Futura Childs slipped silently from the seat of her solar scooter and sneaked around to Ole Tymer’s back patio. Sure enough, there he was snoozing in his lounger. “Surprise! I baked cookies,” she announced. Oly’s eldest granddaughter was a sweetheart. They settled in for a treat of cookies and milk.
Soon the conversation turned to school – friends, sports, classes and the rest. “In history, we’re studying the early 21st century, when you were a kid, Poppie. That pandemic must have been a pain, so many people sick and things being shut down. And, oh man! The climate crisis was going on at the same time. We learned about stuff like one July, 2025 I think, there were four ‘thousand year’ downpours in less than a week! Heat records were being broken year after year all over the world. That was crazy!”
“Yup, I remember my parents talking about how politicized the climate issue had become,” Oly reminisced. One time, a bunch of people came over. I was supposed to be upstairs doing homework, but I sat on the steps and listened in for a while. They talked about something called the Endangerment Finding. It stated that greenhouse gas pollution is a threat to human health and safety, so the Environmental Protection Agency had the responsibility to limit that type of pollution.
“Well, as you can imagine, the fossil fuel folks didn’t like that! They tried to get rid of that policy. I remember my parents and a lot of other folks raised a stink. There was just so much evidence of the warming and the damages to health and safety caused by emissions from burning fossil fuels. Stuff like cancer rates 50 times the national average for communities near coal plants and all the destruction from extreme weather events. I was just a kid, but it sure seemed to me like health and safety were being affected big time so regulations were needed. Even so, some folks argued the EPA should butt out.”
“Well Poppie, I’m glad your parents and others stuck with it. The EPA kept the Endangerment Finding authority after all, so polluters weren’t able to get away with messing up the planet. Now,” she smiled, “we’re still happy and healthy on our only home where we’re all forever… Earthbound.”
Learn more - https://tinyurl.com/565x7825 Send comments to [email protected]. Include Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194
Soon the conversation turned to school – friends, sports, classes and the rest. “In history, we’re studying the early 21st century, when you were a kid, Poppie. That pandemic must have been a pain, so many people sick and things being shut down. And, oh man! The climate crisis was going on at the same time. We learned about stuff like one July, 2025 I think, there were four ‘thousand year’ downpours in less than a week! Heat records were being broken year after year all over the world. That was crazy!”
“Yup, I remember my parents talking about how politicized the climate issue had become,” Oly reminisced. One time, a bunch of people came over. I was supposed to be upstairs doing homework, but I sat on the steps and listened in for a while. They talked about something called the Endangerment Finding. It stated that greenhouse gas pollution is a threat to human health and safety, so the Environmental Protection Agency had the responsibility to limit that type of pollution.
“Well, as you can imagine, the fossil fuel folks didn’t like that! They tried to get rid of that policy. I remember my parents and a lot of other folks raised a stink. There was just so much evidence of the warming and the damages to health and safety caused by emissions from burning fossil fuels. Stuff like cancer rates 50 times the national average for communities near coal plants and all the destruction from extreme weather events. I was just a kid, but it sure seemed to me like health and safety were being affected big time so regulations were needed. Even so, some folks argued the EPA should butt out.”
“Well Poppie, I’m glad your parents and others stuck with it. The EPA kept the Endangerment Finding authority after all, so polluters weren’t able to get away with messing up the planet. Now,” she smiled, “we’re still happy and healthy on our only home where we’re all forever… Earthbound.”
Learn more - https://tinyurl.com/565x7825 Send comments to [email protected]. Include Docket ID No. EPA-HQ-OAR-2025-0194
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