Dear Legislators,

My name is Dr. Mary E. Brady, a long-time resident of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

As a special educator who recently retired from UMassBoston, I spent over 50 years working with children and their families who are most vulnerable to a polluted environment of dirty air, soil, and water. The recently publicized Stove Study took us into kitchens, particularly of families with lower incomes, to document the impact gas has on young lives.  Numerous studies reaffirm the health impacts of dense traffic, polluting buildings to asthma and other medical illnesses with a direct link to limited cognitive abilities, and restrictions to running and playing in our wonderful parks, ponds and oceans in the way that all children should be able to do.  

I have direct and painful experience watching my 2 year old foster grandson, in the process of being adopted through Department of Children and Families, as he wheezes and gasps instead of giggling.

I am also a member of Mothers Out Front, actively working towards a livable climate for all of our children.  As such, and I am writing to testify in favor of An Act establishing a climate change superfund and promoting polluter responsibility.

Children and their families are already paying a price for pollution [spewed] from gas leaks and dumped into our atmosphere from fossil fuels that remain part of our lived environment.  Now it’s time for those who create these damaging conditions to assume their responsibility, especially since they were aware of the damage and chose to act in the interests of profit rather than people.  We have no choice but to hold them accountable if they will not do so on their own, and they clearly have not.

Pay for the clean-up especially in neighborhoods with limited resources to clean up the messes the fossil fuel industries have made.  

We teach our children to clean up any mess they make-now we as adults must show the fossil fuel industry how they can do the same with their own messes.

Please support this legislation to hold polluters accountable for the damages they have caused while raking in record profits. I urge you to give a favorable report to House Bill 872 and Senate Bill 481: An Act Establishing a Climate Change Superfund and Promoting Polluter Responsibility. Thank you for your time.

Mary E. Brady, Ph.D
Mothers Out Front