My name is Rev. Darriel Harris. I speak to you today as an ordained Christian 

minister, and on behalf of the Baltimore Food and Faith Project, an initiative run out 

of Johns Hopkins University's Center for a Livable Future. Our mission is to promote 

a just, healthy and trustworthy food system with Baltimore area faith communities. 

Over the past several years we've partnered with over 70 congregations and 

interfaced with members from over 500 Baltimore area congregations across 

different faiths and denominations. 

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to testify in support of the new carbon 

pollution standards for existing power plants. 

Our current trajectory of pollutants and climate change not only threatens the 

physical wellbeing of our constituents, and citizens and visitors all across America, 

in the form of asthma and other respiratory dangers, but it also poses a significant 

threat to our food system. 

Our weather patterns are becoming increasingly severe. Anecdotally, in the 

beautiful state of Maryland, my birth state and current residence, tornado watches 

and warnings have grown from an uncharacteristic threat to a familiar alarm. 

Across America, severe weather increasingly damages crops, farming machinery, 

and animal housings. Rising temperatures in our oceans, rivers and bays are 

negatively impacting the environment of our fish and other seafood. It is now 

undeniable that carbon pollutants significantly contribute to the danger in which we 

find ourselves. And it is not just a danger to breathe, but a danger to our most basic 

necessity and common leisurely activity; a danger to eat. 

For many in Baltimore City eating is not a new challenge. Over twenty percent of 

Baltimore City residents live in food deserts - an area where healthy food and fresh 

produce is simply not accessible. Many more suffer from the reality that healthy 

food is not affordable. To help combat this problem, religious communities across 

faiths and denominations, have initiated congregational gardens to help supplement 

the growing food gap in Baltimore area communities. Additionally, civic groups and 

coalitions have joined forces to glean from area farms, setup mobile food markets, 

and provide education to avail fresh produce to populations where fresh produce is 

not readily available or not affordable. For those who wish to consume food from 

just, trustworthy, and environmentally friendly sources, urban and regional food has 

become increasingly available at farmers markets, farm to table restaurants, and 

Community Supported Agriculture (or CSA) drops. During this current growing 

season, many of these valuable, and frankly life altering efforts, were delayed and 

hindered by polar vortexes at the start of the growing season. The unpredictability 

of our weather, which impacts our agriculture and the way we eat, is a growing 

concern that is felt foremost by those who already find eating a challenge. 

The new carbon pollution standards for existing power plants put forth by the EPA 

is a reasonable step to curb a portion of the pollutants that drive climate change. As 

I close, I am reminded of St. Francis of Assissi's understanding of neighbor. St. 
Francis took seriously the Lord's mandate to love his neighbor as his self. St. Francis 

was able to love the least of those in his era - lepors, poppers. But he also 

understood that he had a kinship with all of things on the Earth, after all he too came 

from and would eventually return to the soil. So Francis began to understand his 

neighbor to be not only other people who equally relied on the Earth's outputs for 

life, but Earth herself. Consequently, he began to honor, respect, and become a 

better steward of neighbor Earth that sustained his life. It is in the tradition of St. 

Francis, the convictions of my Christian ministry, and the goals of the Baltimore 

Food and Faith Project and its' affiliates, that I thank you for the new standards of 

existing power plants, and implore you to enforce these standards and develop 

additional ways to curb carbon pollution in America. 

Thank you.