Driving towards a Cleaner Future
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Environment California Statement on the EPA’s New Pollution Standards for Gas-Powered Vehicles
Environment California
In response to today’s announcement that the Environmental Protection Agency has finalized new pollution standards from gasoline-powered vehicles, Environment California Clean Energy Advocate Michelle Kinman issued the following statement:
“Every parent in America should be free from worry about their kids getting sick from breathing the air when they play outside. That’s the promise of the Clean Air Act – it’s a promise that we’re one step closer to fulfilling with today’s announcement, and it’s a step that would not have happened without California’s long leadership on vehicle emission standards.”
“The Environmental Protection Agency’s new rules will prevent up to 50,000 cases of respiratory ailments for children annually. We thank President Obama and EPA Administrator McCarthy for their continued commitment to cleaner air for America.”
More background
Benefits of the New Rules
Despite the substantial progress America has made in reducing vehicle emissions over the decades, passenger cars and trucks still produce millions of pounds of health-threatening air pollution every day. As a result, millions of Americans are still exposed to unhealthy levels of air pollution – contributing to high asthma rates and shortened life spans.
Requiring automakers to build cleaner cars is a clear victory for our health and our environment. Once fully in place, according to EPA, these standards will annually prevent 2,000 deaths, 50,000 cases of respiratory ailments in children, and 1.4 million days of lost work, school or restricted activity due to pollution-caused illness. The health benefits outweigh the cost of implementing the standards by up to 13-fold.
Today’s action by EPA builds upon decades of work to clean up our air, starting with the states.
State Leadership
California created the world’s first tailpipe emission standards in 1966. In response to the requirements, automakers invented and refined the catalytic converter – now standard equipment on every gasoline-powered car in the United States and most in the world – and a variety of other enhanced emission control technologies.
In later decades, California and 13 other states developed and implemented their own state-level clean car standards. Beyond charting a path for pollution reductions for those states, these standards also pushed automakers to begin developing the cleaner cars that we see on the road today, including advanced-technology hybrid electric cars, and fully electric cars with zero tailpipe emissions.
This state leadership has paved the way for today’s action at EPA. It has also paved the way for earlier EPA action to regulate global warming pollution from vehicles, which began with model-year 2012 cars.
More background on California’s leadership on clean cars can be found in the 2010 Environment California Research & Policy Center report Clean Cars in California: Four Decades of Progress in the Battle to Clean Up Our Air. Details of the EPA action can be found here: http://go.usa.gov/Kx5G
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Environment California is a statewide, citizen-based environmental advocacy organization. For more information, please visit www.environmentcalifornia.org.
