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;, e Reduce Power Plant Carbon

Good morning. IViy name is Seth Heald. I've lived in Virginia for 32 years. I'm a recently retired lawyer and a current graduate student in the masters degree program on energy policy and climate change at Johns Hopkins University.

I thank the EPA for issuing the proposed carbon standards, and for holding this hearing today to allow the public to comment on them. Efforts to reduce power-plant carbon emissions are long overdue. President Lyndon Johnson was briefed on global warming in the 1960s. As the science historian Spencer Weart described in his excellent, highly readable 2003 book The Discovery of Global Warming, we've known since the 19 th century about the ability of atmospheric carbon-dioxide emissions from fossil-fuel burning to raise Earth's temperature. In the 1980s and 1990s the science became even clearer, as did the evidence that atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased enormously and our planet is, as a result, indeed warming. We've known for some time what we need to do. But our nation and much of the rest of the world have dithered.

So it's heartening that the EPA has now taken a serious step towards reducing carbon emissions from a leading source—electric power plants. In truth, the proposed rule is insufficient. We need stronger emission reductions, and we need them more quickly. But I won't dwell on that here. The proposed standards, and the great flexibility they give to each state to implement them, are an important first step in our effort to decarbonize the electric grid.

We know we can do this. In fact many states, not waiting for the EPA, have already taken significant steps to reduce power-plant carbon emissions, and their economies have not suffered; indeed they have thrived. Unfortunately my state, Virginia, is well behind the leaders in acting on climate, but these carbon rules will prod Virginia to catch up with its more forward-thinking neighbors.Despite the urgency of our climate predicament, you have heard and

will hear from people and corporations, some quite powerful and influential, who claim that we can't do this, or we can't afford to, or it will ruin our economy. Many of these naysayers are linked to and profit greatly from the burning of fossil fuels. As shown by Professor Naomi Oreskes in another excellent book, Merchants of Doubt, some fossil-fuel interests have promoted a deliberate campaign of disinformation about climate science, designed to create a false sense of doubt about that science, just as was done decades earlier in connection with tobacco and its link to cancer.

The short answers to the climate-action naysayers are (1) we can't afford not to act now, (2) delaying climate action will cost our economy much more, and (3) the EPA is required to act on carbon emissions because the Supreme Court told the EPA it must—seven years ago in EPA v. Massachusetts. In fact the current efforts of some, including some members of Congress, to demonize the EPA's carbon-reduction efforts and to resist impleanentation of EPA v. Massachusetts remind me of an unfortunate chapter in Virginia's history.

In the 1950s a shameful effort, termed "massive resistance," was established at the instigation of a U.S. senator from Virginia. Many other public officials signed on, and state laws were even passed in the effort. The purpose of course was to block implementation of the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board of Education decision barring segregation in public schools.

The massive resistance of the 1950s was morally and legally wrong, the actions of a group of misguided people who were on the wrong side of history. Well the same is true of those today who say we shouldn't act now to reduce carbon emissions, and that the EPA should not do what the Supreme Court told the EPA it must do.

Virginians and all Americans face severe threats to life, limb, public health, and property from global warrning. Thank you EPA for taking this important step in reducing carbon emissions.