"When elected officials abandon our environment and ruin our natural resources, public health is endangered. I know the importance of providing a clean environment for our children; I have attended more than one funeral for a child who has died from an asthma attack"
About this Quote
Moore isn’t arguing policy in the abstract; she’s prosecuting negligence with a body count. The first sentence lays out a clean chain of culpability: officials “abandon” the environment, resources are “ruin[ed],” and the harm lands where it’s hardest to dismiss - “public health.” That phrasing matters. “Abandon” implies a duty already owed, not a nice-to-have green agenda. “Ruin” is blunt, irreversible language, more like a crime scene than a regulatory debate.
Then she detonates the real charge: “I have attended more than one funeral…” It’s a jarring shift from institutional cause-and-effect to personal witness, and it’s engineered to undercut the standard political escape hatch: uncertainty. You can argue about parts per million and study design; you can’t debate a funeral. The detail “more than one” does double work - it suggests a pattern, not a tragic fluke, while refusing to sensationalize with numbers that would invite scrutiny or partisan quibbling.
The subtext is aimed at a familiar tactic in environmental fights: treating pollution as someone else’s problem, or as a trade-off for jobs and growth. Moore reframes the issue as immediate and intimate, with children as the moral center and asthma as the emblem of modern, preventable vulnerability - a disease that spikes in communities closest to highways, industry, and under-resourced healthcare.
As a politician, she’s also signaling credibility through proximity: not “I’ve read reports,” but “I’ve been there.” It’s an empathy claim, yes, but also a warning: when government cuts corners, the costs aren’t theoretical - they show up in the smallest coffins.
Then she detonates the real charge: “I have attended more than one funeral…” It’s a jarring shift from institutional cause-and-effect to personal witness, and it’s engineered to undercut the standard political escape hatch: uncertainty. You can argue about parts per million and study design; you can’t debate a funeral. The detail “more than one” does double work - it suggests a pattern, not a tragic fluke, while refusing to sensationalize with numbers that would invite scrutiny or partisan quibbling.
The subtext is aimed at a familiar tactic in environmental fights: treating pollution as someone else’s problem, or as a trade-off for jobs and growth. Moore reframes the issue as immediate and intimate, with children as the moral center and asthma as the emblem of modern, preventable vulnerability - a disease that spikes in communities closest to highways, industry, and under-resourced healthcare.
As a politician, she’s also signaling credibility through proximity: not “I’ve read reports,” but “I’ve been there.” It’s an empathy claim, yes, but also a warning: when government cuts corners, the costs aren’t theoretical - they show up in the smallest coffins.
Quote Details
| Topic | Health |
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