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Statement Of Jennifer Hicks
Environmental Protection Agency
Aging Initiative Public Listening Session
Baltimore, Maryland
May 7, 2003
Chesapeake Climate Action Network
Chesapeake Climate Action Network is a nonprofit organization here in Maryland based in the DC area, and our sole exclusive focus is on the effects of global warming. We have concerns about the direction of the federal government addressing global warming, so we are taking it to a state level and we are taking it to a community level. Our goal is to get renewed clean energy established in our country as a credible major source of energy resource in the very near future. The issue of global warming has a direct impact on seniors' health. AARP has mentioned it, NAACP has mentioned it in their testimony that global warming is a major factor in how we will see our seniors live over the next 100 years. Since the Industrial Revolution, we have seen a one degree warming increase and that was only 150 years ago. Just to put it in perspective, since the end of the Ice Age, there has only been about a 3-5 degree increase in warming so we are accelerating by human activity, mainly power plant pollution and car emissions. Carbon dioxide is the primary cause of global warming, and according to credible U.S. scientific reports, the U.S. emits almost 25% of all on earth. At this point, if we stopped all carbon emissions, we would probably still see a 2-degree rise by the next 100 years. Seniors are the most vulnerable to heat stress. I have relatives who live in Maine who cannot go out in the summer, and Vermont has seen its first Code Red days. As the temperatures rise, so do heat stress related deaths and sicknesses. Currently the President's air pollution plan does not include carbon dioxide among the pollutants it proposes to reduce. The most authoritative scientific panel ever assembled to study global warming, the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, issued a report and concluded that in order to stabilize the climate, we must reduce our fossil fuel use by 70% to 80% over the next few years. The Bush plan must include carbon reduction. I am going to be a senior citizen not too far in the future, and this is what I am facing and I know I will be affected as I get older.
The impact of global warming includes heat stress, diseases and severe weather events. It is no accident we are seeing more hurricanes, more flooding, more tornadoes, more large scale weather events. And as someone said, seniors are the last to be able to move or relocate if there was ever a crisis or major accident, so even on a fundamental level. Anything that changes or shifts like we are seeing now will affect the most vulnerable now.