cumulative impacts

Editor’s Note: This post contains two of many testimonies given at an Environmental Protection Agency listening session at EPA headquarters in Washington, D.C. The EPA held sessions in 11 regional offices across the country to allow the public to comment on the agency’s plans to begin regulating carbon dioxide emissions — one of the heat-trapping pollutants that contributes to climate change — from existing coal and natural gas-fired power plants. The public was invited to share up to three minutes of spoken testimony to an EPA panel for the agency’s consideration.

My name is Dr. Jalonne L. White-Newsome and I am a federal policy analyst at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, a 25-year-old community based environmental justice organization based in Harlem, N.Y. However, I work out of our Washington, D.C. office, mostly engaging in federal policy. Although I am in a different location, WE ACT D.C. has the same mission: to build healthy communities by insuring all voices help shape environmental policy and practices so that they are fair.

As a public health researcher who has seen the impacts of temperature, air pollution, and climate changes on urban-dwelling seniors in low income communities of color, I am clear about the need for and the importance of the testimony that I, and hopefully other environmental justice organizations, will offer here today. While three minutes is not a lot of time, I do have a couple of "calls to action" to uplift as you continue your work:

1. Recognize the deficiency.
2. Recognize the cumulative impacts.