MiCCA opposes EPA’s proposed dangerous carbon pollution repeal

We represent more than 450 health professionals who are concerned about the immediate and long-term health risks posed by fossil fuels. While the world faced the hottest summer on record, our state was plunged into hazardous levels of wildfire smoke for many days, resulting in hospitalizations related to asthma, COPD, and other related respiratory and cardiovascular conditions.

As much as some of our officials wanted to blame Canada’s forest management, there has not been a change in policy on Canada’s end that suddenly prompted this new trend. Instead, scientists have warned of increased and more severe climate-driven wildfires. Doctors, nurses, and med students in our network are also seeing other adverse health impacts in their practice. Some examples:

• Rates of Lyme disease have increased by 168% in a five-year period in our state, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. 

• Extreme precipitation events (in the top 1%) have increased by 37% in the Midwest since 1900, according to NOAA.

• The average summer temperature in Michigan has increased by 2.5’F degrees since 1895, according to MDDHS, and while it’s known that extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related death, an investigation from NPR and Boston University found that we still under-report heat deaths by a factor of five.

These are not random trends that appeared overnight but forecasted changes directly linked to greenhouse gas emissions. This latest attempt to eliminate climate pollution standards, among a slew of others, is irresponsible, shortsighted, and downright cruel.

EPA has a responsibility under the Clean Air Act to protect the public’s health, and it was written deliberately to allow our federal government to implement pollution controls for emerging pollutants of concern, which GHGs have proven themselves to be.

In announcing this rollback, industry’s cost savings are being touted as the nation’s cost savings, but that is a false and misleading claim. Complying with pollution control standards is a business cost that industries can afford – and should – pay. 

The cost of them not implementing common-sense GHG emission controls is much higher.

By the EPA’s own analysis, regulating climate pollution from power plants would have saved $120 billion in health costs and helped to prevent $270 billion in economic costs from severe weather and supply chain disruptions.

We hope the EPA reconsiders its decision-making and keeps the rules as they are.