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 US, they are our country’s most significant program to fight climate change. Rolling back these standards harms our climate, our health, our pocketbooks—and even our jobs.

It is time to strengthen the Clean Car Standards to reduce pollution from tailpipes and protect us from climate change.

The Trump-supported rollback of the Clean Car Standards has severely weakened tailpipe emissions standards. The rollback will allow automakers to increase greenhouse gas efficiency by just 1.5% each year, well below the previous version of the standards, which required 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.

Trump’s EPA also worked 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 wrong to strip states’ authority to protect their residents from harmful pollution—but that’s exactly what the Trump Administration tried to do, with the support of Toyota, Chrysler, and other automakers.

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

Moms Clean Air Force has been working for years to aggressively defend and strengthen 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 brought attention to these issues via social media. We will not stop in protecting our children’s health and their future.

The Biden administration has pledged a 50% reduction of climate pollution from 2005 levels by 2030. To help meet that pledge, EPA finalized the strongest possible near-term standards to cut climate pollution from cars in December 2021. This victory happened in large part because Moms Clean Air Force showed up in force at EPA’s virtual public hearing and then helped its coalition partners deliver more than 200,000 written comments in favor of the strongest possible rule to EPA Administrator Regan.

Moms Clean Air Force is now turning attention to greenhouse gas emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks. Send a message to EPA: We need strong pollution standards for trucks as soon as possible.