THE EPA HAS DECIDED CLIMATE CHANGE IS NOT REAL. WHAT!

By Ruth A. Sheets

Yo!  Lee Zeldin,  Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator, wake up!  Your future also depends on the decisions you make now.  At this moment, you are not on a good track in the decision-making department.  Check this out and maybe you’ll decide to do better.

Let's face it, no matter what those like you, who are ignorant of a subject, put into positions you know nothing about think, science is real and so is global warming/climate change.  I do wonder why so many Trump/Republican appointees have decided lying about reality is a good thing; it isn't, it is just ignorance made manifest!  

I communicate with you as a concerned citizen to implore you to uphold your Agency's Endangerment Findings and maintain vital climate standards.  That's the intelligent thing to do, but it is not clear where in the current EPA leadership intelligence lies if it is present there at all.  What do you think?

The Endangerment Finding is an assessment of the challenges faced by the people and environment caused by human activity:  fossil fuel burning, power plant emissions, harmful chemicals, and more.  Revoking the Endangerment Finding would ignore overwhelming science and endanger public health. In addition, this set of proposals you are championing undoes the vehicle emissions standards. Transportation is the largest source of climate pollution and these standards are critical to limiting dangerous heat-trapping emissions.  Is there someone intelligent there to understand this?  I am not sure.  Either way, do you care!

From the beginning in the early 1970s, the EPA’s duty has been to base decisions on science and to protect the public from dangerous pollution, just as Nixon and his scientists expected.  What you are proposing now advances polluter interests, not the EPA’s mission.  Why would you permit this? 

Have you considered that this means the polluters are also lacking in  basic thinking skills (I guess greed does that to you). They will be physically impacted by the extra pollution, just like we, the  expendable peons, even if they/you can't see it.  Greenhouse and other gases are invisible, but they allow for heating of our world.  The visible pollution is also dangerous because it can cause cancer and other lovely medical conditions and you rich folks get those too.

I am hoping there is a spark of intelligence left at EPA that will cause you to uphold the Endangerment Finding and keep strong climate protections in place.  Stop listening to the demands of the folks who will want you all to take the blame when storms, floods, wildfires get worse and start killing even more people, not to mention the wildlife. 

Do the right thing for a change.  Get the word out that the rules will stay in place for now until you "study" the situation, then keep “studying” over and over until people in the white house forget.  Do you have the courage to do that or are you just a lacky whose intelligence was left behind when coming to work for an administration for whom intelligence is a liability? 

POLLUTION PERMISSION!

By Ruth A. Sheets

This is a note I sent to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in response to their intention to drop the pollution regulations on coal-burning power plants.  The impetus for this response was from “Moms Clean Air Force” (www.momscleanairforce.org ).

Dear EPA Director;

What is going on with you at EPA?  Why are we the people having to beg, I mean BEG you to do your job to protect our children and the rest of our population?  Where is your humanity?  As a teacher and human being concerned with children’s health, I’m writing to  strongly oppose EPA’s efforts to roll back the recent updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. Now, let's see, why would you even think of doing that?  Are you thinking it won't impact your family since you are rich, so who cares; it won’t get us!  Is there no moral code of value among Trump's appointees to our critical agencies?  Where did you leave your moral compass and why won't you go and pick it back up and use it?  Are you scared of Trump?

If you were truly a scientist worthy of the office you hold, you would know that no amount of mercury exposure is safe for a child’s brain, NONE! We must keep mercury and other dangerous pollutants from spewing out of coal-fired power plants and ending up in our air, water, soil, and food.  In fact, we need no coal-powered plants, despite what coal miners supposedly want, according to Donald Trump (but that’s probably not true).  We will all suffer for your ignorance and unwillingness to do the right thing!  Why would you choose to do that to yourselves and the rest of us too?

Over the last decade, mercury protections have had significant public health benefits.  You would know that if you cared one wit! Last year, the EPA under President Biden strengthened these safeguards even further to address gaps that were allowing coal plants to continue to emit dangerous quantities of hazardous air pollution, which has been illegal for some time, but, ah well, if the polluters were not caught, no problem, right?  Now you want to just let them go back and pollute to their heart's content.  Who does that, what kind of person would put kids at risk that way?  If you looked, you would see that the recently strengthened regulation improvements offer serious benefits:

- 70% reduction in the emissions limit for mercury from existing lignite-fired plants,

- the strengthening of protections from non-mercury toxics such as lead, arsenic, and chromium, 

- the reduction in emissions from other health-harming air pollutants, including fine particle pollution, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and carbon dioxide

- the requirement that coal plants continually monitor their emissions.  

(from the Mom’s Clean Air Force report)

These safeguards are critical for everyone, but particularly for the communities most impacted by pollution from coal plants, and I wonder who those vulnerable people are.  Oh yes, mostly Black and Indigenous people and other poor folks of all races who generally get no voice with rich folks like you all who just can't manage to care. Those communities  for example, rely on fishing as a primary food source, for cultural identity, and for local economics, and that fish is often contaminated with those pollutants.  This contamination impacts many vulnerable people, particularly children.

So, as you can see, regulating power plant pollution of all kinds  is critical for infants and children, whose developing brains can be permanently impacted by mercury exposure, leading to developmental delays, learning disabilities, behavioral problems, and birth defects.  Are you OK with that?  Is that what you are hoping will happen so there will be an impacted class of workers you and your rich buddies can exploit? That is EVIL!  Are you?

