EPA Hearing on Proposed Carbon Pollution Standard for Future Power Plants 

May 24,2012 

Testimony submitted by Kathleen Mogelgaard 

Telephone 202-487-9084: Email: 

Good afternoon, and thank you for providing this opportunity for public input on the EPA's proposed 

carbon pollution standards for future power plants. My name is Kathleen Mogelgaard, and I am a resident 

of Washington, DC. I have a longstanding interest in environmental policy, and I work as an independent 

consultant on science and policy issues. 

For the past two years, I have taught a course on climate change and energy policy to undergraduates at 

the University of Maryland. In that process, my students read technical reports on climate change science 

and climate change impacts, learned about prospects for energy efficiency and renewable energy 

development, and spoke with guest lecturers from the federal government about the challenges and 

opportunities in the federal system for advancing a clean energy future and mitigating climate change. 

My students teamed the basic science: that carbon pollution is contributing to global average temperature 

increase. They learned that the United States has contributed the most of any country to the carbon 

pollution that is causing this temperature increase. And they learned that in the United States, electricity 

generation is the biggest source of carbon pollution. 

My students also read the US Global Change Research Program's recent report about the impacts that 

climate change is having in the United States: severe weather, sea level rise and storm surge, more 

agricultural pests, and health risks associated with extreme heat and declining air quality. Students wrote 

about how these changes are already affecting their lives and the lives of their families. In class, when we 

discussed projected gro\\th in greenhouse gases and carbon pollution, they voiced their fears about what 

the future might look like for them if these trends don't change. 

We talked about how to respond to these challenges, analyzing possibilities for reducing carbon pollution 

at individuaL state, national, and international levels. Students quickly realized how critical federal 

government action is. They recognized that individual and state action can only get us so far, and how 

international progress on climate change has been stymied by a lack of national action. 

Not surprisingly, many of my students are frustrated at the slow pace offederal action. After studying the 

climate science and impacts- and especially after viewing a film in which they watched an old man on 

the Pacific Island of Kiribati, a country with almost no carbon pollution, dragging boulders by hand to 

protect his familv's home from sea level rise and storm surge- after seeing that image and others like it, 

many students are somewhat bewildered that the US government has yet to impose any limits carbon 

pollution from power plants. 

It is for their sake and my own that I want to voice my support for the currently proposed rule that would 

limit carbon pollution from future power plants. Such limits represent an important step in the direction 

our country needs to head- toward a future in which we continue to innovate and prosper with cleaner 

energy sources that don't threaten our health, that don't wreck our agricultural systems and strain our 

water supplies, and that don't inundate our coastlines and the coastlines of others around the world who 

have not contributed to this problem. The proposed carbon pollution standards for future power plants do 

signal that we are serious about addressing our climate change and energy challenges, that we are ready to 

lead, and that we do, indeed, care about the future we are leaving to our young people. 

Thank you for this opportunity to share my views.