The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to support the EPA’s Clean Power Plan which was presented by Sandra Kurtz, an environmental services professional in Chattanooga.
The Clean Power Plan seeks to reduce air pollution by power plants across the nation since those plants account for 40 percent of carbon emissions nationwide. She said that it is essential to address these issues and take responsibility on a legislative level as soon as possible because the people most vulnerable to the resultant climate change from carbon emissions are often those who contribute to it the least.
The plan as Ms. Kurtz outlined it, will create more jobs, specifically in the solar industry and other renewable energy fields, lower electricity bills for participating municipalities, and elevate the overall air quality of the communities.
She said that the solar industry employs 2,200 people in Tennessee and expects that number to be eight times greater than oil, gas, and coal combined by 2016. A Harvard Study she cited also ranked Tennessee as the eleventh state that will gain the most in the improvement of public health from implementing the plan.
She said simply cutting emissions will not only preserve the natural scenery and attractions around Chattanooga, but save money in the long run as citizens are healthier overall, requiring less dire solutions to medical concerns tied to pollution.
According to the speaker, the goal right now is to build support across cities in Tennessee and the nation for the plan which is currently still in a drafting period set for completion later this summer.
She also referenced the Surgeon General’s acknowledgement of the “sobering truth” of climate change last Tuesday.
In that statement to a gathering of health leaders at the White House, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said that climate change presents, “A serious, immediate and global threat to human health.”
He also said, “We are not here today to debate whether or not climate change is real. We are not here to debate whether or not human activity is contributing to that. These questions have been settled by science...we are here today as public health leaders, as policymakers, and as citizens of the planet to figure out what we are, in fact, going to do about climate change.”