Kathy Mohr-Almeida

AZ I See it

Every parent wants to see the hopes and dreams of their children fulfilled. When she was in third grade, my daughter told me about her dream of saving endangered species from the impact of climate change.

My job as Mom is to support my child’s hopes and dreams, so we began to work together to decrease carbon in the atmosphere.

We have connected with multiple environmental communities, participated in marches and demonstrations, and done lots of public speaking and movement-building work in Arizona.

Along the way, we discovered that many families share my daughter’s dream and are actively working to mitigate the effects of climate change in our state.

Unfortunately, our collective efforts to safeguard public health, biodiversity, our children’s futures, and to proliferate clean, site-based energy production have been halted by the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality and the Arizona Corporate Commission.

These bodies now appear beholden to the fossil-fuel industry, as they continue to push agendas contrary to the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan.

What the Clean Power Plan does

The Clean Power Plan mandates that all states get a certain percentage of their energy from renewable sources. It is estimated that when the Clean Power Plan is put into effect, we will see a 32 percent reduction in the carbon footprint related to national energy production.

Globally speaking, this represents a return to atmospheric carbon parts per million (ppm) to about 378.47 ppm by 2030, similar to atmospheric conditions in 2005.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, Arizona's Renewable Environmental Standard requires that by 2025, 15 percent of the state’s electricity consumed comes from renewable sources. In 2014, that figure was only 8.9 percent.

Arizona utilities and coal purveyors wrongly assert that the Clean Power Plan will harm Arizona’s economy. They contend that Arizonans must choose between the health of our children or a robust economy. And they have obstructed the implementation of the Clean Power Plan and severely hobbled our rooftop-solar industry.

Why make this a choice between money and health?

Currently, it costs Arizona families more to install and use rooftop-solar systems than to continue as public-utility customers. This makes the morally right decision to be greener unviable, and Arizonans are angry.

We know that every daily activity that requires power, such as turning on the oven or air conditioner, is an act that mortgages our children’s futures.

The Clean Power Plan is good for Arizona beyond lowering carbon emissions. The plan supports the democratization of energy production, which will increase the savings of every Arizona family with a solar unit on their rooftop.

The Clean Power Plan also protects public health in a state where we hospitalize about 3,000 children per year in part because corporate entities use the atmosphere as their no-cost dump.

Arizonans bear the costs of dirty energy production in many forms, the state Department of Health Services documents: $650 million in annual health-care costs, 132,000 days lost to hospitalization and 80 asthma deaths per year, among other indications.

The Clean Power Plan makes sense in sunny Arizona. It expands the renewable-energy sector of Arizona’s economy, advances high-paying clean-energy jobs, especially on reservations where jobs are scarce, and it protects Arizonans from a myriad of human and economic costs related to the climate crisis.

It is a viable strategy to create affordable, safe and clean-energy sources that won’t cause climate disruption or sicken our communities, and its immediate implementation is of paramount importance in Arizona.

Kathy Mohr-Almeida, Ph.D., is a mental-health professional, educator and climate-crisis activist. Email her at kathylynn626@yahoo.com​; follow her on Twitter @kathylynn626.

My Turn: Obama's Clean Power Plan moves too fast

Will Arizona dodge rapid shift to renewable energy?

Arizona joins lawsuit to block clean air rules