Grateful Shuler voted against environmental rollbacks

Jennifer Rennicks, Asheville • Letter to the Editor • Asheville Citizen-Times

Recently, the House of Representatives voted on legislation to allow our nation's biggest polluters to dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution in our air. Although the bill did pass, I'm pleased Rep. Heath Shuler was not a supporter. As a mother who's held an asthmatic child struggling to breathe, I am sincerely grateful that he cast a vote on her behalf and the 200,000 other children in North Carolina who suffer from asthma instead of supporting the profits of large polluters.

It's hard to understand who could want to rollback environmental and health protections after three environmental disasters in a row. Middle Tennessee is still dealing with the 2008 coal ash disaster and it will be years, perhaps decades, before Gulf Coast communities recover from last year's oil spill. Displaced residents in Japan are struggling with the ongoing nuclear meltdown after the earthquake and tsunami. While some may breathe a sigh of relief that none of those disasters happened here in WNC, but for the grace of God go we. When we have the ability to protect the least among us from many forms of pollution, it is a moral duty to do well by doing good.