Public Comments Needed: Keep Clean Car Emissions Standards

TAKE ACTION! By 2030, the pollution equivalent of this rollback will be like firing up 30 coal power plants.

Emissions from transportation make up the largest share of air pollution in the United States. The pollution pumped out of cars’ tailpipes, from ozone to particulate matter, is linked to asthma, bronchitis, and 30,000 premature deaths each year. But now the future of the nation’s tailpipe pollution protections is under attack. The Trump administration is charging ahead with a plan that would unleash tailpipe pollution across the country, and we need your help to keep those protections in place. Last month, Trump’s EPA chief proposed scrapping one of the country’s biggest public health victories in recent years — the clean car emissions standards — and proclaimed that states like California shouldn’t have the legal authority to set their own, safer limits on tailpipe pollution. Earthjustice is part of a coalition already challenging preliminary portions of the rollbacks in court, but we need your help to stop the EPA’s new proposal. The first step in any federal rulemaking process is a public comment period, and you only have until October 23 to raise your voice. Tell the EPA that we won’t stand for its reckless rollbacks. The rollback is the latest in a long list of gifts from the Trump administration to the oil industry given at the cost of Americans’ health. By 2030, the pollution equivalent of this rollback will be like firing up 30 coal power plants. In 2025, we’ll all pay $17 billion more at the gas pump if we lose this fight. We remember the thick smog that used to choke our cities, and we refuse to return to those times. We shouldn’t have to worry about whether our air is safe to breathe. Our families deserve clean car standards that protect our health and save money at the gas pump. Everyone who breathes should be worried about the tailpipe pollution Trump’s administration wants to unleash. Our health is too valuable to cede to polluter interests and we’ve fought too hard for our clean air to lose the progress we’ve made. Today, your support is more critical than ever.

Paul Cort, Staff Attorney, Earth Justice

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Dear Forest Service,

I strongly oppose the proposal to roll back clean car standards and infringe on the longstanding authority of states to protect their citizens from air pollution. Undermining these achievable, successful, and commonsense standards will allow automakers to manufacture dirtier cars that pollute the air and harm our health. History has shown that we can simultaneously reduce tailpipe emissions of air pollutants and make our cars more fuel-efficient, safer and cheaper. Much of that leadership has come from the states. Rolling back federal vehicle standards while taking away states’ authority to protect their residents is inconsistent with federal environmental and energy conservation goals. Americans deserve clean air. We shouldn’t be rolling back the standards and safeguards that protect them.