Fellow REPs (and other friends),
The following came to me as an
email this morning, and I just have to share
it with you all. This is a
powerful statement about the need to rid our air and
water of poisons like
mercury. I encourage you to read it and pass it on to
others.
Martha
Martha Marks, Ph.D. — President
REP America
(Republicans for Environmental Protection)
3200 Carlisle Blvd., NE; Suite
228
Albuquerque, NM 87110
505-690-9601
[log in to unmask];
[log in to unmask]www.repamerica.org or
www.rep.org*********************************************
Dear
friends,
The Bush Administration has proposed new mercury emission
standards that will
invite much more mercury, a known brain-damaging poison,
to be poured into
our air and water. EPA is holding hearings about these
proposals - in a grand
total of three cities. One was Philadelphia, today.
This was my testimony, on
behalf of The Shalom Center.
Shalom,
Arthur
***
February 26, 2004
Hearing officers for the EPA: Good
afternoon, and in the traditional words of
Jewish greeting, shalom aleichem
- peace be with you.
I am Rabbi Arthur Waskow, director of The Shalom
Center, a 20-year-old
nation-wide network of Jews and others who draw on
Jewish wisdom of the past and
present to seek justice and healing of the
earth. We have 2,000 members. Our
Email lists reach more than 21,000
people.
The Bible, in Exodus I:16-21, tells this story: Pharaoh, king of
Egypt,
ordered midwives to kill the newborn babies of the Hebrew women. But
the midwives
held God in awe, and did not do as Pharaoh had commanded
them.
This is both the oldest story we have in which a government
sentences
innocent children to death, and the oldest story we have of
nonviolent civil
disobedience.
The present proposal to increase the
amount of mercury that industries are
allowed to pour into our air and water
is an act of Pharaoh, an act of depraved
indifference to human life and
especially depraved indifference to children.
For the economic advantage
of some and the political advantage of their fr
iends, the proposed new
standards will kill children and cause them brain damage.
How do we know
this? --
The EPA and forty-three states have now issued advisories
warning people,
especially women and children, to avoid or limit eating
local fish because of
mercury.
Even with these warnings, the Centers
For Disease Control and Prevention
estimate that 1 out of 12 U.S. women of
childbearing age have unsafe levels of
mercury in their blood due to fish
consumption.
The best way to protect women and children from mercury is
to eliminate it
from its largest source: power plants. But the
electricity and coal industries
are pressing hard to avoid limiting their
mercury emissions, and the Bush
Administration has now proposed to weaken
those standards.
More than 600,000 newborns are at risk of brain damage
and learning
disabilities every year because their mothers have been exposed
to mercury pollution.
Instead of using already existing technology to
reduce mercury emissions by as
much as 90%, as is required by the Clean Air
Act, the new plan would postpone
any significant controls for mercury until
2018, and in doing so would
unnecessarily endanger the lives of an entire
generation of children.
The proposal also would give polluters at
least 15 years to make the reduction
s rather than the three years required
by law.
When plants are not forced to curb pollution but can buy
pollution credits,
it increases the chances that there will be communities
where mercury pollution
is more prevalent.
If it is not to fall into
the path of Pharaoh, the Bush Administration must
protect children's health
by reducing power plant mercury emissions by 90
percent by 2008 and ensuring
that these reductions occur at each and every power
plant.
The Clean
Air Act requires these reductions. Human decency requires these
reductions.
God's demand that we choose life and protect children requires these
reductions.
The midwives held God in awe and refused to obey the
Pharaoh's murderous
orders. Even Pharaoh's own daughter took action to save
a child - Moses -- who had
been condemned to death by her own father's
command, her own government's
laws.
I look into your faces, and I see
people who perhaps have children, as I do;
who perhaps have grandchildren,
as I do; who perhaps have nieces and nephews, a
s I do. I urge you -- like
the midwives and like Pharaoh's daughter -- to
stand up against whatever
pressures are being exerted on you by your superior
officials in this
government, ordering you or leaning on you to make decisions
that could
bring on the death and mental ruination of thousands of children.
I urge
you to see in the faces of these brain-damaged children the Face of
God, to
hear in the wailing of these children the Voice of God.
Shalom, Rabbi
Arthur Waskow
[At the end there was a long silence. I'm not sure, but
the usual etiquette
may be that the witness says "thank you" for being
accorded the "privilege" of
a hearing. If so, that was not the way I was
feeling about my citizenly role
before the hearing. After the silence, as I
simply watched the Board with
awareness, one of them finally said "Thank
you." That felt right.]