So, I say to you, do not roll back the recent updates to the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards.  Instead, expand the regulations to include other toxic waste that none of us should be breathing, eating, or drinking.  That is the right thing to do in case you didn't know.  There are real scientists out here who can help you understand this pollution danger, but I bet you will not consult them or do anything to stop this backsliding on pollution because money and executive threats are more important than the health of your fellow Americans and the climate crisis that stalks all of us.  Terribly sad!  R.Sheets

OPEN LETTER TO POLLUTERS AND THEIR EPA ENABLERS

by Ruth A. Sheets

Dear Men,

Throughout our history, companies, then corporations have destroyed, polluted, then left the mess they made for someone else to clean up, usually the American taxpayers who only as an aside benefited from whatever that company/corporation was up to.  Clear cut whole mountainsides, leaving the bare earth open to the elements, causing landslides, floods, and an ugly landscape.  Once you have seen the results, you can’t forget.

Mining entities dug into the ground for coal and minerals for profit, but often left the torn-up land and poorly maintained areas to do further damage after the original miners left:  floods, pollution from slag heaps, broken dams, and more. 

Sometimes the miners and loggers were paid well, but there was an enormous cost to future generations from their work because they were allowed to  destroy nearly unchecked with no provision for that future.

Plants of all sorts churned out the products we needed and were taught to need while our air became unbreathable and our water burned.  By 1970 most people had had enough.  They were able to force Richard Nixon to go along with anti-pollution legislation and the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).  What brought the economy down in the 1970s was not the new move toward real regulation.  It was our over dependence on oil from the Middle East and the limiting of that oil.  We worked through that problem by driving smaller cars that got better gas mileage.  Work hours were changed, many people tried to use less electricity, and people began working together to get through.  And, a lot of work began on Solar energy.  I can’t help but wonder what our planet would be like now if that effort had continued at the same or greater rate.  We’d be the world’s leader in all areas of renewable energy. 

Well, then came Ronald Reagan. Saint Ronnie was being pushed by you polluters to go back to more polluting.  He encouraged car makers to go back to even bigger, heavier automobiles than before and gave all kinds of tax incentives to buy trucks for work when a car would have done better.  He removed the solar panels from the roof of the white house, a perfect symbol of his approval of polluters.  “Morning in America” turned out to be our path back into the world of pollution, or at least as much as the EPA would allow.  That agency saved us a little from what could have been an even bigger and sooner disaster than we are now, and will be facing in the near future.

Finally, we have Donald Trump.  Mr. Trump is certainly not bright when it comes to business (bankrupted 6 times) or government (He had no clue what was going on with COVID19 and still doesn’t).  I believe Mr. Trump was advised to select ignorant people for all appointed positions in our government and did so with full compliance of Republicans and some Democrats in the Senate.  They agreed to approve former lobbyists for positions in agencies that oversee the corporations they previously served.  That includes you at the EPA.  The appointees have all stepped up to get rid of or lessen regulations in the areas they are supervising, for their old buddies, of course, and you polluters are thrilled!  More pollution, no problem.  Besides, you guys will not have to breathe or drink it.  That’s for Black people, other people of color, and poor people in whose neighborhoods you polluters do your work.  The intense ignorance of you all in charge at the EPA permits polluters to pretend you don’t know the earth is a single entity and that what happens in one place impacts the rest too. 

What does it say about you directors of regulating agencies that you are not bothered by the fact that it is poor folks and people of color who are most harmed by your pollution?  Does it mean a major hiring criterion for lobbyists in your corporation  is lack of empathy?  It is clearly the most important factor for positions in Trump’s administration.  No empathy, perfect Trump man!  Do you ever think about the oath you appointees swore to protect and defend the Constitution?  How much does an oath mean to someone without empathy?  What about religious conviction?  This administration plays to the evangelical right, who claim to be so holy.  How is harming the least able to defend themselves a holy act?

So, polluters and EPA enablers, here's an example of what you are agreeing to.  Every year, exposure to PM 2.5 causes tens of thousands of premature deaths in America. In 2017 alone, it was attributed to 85,000 deaths.  Are you OK with that or will you try to blame those deaths on something else as nearly all Republicans and conservatives do?  EPA has proposed to retain the outdated standard for particulate pollution, set nearly a decade ago, despite the fact that the agency’s updated policy assessment demonstrates that this standard is inadequate to protect public health.  Will the updated standard be put into place, not on Trump’s watch, despite consistent scientific evidence that particulate pollution is linked to hospital admissions, emergency room visits, as well as early death due to lung disease, heart attacks, strokes, asthma and cancer.  And having air pollution related heart and lung disease increases the  risk of death from COVID19.   

Oh! That word "scientific!"  It really does get in the way doesn’t it!  You guys don’t like “science” do you, that is unless it is making more money for you?  In this case, you won’t be paying for the hospitals and medical procedures, so those costs don’t impact your bottom line, so they aren’t your problem, right?

You polluters clearly believe none of the  pollution your corporations produce will affect you.  You won’t get the virus or if you do, it won’t be so bad because you haven’t been exposed to your own pollution too much, and of course, you are privileged white guys who have mostly had the best of everything, unlike those living under the pall of your air and water pollution.  Lucky you!

We the people are fed up with your smug superiority that is only a product of your race, money, and your threat that you’ll take away the “good jobs.”  First of all, a job that leads to black lung disease and other severe lung conditions is not a good job.  A job that causes lead poisoning in children is not a good job.  A job that creates automobiles that will pollute and dump more greenhouse gasses into an already overloaded atmosphere is not a good job.  And, a man who works to increase pollution in neighborhoods he will never see to protect corporations who care nothing for the people, negatively impacted by its industry is not doing a good job.