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Welcome back to Pittsburgh, and thank you for the opportunity to share these thoughts. 

By way of background, I have a PhD in Engineering, and I taught at Carnegie Mellon University. I'm a 

Registered Professional Engineer in Pennsylvania, and I've held management positions both in 

government (local and Federal) and in the business world (in large corporations and as a small business 

owner). 

I was a "road warrior" for IBM for several years, and I appreciate the task that you're performing here. 

So, to make it easy for you, you can tally !!!Y remarks under the category "The proposal doesn't go 

nearly far enough." 

I can speak to its other shortcomings, but I'll focus on tracking. As it stands, the EPA's proposal simply 

encourages substituting natural gas for of coal for electric generation. Yet mounting scientific evidence 

shows that the natural gas fuel cycle will be as bad or worse for the climate. 

When you leave Pittsburgh this week, you'll have gathered your quota of public comments, and you'll 

have tested the political winds. But I hope you'll take something else back with you to share with 

Administrator McCarthy and with President Obama. And that's courage. Because this is a timid 

proposal. At best, it begins to acknowledge that "something" needs to be done. But it doesn't really 

challenge our business sector, and it doesn't offer much hope for escaping the climate catastrophe. 

Now, Pittsburgh knows something about courage. People here stood up to the armed thugs of Henry 

Clay Frick. Ordinary people here have contended with David Roderick, with Don Blankenship and with 

Aubrey McClendon. We don't start off by knuckling under to big money or high-powered politics. 

For four years now, I've been a member of Marcellus Protest, a grassroots group that worked to pass 

the first municipal ban on tracking (first in the world as far as we know) in 2010. We have no staff, no 

annual budget, and no reason to mince words. Some of our members deliver drinking water to 

neighbors whose water supplies have been destroyed; some raise money for air scrubbers, for 

neighbors who can't breathe in their own homes; some hold the hands of neighbors, as they're dying 

from tracking-related cancers. 

Marcellus Protest speaks at community meetings, we educate our local officials, we carry petitions doorto-door, we pass the hat. And some of us have been run off the roads by hostile gas field workers. 

We do all this, not for pay, not for institutional power-jockeying, but because our families, our 

communities, our society, and everything we love is threatened with extinction. We're not dealing in 

political calculations about what's possible, what's likely to pass, or who has the votes. We're standing 

up and inviting our fellow citizens to do what's necessary to have a chance of surviving the climate crisis. 

EPA's announcement of this "Clean Power Plan" has presented our nation a terrible choice, and it's a 

false choice: between supporting a proposal which does a little bit to address the crisis (and a little bit 

to make it worse), versus letting this proposal be defeated by those who want to do nothing about 
climate destruction. So the "Big Greens" have to line up behind this proposal, and there's no one but us 

in the grassroots to advocate for what's really needed. 

Because what we need is a plan that begins to leave carbon in the ground, not just putting one fossil fuel 

in place of another. We need a plan that tackles extraction, not one that tinkers with domestic 

consumption while sponsoring exports to be burned somewhere else. We need a plan that talks plainly 

to the American people about what's at stake here, not these bland bedtime stories about "carbon 

pollution"- as if it were just one more high-handed government intrusion into our consumer-driven 

economy. 

We need a plan that begins to turn that fossil-fuel economy around, not one that encourages 

investment in more pipelines, more export terminals, more gas-fired generators, and more and more 

and more reasons for hearing that "we can't afford" to do what we'll have to do in order to make any 

real progress in the future. 

So take that message back with you. If Washington will exert some leadership, will demonstrate that 

our government "gets it," then the grassroots will join with you in fighting for your proposals. But if 

you're convinced that this plan is the best that we can expect from inside the Beltway, then do this: Go 

into the office, drop your government ID badge on your manager's desk, and come on back to Pittsburgh 

to join us. 

Thank you for listening.