducing the toxic pollutants from coal combustion that damage our hearts, lungs, and brains.

For a new analysis of coal’s grave health effects and the need for regulation, read PSR’s new report: Coal’s Assault on Human Health. 

Here is a simple and effective action you can take to reduce greenhouse gases.  All you need to do is to add your name to the brief letter that follows, paste it into the EPA website for public comments, and press “submit.”  Feel free, of course, to edit the letter to better express your personal concerns.  Here’s the letter:

Attention Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR 2009-0517

Dear EPA Administrator Jackson,

A relatively small number of factories and coal-burning power plants emit more than half of the carbon dioxide discharged into the atmosphere by the United States. The most effective way to cut global warming pollution is to require those big polluters to make significant reductions in their dangerous emissions.

Carbon dioxide emissions from coal combustion constitute a major source of global warming gases.  Controlling those emissions is absolutely essential if we are to minimize the worst consequences of global warming:  heat waves, climate instability, storms, extreme weather, flooding, and drought. These changes in climate will result in grave threats to human health:  increased heat stroke and respiratory diseases; increased water-borne and vector-borne diseases; decreased food production; shortages of potable water; population displacement, and growing conflict and war.

As a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility, I support the EPA in reducing global warming emissions and regulating first those polluters who are responsible for the largest share of the problem.  This approach will allow swift reductions in emissions of carbon dioxide and will also contribute to reducing emissions of toxic pollutants that damage the respiratory, cardiovascular and nervous systems.

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