Thanks for being here to listen to ordinary people like me.

My name is Susan Jacobson, and am an economics professor at Regis College in North Denver. Climate change is real. The organization 350.org highlights just how far beyond the "limits" we have already gone. Named for a "safe" level of parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere, it now almost looks laughable. In gay 2013, we hit 400 ppm and the line on the chart just keeps rising. You don't have to be a scientist to notice. Crazy weather - fires, floods, heat, and drought are visible to everyone, especially those of us who live in the fragile environments of the desert west. I am a member of a number of organizations including Great Old Broads for Wilderness, Grand Canyon Trust, Conservation Colorado and the Sierra Club. These affiliations indicate my deep love of the western landscape which will be changed dramatically if we don't act. I also, thankfully, am blessed with a strong constitution and a good job. But_ I'm not here today to testify not for me personally. I'm here to testify for all the people who don't come to these meetings to speak out because they can't. They are the people who are sick or working long hours for minimum wage to support families. These are the people who sufferthe greater costs of inaction on climate change because

they live and work in the most polluted are a s. Others of us, the privileged few find ways to buy our way out of the problems for now and apparently we haven't yet had the wisdom or ethical conscience to think far enough ahead to curtail and clean up our consumption and pay our fair share of the costs of energy use. just heard last week on Colorado Public Radio the director of the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden say that coal is still the cheapest source of a kilowatt hour. But "cheapest" ignores the huge costs to our environment and to our health that are unjustly borne by those who are least able. Of course the director of NREL knows this, but too many of us focus on "costs" economic costs / dollar costs that do not reflect the real costs of our way of life. To use Raj Patel's words, coal is not "cheap" energy it's "cheat" energy because we are transferring the real costs to the less fortunate and to the earth. Let me quote from a recent report: "The findings of the Yale University research add to evidence of a widening racial and economic gap when it comes to air pollution. Communities of color and those with low education and high poverty and unemployment fac:e greater health riskseven if their air quality meets federal health standards.

This is according to the article published online in the scientific journal Environmental Health Perspectives." Cleaning up our economy is about more than clean air for those of us who are here to speak out. It's also about justice. As Gina McCarthy said, we have a "moral obligation to act." A 30 0 /0 reuuction by 2030 as - compared to 2005 levels is not only doable but imperative. This is not a do or die effort. States may implement the regulations using many flexible means and methods over
time. One more issue. People throw out numbers to get attention. in the Denver Post this morning I read that the American coalition for Clean coal Energy is against tougher air quality standards because it will cost 9,000 mining jobs. 9,000 jobs may sound like a lot, and to the 9,000 people whose jobs are lost it is. But to put that number in context, the US economy created 288,000 jobs in June alone - one month. People need jobs, but not just any jobs. They need good, sustainable jobs. Finally, how do we offset perhaps higher economic costs of energy for those least able to pay. We must use subsidies for those least able to pay. Rather than ignoringthe costs to the environment and health that are

disproportionately pad by those people who are least able, we who are able need to bear those costs. 1here's no more ignoring reality. It doesn't go away if we turn our heads. This is an ethical imperative which we must support. Thank you for listening.



## LII