Fossil fueled vehicles are polluting our neighborhoods.
Our school routes.
Our cities and our rural towns.
Our beaches.
Our ports.
And pollution from transportation is harming our most vulnerable communities the most.
We’re done waiting. This is the moment for strong standards that ensure clean air everywhere. We need electric cars, trucks and buses NOW. And we need the transition to these pollution-free vehicles to be one that protects workers and invests in domestic manufacturing and quality union jobs.
Years in Reverse
In 2012, the Obama administration made history by finalizing strong vehicle pollution standards for new cars and light trucks through 2025. When the Trump administration took office in 2017, one of its biggest attacks on climate was severely weakening these standards.
The Trump administration also revoked a long-standing California waiver under the Clean Air Act that allowed the state, as well as 14 states and DC, to be even more ambitious in reducing vehicle pollution and cleaning up the air.
Over the years, the Sierra Club, in coalition with environmental, consumer, environmental justice, health, faith, and family groups, has actively fought back against these dangerous attacks on vehicle pollution standards.
We’ve been organizing on the ground in key states, engaging supporters in public hearings and comment periods, challenging Trump’s rollbacks in court, elevating the rollbacks in the media, and holding the automakers that lobbied for weaker standards accountable.
The Current Moment
Now, the Biden administration has an opportunity to make up for lost time and be bold in addressing transportation pollution by shifting the nation to electric cars, trucks, and buses.
One of the most important levers to do that is through strong policy to scrap Trump’s weakened standards in the short term and then establish new bolder vehicle standards. This will set us onto the necessary path for pollution-free cars, trucks, and buses this decade.
Yet, once again, vehicle manufacturers have been working behind closed doors to keep us tied to polluting vehicles by pushing for weak standards.
President Biden: It’s time to restore the Obama-Biden standards and go even further.