Three cheers to the EPA for establishing new standards limiting industrial carbon pollution from new power plants!

This first-ever national industrial carbon pollution rule, the New Source Performance Standard, is essential for the health of our children, the protection of our environment and for our national and state economy.

For the first time, there will be a limit on the amount of carbon dioxide new power plants will be able to spew into the air.

This will help protect vulnerable elders and children from asthma attacks. Rising temperatures caused by climate change make smog pollution worse, which triggers asthma attacks. As a state downwind of Midwestern power plants, Maine has the highest rate of childhood asthma in the country.

This new carbon rule will help all Maine citizens breathe a little easier.

The EPA’s new CO2 rule will provide an important mechanism for limiting greenhouse gases, which will help to slow human impact on the climate. There are currently no national limits on the industrial carbon pollution coming from sources like power plants.

More work will be needed to stabilize and reduce carbon emissions, but this is an important step in that process.

Finally this new rule will encourage a gradual transition from coal-based power generation to electricity generated by cleaner natural gas and clean, sustainable renewable energy.

The development and manufacture of this new energy technology and the creation of the next generation of energy infrastructure will create millions of new jobs, including many in Maine. That is good for our economy and for our national security.

I encourage my fellow Mainers to embrace these new EPA environmental health standards and urge our entire congressional delegation to support them as well.

Ed Saxby

Cape Elizabeth

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency released its long-awaited standard on emissions of carbon dioxide that will limit its output from new power plants. This is a small but critical step in addressing the serious problem of climate change.

It is also a chance for Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins to support the effort by not voting with fellow Republicans who will attempt to delay or prevent it.

As a scientist and grandfather, I view climate change as the most important problem facing humankind. The detractors will say that carbon dioxide is plant food — that it is ridiculous to call it a pollutant.

Scientists know, however, that in addition to causing the planet to warm faster than it ever has before, excess carbon dioxide is causing the acidification of the oceans, which will lead to mass extinctions of ocean species.

Ocean acidity levels have remained relatively constant for 20 million years, but since we began burning fossil fuels, the acidity has increased, and at the present rate, the impact on shellfish and coral reefs will be felt by 2050. This is potentially a big problem for a state like Maine with a large fisheries industry.

My hope is that Sens. Snowe and Collins also care about future generations. I hope that — rather than siding with the fossil fuel industry — they will vote for a future in which the oceans remain a source of food and recreation.

Tom Mikulka, Ph.D.

Cape Elizabeth

General Assistance good for recipients’ neighbors

As citizens of Maine, we are writing to express our concern about the ongoing consideration of eliminating General Assistance benefits for Maine’s neediest residents.

General Assistance provides vouchers for food, medicine and shelter on an emergency basis. These are not easy handouts.

At most, these vouchers are a bare bones support, keeping people off the streets and safe. The Governor’s Proposed Supplemental Budget for 2012-2013 will force our poorest neighbors to do without food, shelter and medicine.

Our families have grown up in and around Portland. We have been privileged to travel throughout the state in the course of our lives. From York Beach to Houlton, from Down East to Bethel, we have gotten to know many people who, whether born here or here by choice, also love Maine.

The Maine our friends and family are proud to hail from is the state of Margaret Chase Smith, Edmund Muskie, George Mitchell, William Cohen, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.

We understand that we are all neighbors, that we don’t let each other go hungry, or do without shelter or warmth. Please don’t ask us to change.

We have asked our legislators to oppose the supplemental budget proposal. We encourage our fellow neighbors to do the same (find your representatives at http://www.maine.gov/legis/house/town2reps.htm).

No matter if General Assistance has never helped you or anyone you know, these cuts will affect all Mainers.

Homelessness, hunger, illness and crowded emergency departments will impact all of us.

Kevin Sample and Lisa Savard

Portland

Toxins in state’s water dangerous to ‘real people’

In a new report from the Environment America Research and Policy Center, the state of Maine is 20th on the list of places where the most toxins are dumped into waterways.

This is anti-Maine; we want an image of a clean, pristine, safe place to vacation. But in fact we are the 20th dirtiest place to be in the nation — where swimming or fishing or boating can introduce toxins into your system.

How many pregnant women eat fish caught in our waterways? How many kids have toxins introduced into their systems from their little cuts when they swim in the creeks and rivers? How much do we breathe into our lungs when the toxins evaporate into the air?

The GOP, corporatists and tea party would have us be quiet on protecting the environment because it hurts profits, hurts jobs.

They don’t care that it hurts real people.

What it comes down to is: Do we really need a business that makes the planet unlivable and kills people?

Charles Reid

South Portland