Allison Donnelly 

Student, Duke University 

allison. don nelly@duke.ed u 

Comment on the Carbon Pollution Standard 

Washington, DC 

May 24,2012 

Good evening. My name is Allison Donnelly; I am a rising junior at Duke University, but I am 

originally from Appleton, Wisconsin. The carbon pollution standard is important for all of 

us- which is why you've heard today from public health professionals, businesses, 

environmental organizations, economists, faith groups, mothers, and concerned citizens in 

support of the rule. I'm here representing a voice and an age group that isn't often included 

in these hearings: college students. 

Like every other American, we have a stake in this, a responsibility to be informed, and the 

right to speak up. We understand the health consequences of both pollution and climate 

change. We understand from basic economics concepts like externalities and how damages 

from pollution can end up costing us far more than what we actually pay. We also 

understand the messaging coming from the other side: complying with the rule will cost 

the electric power sector more money to build and operate, and therefore lose jobs and 

hurt the economy. But this is far outweighed by the positive economic impacts- a factor 

which has been understated, and affects us greatly. 

The jobs rhetoric applies just as much to college students as to the rest of the country, and 

potentially even more. When my friends in the class of 2012 graduate- or when I graduate 

in 2014- we enter the work force in full for the first time, and every single one of us is 

worried about finding work. The unemployment rate for workers under age 25 is 16.4%-

twice as high as the national average. Also notably, the underemployment rate for recent 

college graduates was 19.1 o/o over the last year, according to a recent report by the 

nonpartisan Economic Policy Institute. 

We students have ideas and the know-how to put them to good use, and we as members of 

an overeducated and underem played workforce will therefore tend to gravitate towards 

areas where we see progress and growth -areas where investments have sparked 

innovation. 
Allison Donnelly 

Student, Duke University 

allison.donnellv@duke.edu 

Comment on the Carbon Pollution Standard 

Washington, DC 

May 24, 2012 

The carbon pollution standard will do just this- spark innovation. It will create highpaying jobs for an educated workforce to develop and implement new technologies to 

provide clean, reliable power. A March 2012 report by the Economic Policy Institute stated 

that investments towards cleaning up and modernizing power plants would create many 

more jobs than it will displace. For example, the report analyzed the EPA's finalized mercury 

and air taxies standard and estimated that the rule would create 117,000 new jobs. 

Investments in clean technologies for power plants would further spur one of the fastest 

growing industries worldwide, the clean energy sector. In the last seven years, investments 

in US clean energy have increased 600 percent, and the industry already employs 2.7 

million Americans, according to reports by the Pew Charitable Trusts and the Brookings 

Institute, respectively. 

This generation of current students is not bound to a view that traditional coal is how 

we've always done things, and that's how we're going to continue. In our lifetimes, we've 

seen massive strides with cleaner technologies, and we see no need to hold on to outdated 

technology simply because alternatives represent a change to the status quo. We will be the 

ones in a few years taking those massive strides in innovation ourselves. Therefore we call 

on the EPA to enact the first-ever carbon pollution standard for new power plants, to 

reduce pollutants that should not be in our air in the first place, and to spark innovation in 

new cleaner technologies that will create jobs. We, the future American workforce, are 

counting on it. 

Thank you.