Testimony by leffrey Hyman 

301-300-8864 

Dr.lames Hansen predicts that if we burn all fossil fuels, we could cause our planet to become not only 

ice-free, but also human-free. I imagine that the point of no return that guarantees our near term 

extinction must be somewhere less than all of the fossil fuels. I hope to G-d we haven't crossed that 

point already. 

Bill McKibben wrote about how, if we want to avoid dangerous limits of global warming, we need to 

keep at least four fifths of reserves of fossil fuel carbon in the ground forever. At current rates, we are 

set to blow past this limit within 14 or 15 years 

I'm scared. I'm seeing the end of humanity. Unmitigated global warming means the total annihilation of 

everything of value in this universe. 

President Obama has said that global warming is one of most important issues of this this generation, 

except for every other thing that comes up that seems to knock global warming down a line on the list 

of most important presidential priorities. President Obama is wrong. Global warming is the single most 

important issue in the whole history of life on Earth. 

Dr. Hansen has said that the upper limit for our safety of co2 in the atmosphere is 350 ppm. If we could 

stay below 400 ppm, we might still be able to get back to below 350 by means of things like 

reforestation. But if we go much greater than 400 ppm, 350 ppm will no longer be practically possible. 

We are at 400 ppm now. We need to act with urgency. 

We have already caused a certain amount of damage to the planet that we will not be able to fix, but 

only grieve and mourn. There is further warming in the pipeline that we will not be able to prevent. But, 

there is potentially even greater damages that hopefully we can still prevent, if we act. 

Humans have accomplished many great things across the history of our civilization. I think it would be 

nice of us if we would choose to continue to survive on Earth so that we may be able to remember the 

achievements of the past as well as continue to do more great things in the future. If we survive global 

warming in the short term, there are longer term risks to our survival on Earth from things like the 

asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs and our sun eventually dying. I believe we could work over 

thousands of years to survive those threats by colonizing Mars and even other planets around other 

stars, but we will need a stable home base on Earth to work from. 

I think that people who go into public service for a career are interested more in serving the public good 

more than personal enrichment, serving people who you have never met and never will meet. I want 

you to consider that the potential people of future generations, who you will also never meet, 

outnumber and outweigh the number of people alive today. 
I don't have children of my own, but I have a nephew and four nieces, and 1'm afraid for them. As 

droughts increase and sea levels rise I worry if they will always be secure in their ability to obtain food 

wonder if they may be among the last humans to survive on earth before our extinction. 

This Clean Power Plan is a baby step. Go ahead and take your baby step, but don't imagine it to be more 

than what it is. We need more. We need total war effort to mitigate global warming, and this is not 

that. We need a plan that causes global carbon emissions from all sources to be reduced by more than 

half within a decade. We need a high and rapidly rising global price on carbon. Work on that. 

As the fossil carbon energy industry is squeezed and ended, we can expect carbon-free energy 

alternatives (like wind and solar power and nuclear power) to grow and expand and make gains in 

efficiencies, but we can't rely on future miracle technology that hasn't been invented yet to solve all our 

problems if major world governments refuse to treat global warming with all warranted gravity. 

Take your baby step and go and do more.