Help Reduce Industrial Carbon Pollution

On Tuesday, June 19th, and hearing will be held in the Philadelphia City Council Chambers from 5-8 pm, regarding a proposed EPA rule that, if allowed to be implemented, could save jobs, lives, and avoid painful, longterm debilitating breathing issues for millions of people in our state and across the nation.

This rule would do one simple thing. It would establish a standard for new (only plants built after the rule goes into effect - "fair play") power plants for their industrial carbon emissions. Many of the other pollutants emitted by power plants have long been regulated but carbon pollution has not.

In Delaware and Montgomery Counties over 300,000 people are at higher risk of developing asthma for a variety of environmental reasons. 

Fossil-fuel burning power plants currently emit more than two billion tons of carbon pollution and other toxic pollutants into the air each year. This pollution fuels global warming and increases the number of unhealthy air days, resulting in more respiratory ailments, heart attacks, heat-related deaths, and other harmful health effects. 

Power plants are the largest source of global warming pollution in the country, and there are currently no limits on the amount of greenhouse gases they can emit.

As a member of the clergy, someone at risk for asthma, someone with a wife and firends who suffer with asthma, and someone who, along with you, will face the need to adapt to increasing climate change, I urge you to:

-- Take part in the hearing in the Philadelphia City Council Chamers from 5 to 8 next Tuesday

-- got to http://bit.ly/epa_carbonrule and send a comment directly to Lisa Jackson at the EPA 

Your voice is needed now to support the proposed protections and to counter big polluters who are spending millions to get Congress to block the EPA's action. 

Thanks, Rev. Douglas B. Hunt
Pennsylvania Interfaith Power and Light