Power Plant Rules, 2024!

COEJL’s kudos goes to the EPA for ensuring cleaner air and water, protecting public health, and limiting climate-changing emissions by issuing the four sorely needed “Power Plant Rules” that are achievable, ambitious, and profoundly consonant with core Jewish values​.

These rules were finalized during Passover, which is most apt,” said Rabbi Fred Scherlinder Dobb, COEJL’s Rabbinic Consultant. “The Exodus story addresses environmental justice, with each plague a demonstration of nature going awry when a society follows unsustainable and unjust ways. Today, these new EPA rules advance our much-needed liberation from the damaging grip of fossil fuels.”

“These protections are especially needed for under-resourced communities,” said Israel Harris, COEJL’s Advocacy Director, “who are more likely to live near power plants, and are disproportionately impacted by the ravages of pollution and climate change, including children whose growing bodies face the gravest risks from pollution.” 

COEJL brings Jewish values into the policy sphere, with the imprimatur of a large swath of the American Jewish community – and we find much here to celebrate:

• The cycles of Creation (seder beresheet) should endure from generation to generation; toward that goal, it’s key that existing coal-fired and new ‘natural gas’ power plants must now control 90% of their carbon pollution.
• Public health, especially for children (l’dor va’dor) and the vulnerable (tzedek tzedek tirdof), is a basic Jewish value and human right that must be protected – ala these rules’ near 70% reductions in mercury and toxic metals emissions from coal plants.
• Water is life (mayim chayim), and coal-fired power plants must soon reduce the pollutants they discharge into waterways by some 600 million pounds annually, and finally regulate their leftover toxic coal ash which contaminates groundwater.

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Per the Torah’s commands to “pursue justice” (Deut. 16:20) and to “choose life” for ourselves and our descendants (Deut. 30:19), these protections for our water and air will benefit everyone, in our nation and our world. 
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COEJL joins a chorus of faith groups, including many from the National Religious Partnership for the Environment (NRPE.org), in lauding these new rules. Our partners at the Evangelical Environmental Network spoke for all of us, across faiths:  “Today, the EPA and the Administration put our children’s health and future first, and for that we are grateful.”