elections matter to safeguard public health & advance environmental justice: EPA Testimony

It shouldn't be partisan to say that government ought to protect public health, and ensure long-term sustainability and equity and justice across the land. The details are definitely debatable, but morally and Judaically, the basic case is clear.

Some administrations take this responsibility seriously; others downplay or even subvert it. The current one wishes to grant California, and by extension numerous other states, a Clean Air Act "waiver" to tighten tailpipe emissions regulations, reduce climate pollution, address historic racial harms, and save thousands of lives. By contrast, the previous one sought to eliminate the chance for high-pollution states to do this at all, while putting spuriously low dollar values on future generations in their cost-benefit analyses.

Whatever your party preference, please bring your ethical-spiritual values into the political process and the ballot box - as we recall the difference it makes for the climate, for society, for marginalized citizens and for our own progeny.  

​Below, for the record, is the testimony I offered on today's virtual EPA hearing - alongside numerous NRPE and IPL and faith advocates. (We had but three minutes each, so the last few paragraphs here were k'tiv v'lo k'ree, written out but not vocalized). Hope it's one more useful example of how, without partisan rancor but with prophetic purpose, we might advance our deepest-held values in the public sphere.

Rabbi Fred’s COEJL testimony for the EPA, to grant the ACF waiver – 8/14/24 

Thank you all. I’m Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb with the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life, which represents much of the American Jewish community, alongside Catholic, Protestant, and Evangelical groups under the National Religious Partnership for the Environment; I’m also on the board of Interfaith Power and Light. ALL these groups, well represented today, unite ethics, conscience, and religious tradition toward the moral necessity of granting this waiver, straightaway.
We apply faith teachings within, not over against, the law – so, as you’ve heard from others and know in your hearts, let’s make it plain: statutory logic is rock-solid, following decades of precedent, under section 209 of the Clean Air Act. Are these ACF [Advanced Car Fleet] rules “at least as protective of public health and welfare as applicable federal standards”?  Clearly. The very question underscores Congress’ Clean Air Act clarity – so please let the EPA protect, as intended, by waiving the preemption, and letting California proceed.
I live on the other coast, 3000 miles east, and still benefit from California’s efforts.  Hooray for Section 177, and other states that ride Cali’s coattails, enjoying cleaner air in our locales too – a holy multiplier for reducing tailpipe emissions; lifting some of the disproportionate and historic racial harm off marginalized and low-income communities; and advancing public health, nationwide. (It’s personal for all of us:  my own daughter, a Spelman student, lives downwind from two massive Atlanta railyards; would that every state prioritized public health).
And, given prevailing winds, most of the country is downwind from California. As farmer-poet-theologian Wendell Berry beautifully spins the Golden Rule, in our time: “Do onto those downstream, as you would have those upstream do unto you.” 
​Though process matters, these standards ‘coulda-shoulda’ gone into effect January 1 of this year. Agreeing to the delay made procedural sense – but CARB’s May 2023 “Support Document” showed how these regs “will reduce emissions of harmful air pollutants…statewide … the greatest benefits will be in the [most populous] regions around LA & San Fran: South Coast [alone] will suffer between 761 and 1,190 fewer cardiopulmonary deaths.” 
A thousand lives, just in So Cal, preventably ended by a one-year delay. Thousands more, in the next dozen years, until ZEVs are required – twelve long, polluting years in which industries can and will adapt, infrastructure will grow, costs will decrease, and technology will advance. 
A Panel 1 speaker called this “a death sentence for our industry” – not so! – yet industries like his, profiting off preventable pollution and wishing to do so for over a dozen more years, daily impose a death sentence on thousands of vulnerable Americans. 
A quick South Coast smog story [shared in Jan. 2024 testimony, omitted in August]:  In 1990 I joined a cross-country environmental education walk. From Santa Monica through downtown and East LA, east through Claremont, and Ontario – we inhaled the growing haze each day.  Only past San Bernardino – and clearer yet, way out, past Desert Hot Springs – could we look back each morning, see this massive beige cloud low on the western horizon - coming toward, looming behind, and finally enveloping us. This was deadly ozone, the daily smog, born of ‘South Coast’ morning rush hour.         
A third of a century later, thanks to CARB’s work and EPA’s history of not unduly withholding these waivers, it’s vastly better! And still thousands of lives can yet be saved; asthma and other adverse effects of pollution and climate change staved off; and environmental justice and equity goals realized.
The ‘fierce urgency of now’ (MLK) requires immediate Protection – shmirah, we call it - guard duty, the role of government and civil society alike. The mythic first humans’ role in the first ecosystem, the Garden of Eden, in Genesis 2:15, remains:  L’ovdah, to serve the land; ul’shomrah, and to guard, protect it. This is EPA’s mandate, and all of ours, still. Please - in the name of all that is holy - let this agency, and this land, delay no more; and promptly grant the waiver.
​Thank you.