Today the Environmental Protection Agency held a “listening session” in San Francisco, one of 11 cities hosting such public hearings across the country to “solicit ideas and input from the public and stakeholders about the best Clean Air Act approaches to reducing carbon pollution from existing power plants.” More than 100 people were there bright and early on a Tuesday morning, and more arrived during the day, to add their voice to the conversation.
Each speaker — everyone from staff and volunteers of environmental and public health organizations to members of labor unions to industry representatives to unaffiliated but concerned citizens — had three minutes to tell the EPA what they thought. Some of the comments were interesting, some provocative, some (to be totally honest) a little repetitive. And some of the speakers were downright powerful and inspiring.
Below is the testimony from a mom, Carolyn Clara, who brought her young son Oliver to the hearing with her, and who dedicated her comments to him:
I’m here with my son and because of him. He expects me, expects all of us, to take care of him and protect him.
My son loves picking the ripe juicy plums and crunchy apples from the trees near our house. He keeps track of the details. He tells me, “Mama, in June we eat plums, in September, apples.” He wants to know where the plums are now. I tell him they will be back in June. He believes me, assured that fruits, like seasons, go in cycles. That the trees and plants we depend on, the earth itself, is secure, will take care of us. That loss is manageable, because it is part of a sustainable cycle.
I pray that I am not lying to him. I know that here, we are suspension, still thinking, most likely, that next year the plums will ripen again in June. But what is the difference between me and a mother in Sudan, whose plum tree is part of the 2% loss of productivity expected each decade? What is the difference between me and a mother in Bangledesh, driven from her farm by floods? Or a mother in New Orleans, Queens, Oklahoma, or the Sierras, whose trees have been destroyed by “extreme weather” whose cause we all know. But this is also about this very child here: What is the difference between now, and 10 years, in 20 years, in 30 years from now, will I be able to assure this child that the plums will come back?
I feel the season’s heat pressing harder now, and feel the same dull fear I felt when my son had a fever as a baby. The same dull fear as all mothers. I hear the oceans lapping at our edges, smell all of us bristling more and more with the tension of droughts, wildfires, crop failures, storms.
And so I can’t just reassure him and sit idly under the plum tree, hoping that somehow it will turn out ok. Hoping that despite a near consensus among scientists, somehow, we don’t REALLY have to act, that somehow, we won’t leave our children a world more tumultuous, barren, and suffering, than any we have endured.
We all, in our hearts, and in reading the facts, know what is needed: to reprioritize and reduce, right now. But how much will we stand up to the status quo, the representatives of industry, the protection of profits? How much will we stand up to our own feeling of powerlessness, our enormous inertia that is leading us steadily towards destruction. Will we fight harder, more urgently, than we thought possible, to know that we are not lying to our children when we tell them that it will be ok?
I urge you, as representatives of the government, to step up, to go out on a limb, to do what is right. To set tough limits on existing as well as new factories. To stop protecting the profits of polluters. To refuse dangerous stop-gap solutions like fracking and nuclear and fight for real structural changes. To move quickly towards law that stops ongoing carbon pollution and acts boldly to protect our kids, my kid. I can only imagine what you are up against, what it would take to really do this. But I ask you to consider what we will eventually have to tell our children: the truth about the reality of our world, and our role in it. We don’t have time to wait.
Want to add your unique story to this important public record? You have until November 30th to contact the EPA through their Contact Us page or at [email protected].
