### Testimony of James B. Dougherty, Director

Sierra Club

At the

EPA Carbon Pollution Hearing Thursday, May 241h 

### 2012

Good afternoon. My name is JimDougherty and I am a member ofthe Board of Directors ofthe Sierra Club. Onbehalfofthe Sierra Club and its 1.3 millionmembers and supporters, I'm here to express strong support for the Environmental Protection Agency's first-ever carbonpollution standards for powerplants.

The science before us is conclusive: Climate change is real, it is happening, and it presents enormous threats to ourway oflife and societal well-being. A warmer world will mean more extreme weather, damage viawildfires to private property and public lands, water shortages and reduced crop yields, an increase inpestpopulations and a higher prevalence ofinsect-spread diseases, and intensified precipitation events such as hurricanes, storm surges and flooding. Additionally, doctors and nurses tell us that as temperature rise, so will the instances of smog-induced asthma and respiratory illness. In areas like my home here in Washington, DC, where a disproportionately high number ofchildren suffer from asthma, a warmer planet means reduced public health, more lives lost and an increased burden onour already strappedhealth service programs. Itwill also hurt oureconomy by costing us billions ofdollars in damages.

As the U.S. Supreme Court recognized inthe case ofMassachusetts v. EPA, greenhouse gases are pollutants that threaten public and the environment. Butit is one thing to recognize a problem, and another to address it. Ithas now been five years since the decision inMass v. EPA, making it high time that EPA move forward, as it is now doing, to reduce carbonpollution and to hold industrial polluters accountable for the carbon pollution they spew into our air. Letthis be the end ofthe era in which big polluters are given a free pass to poison ourcommunities. And let it represent a new beginning for American innovation and cleanenergy production.

As EPA is well aware, the United States emits more carbon pollution per capita than any developed country. This must change. The automotive and truck fuel economy standards proposed bythe Obama Administration represent an important first step toward
a cleanenergy future. A vital second step is the regulations we consider today. These regulations must be promulgated promptly.Let me close on a personal note. I worked for EPA in the 1970s, the I980, and the I990s. I had first-hand involvement in the Agency's efforts to implementthe new pollutioncontrol regimes that were createdby Congress in the realms ofairpollution, water pollution, hazardous waste management, and the like. Not once in the past 40 years has EPA set forth a comprehensiveregulatory package that was subsequentlyjudgedby the public to have been too rigorous ortoo expensive. Though industry claimed, at every turn, that the proposed regulations would be unaffordable, this consistently proved to be not true.

Do not be fooled by alarmist calls from a handful ofbackward-thinking utility companies who claimthat regulating carbon emissions will place a drag onour economy. The opposite is true. As we learned every time inthe past, newregulatory regimes benefitted public health, improved the quality ofthe environment, and positioned our nation as an in

Please do not pull yourpunches on what subsequently prove to be the most important regulatory initiative in the Agency's storied history.