Reducing Pollution from Cars and Trucks

How do cars and trucks affect our air?

Cars and trucks can emit a range of harmful pollutants, such as fine particle pollution, nitrogen oxides, and carbon monoxide. Tailpipe emissions from cars and trucks can also combine with heat and air in the atmosphere to form ground level ozone, or smog.

The transportation sector is the largest source of climate pollution in the US.

How does the pollution from cars and trucks harm you?

Exposure to the pollution from cars and trucks can cause a range of health effects in people, such as asthma, lung infections, heart attacks, stroke, premature death, low birth weight, and cancer.

What are the Clean Car Standards?

The Clean Car Standards were adopted in 2012 to set standards for greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks. These standards were adopted with broad support from automakers, labor, and consumers—including members of Moms Clean Air Force, who testified on their behalf and pushed automakers and lawmakers in support of strong regulations.

In 2020, the Trump administration finalized a dangerous rollback of the clean car standards, with a reckless plan that will make our families sicker, increase climate pollution, and cost consumers money at the pump.

The Clean Car Standards have proved achievable and cost-effective for the auto industry. They have delivered the cleanest and most efficient vehicles the American people have ever known. They saved families money at the pump and reduced our reliance on foreign oil. And because the transportation sector is the largest source of climate-warming carbon dioxide pollution in the U.S., they are our country’s most significant program to fight climate change. Rolling back these standards will harm our climate, our health, our pocketbooks—and even our jobs.

By rolling back the Clean Car Standards, Trump’s EPA shows us that it is no longer working to protect people’s health.

EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler and the Trump administration have severely weakened these standards. Their rollback will require automakers to increase greenhouse gas efficiency by a mere 1.5% each year, well below the current standards, which require annual increases of 5%. This rollback will add 1.5 billion metric tons of climate pollution—an amount equivalent to the total pollution from 68 coal plants operating for five years—and the resulting increases in health-harming air pollution will cause 250,000 asthma attacks and more than 18,000 premature deaths.

Wheeler’s EPA is also trying to undermine long-standing state authority by blocking the right of California and 13 other states, as well as the District of Columbia, to set greenhouse gas emissions standards more protective than the national ones. It’s simply wrong for Andrew Wheeler to strip states’ authority to protect their residents from harmful pollution.

Moms are fighting for the Clean Car Standards—and you can help.

Moms Clean Air Force has been working for years to aggressively defend our Clean Car Standards. Our members have sent over 75,000 comments to EPA, and at EPA hearings in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Dearborn, Michigan, Moms testified about why fuel standards are critical to their children’s health. We have petitioned automakers, asking them to protect our families’ health. We have been calling out those automakers that side with the Trump administration on its efforts to strip long-standing state authority to protect residents from pollution. We have discussed these issues in countless meetings with lawmakers, raised our voices in the media, and called out EPA’s hypocrisy on social media. We will not stop in protecting our children’s health and their future.

You can add your voice by contacting your representative to express your outrage at this dangerous, costly rollback. You can also contact those automakers that have sided with the Trump administration—Chrysler, General Motors, and Toyota—to let their CEOs know how disappointed you are with their betrayal. Then, go onto the automakers’ Facebook page to leave a comment or tweet directly to their corporate handle. Ask them: How can they support the Trump administration as it scraps this essential climate program that is saving us money and protecting our children’s health?

The science is clear. We must act with urgency.

Moms Clean Air Force demands that city, state, and federal lawmakers and regulators move us onto a path to climate safety immediately.

We must mobilize immediately for a transition to zero climate pollution. The 100% Clean Economy bill is a great start.
We must have laws and regulations that rapidly draw down carbon and methane emissions and ramp up energy efficiency everywhere.
Our goals must be ambitious, and staged deadlines must be strictly enforced to demonstrate measurable progress.
We must ensure that vulnerable populations and communities of color are given equitable protections and are granted access to cost-effective clean-energy options.
We must make bold investments in innovative technologies that will help solve this climate crisis.
We must hold companies accountable for cleaning up their climate pollution.

Tell Your Representatives:
It’s Beyond Time for Climate Safety