Citizens will testify as EPA’s Clean Car Standards Hang in the Balance

Environment America

At a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency hearing in Washington, DC, Environment America advocates and partners will join concerned citizens and decision-makers in urging the EPA to strengthen not weaken EPA clean cars standards. After a year of record-breaking storms and drought, Environment America and state-based affiliates from Virginia and Pennsylvania warned that the EPA standards represent the single largest step the U.S. is taking to tackle global warming. The hearing follows the Trump administration’s reopening of the EPA’s midterm evaluation on clean car standards. The process withdraws the previously released final determination on EPA’s vehicle emission standards for 2022-2025 and expands the time period under consideration to 2021-2025.

Environment America Global Warming Advocate Aminah Zaghab issued the following statement:

“We know that people want cleaner cars, and today EPA will learn just how much. We need to hit the gas on cleaning up our cars, not reverse the progress we are set to achieve. Automakers have the ability to innovate, the public wants and supports the standards, and they are crucial to reducing emissions and cutting oil use.

“With 2016 now the hottest year on record, we know we must double down on cutting global warming pollution, not weaken effective standards that are already protecting our health and the planet.  When fully phased in, the existing standards are set to save 6 billion metric tons of dangerous global warming pollution; cut our oil use by 12 billion barrels; and save Americans $67 billion to $122 billion. Moreover they are the biggest single federal step we now have to avert the worst impacts of climate change and accelerate our transition off of fossil fuels.

“We are concerned that the only reason to reopen this process is to weaken the standards. President Trump said he would eliminate regulations as he stood alongside automakers in Michigan, who have been lobbying to weaken the standards.  Americans need cleaner cars not more pollution.

“These common-sense standards are doing exactly what they were designed to do. They’re protecting our health and climate from dangerous pollution, saving billions of gallons of fuel, and saving Americans money.  And citizens voicing the social, scientific, environmental and health benefits of these standards only goes to show the importance of the clean cars standards. ”