The Impact of Moms
Over the years, Moms Clean Air Force has contributed mightily to important wins for our children on both the legislative and the regulatory fronts.
Moms Clean Air Force is the largest and oldest group organizing mothers to fight climate change and air pollution. We regularly partner with and lend support to other environmental and justice groups as we do our work together, sharing resources, data, spokespeople, and training.
Moms Clean Air Force strives to be nonpartisan—or as we like to say, Mompartisan—working toward practical, commonsense, and effective solutions on behalf of all of our children’s health.
Read our 2023 Annual Report
Historic Investments in Solutions to Climate Change
On August 16, 2022, President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 into law. This bill is a stunning achievement. It contains a historic level of investment in cutting climate pollution—$369 billion—and puts the US on a path to cut greenhouse gas emissions 40% by 2030.
Moms Clean Air Force staff and members worked for 18 months to get these unprecedented investments in clean energy and transportation passed. We sent more than 80,000 emails to members of Congress, had more than 300 meetings with congressional offices, and planned and participated in more than 100 events to raise awareness about how this funding could protect our communities and ensure climate safety. During the final two weeks before the bill was passed, when it was being considered in the Senate and then the House, we made dozens of phone calls to our members of Congress. Read more about our work to help pass this important legislation.
The Inflation Reduction Act is a smart and necessary investment in our children’s future and an incredible win for the climate community. This bill marks the beginning of a significant new chapter in our work at Moms—advocating for an equitable and safe buildout of a new, massive clean energy grid and transportation system.
Moms By the Numbers
- On the ground: In addition to our national staff, we are proud to have 19 organizers working in 13 states and Washington, DC.
- Meeting with lawmakers: In 2023, our staff and volunteers met with their congressional lawmakers to discuss climate change and air pollution 192 times.
- Taking action: In 2023, our members contacted EPA and their legislators about climate and clean air issues nearly 151,000 times.
- In the media: In 2023, Moms Clean Air Force appeared in 2,580 articles, broadcasts, radio shows, op-eds, and letters to the editor, in outlets large and small, national and international.
192 Meetings with Congress
by our staff and members
in 2023 to discuss climate change
and pollution.
151,000 Messages
to EPA and lawmakers
sent by our members
about climate and clean air
issues in 2023.
2,680 media
appearances
in 2023 — including articles,
broadcasts, radio shows,
op-eds, and more.
Legislative Wins
The Frank R. Lautenberg Chemical Safety for the 21st Century Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2016. This law was passed with overwhelming bipartisan support and is designed to help protect our children from exposure to toxic chemicals. Moms Clean Air Force led the way at the grassroots level for support of this bill.
The bipartisan Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden in November 2021. This bill invests $1.2 trillion in rebuilding and repairing roads, bridges, and railways; expanding access to clean drinking water and reliable broadband internet; creating well-paying, in-demand jobs for our families; addressing the climate crisis; and advancing environmental justice. This is the largest investment in upgrading US infrastructure in the last 70 years. Moms Clean Air Force members advocated for several important climate provisions in this bill, including funding for clean electric school buses and for the cleanup of oil and gas pollution from orphan wells.
In May 2022, EPA launched its Clean School Bus Program, which will distribute the $5 billion in clean and zero-emission school bus funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act over the next five years. Moms joined Vice President Kamala Harris and EPA Administrator Michael Regan at Meridian High School in Falls Church, Virginia, to celebrate this historic investment in electric school buses. We continue to work with EPA to ensure this money goes to the school districts that need it the most.
The Inflation Reduction Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Biden in August 2022. This once-in-a-generation legislation includes an unprecedented $369 billion investment in cutting climate pollution. Moms Clean Air Force members spent 18 months advocating for several important climate provisions in this bill, including a fee on methane pollution to push energy companies to plug methane leaks, tax credits for wind and solar power, and tax credits to help people buy electric cars. We also supported the $60 billion investment in environmental justice, including funds to address environmental health problems, improve access to transportation, improve air quality near ports, and increase air pollution monitoring.
Moms are currently working to pass bills on a range of issues, including regulating methane pollution from oil and gas operations, ensuring environmental justice, cleaning up the electric grid, protecting maternal health from the impacts of climate change, building out electric vehicle infrastructure charging stations, and electrifying school buses. Learn more about the Legislation We Support.
At heart, Moms Clean Air Force is about bringing back old-fashioned values of citizenship, and opening doors for mothers to participate in our democratic process on issues about which they care passionately, to protect our children and their future.
Regulatory Wins
Moms Clean Air Force has organized our members to advocate for health-protective pollution standards from the Environmental Protection Agency. We educate our membership, mobilize written comments to public dockets, organize and support testifiers at public hearings, meet with EPA and White House officials, collaborate with community groups and other advocacy allies, and raise our voices in local, state, and national media outlets. Major campaigns have included:
Mercury and Air Toxics Standards (MATS)
Moms Clean Air Force was birthed in 2011 through a fight for national standards to protect babies from mercury—a brain poison that comes from coal-fired power plants. When we learned that the Trump administration wanted to undermine those standards, we made it a top priority to fight this effort every step of the way. Our perspective became central in the national conversation.
Methane
In 2016, we celebrated the finalization of EPA setting first-ever standards to limit methane emissions from oil and gas operations. But the next administration sought to roll back these vital climate and health protections. EPA’s efforts to undermine limits on methane pollution culminated in 2020, and we fought them at every turn.
In 2021, we mobilized to reinstate federal methane standards, and we won. With bipartisan votes, the House and Senate reinstated the 2016 standards and jump-started EPA efforts to strengthen a methane rule that protects families and communities from harmful air pollution and climate change.
EPA proposed preliminary rules to cut methane and other harmful pollutants from new and existing oil and gas operations in November 2021. Dozens of Moms showed up at a public hearing shortly after to urge EPA to strengthen this proposal—and thousands more Moms submitted written comments. EPA listened and released an updated methane proposal in 2022 that was stronger on leak detection and repair requirements, inspections of small and abandoned wells, and the minimization of highly polluting incidents.
President Biden and EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced the finalization of comprehensive methane protections in December 2023. In the two years leading up to this announcement, Moms members gave 100 testimonies at public hearings and submitted nearly 50,000 comments on the proposed rules. The new safeguards—which will cut methane pollution from covered sources 80% by 2038—are a testament to the power of collective action.
Clean Car Standards
Moms Clean Air Force has mobilized strong grassroots support from every part of the country to push for robust tailpipe emissions standards for passenger vehicles and light trucks, one of largest sources of climate pollution in the US. In 2020, EPA updated these standards with much weaker requirements, and Moms Clean Air Force fought this dangerous weakening with grassroots action, testimony, meetings, media outreach, and more. With an EPA now recommitted to climate action and environmental justice, Moms Clean Air Force is turning out in force to support more ambitious pollution reductions from the auto industry.
In December 2021, EPA Administrator Michael Regan announced finalized—and ambitious—Clean Car Standards for model years 2023–26 that will greatly reduce greenhouse gases and air pollution. These final protections were significantly strengthened from EPA’s original proposal after Moms Clean Air Force and our coalition partners submitted more than 200,000 comments in favor of the strongest possible protections from tailpipe pollution.
Clean Trucks Plan
In December 2022, EPA announced its Clean Trucks Plan, outlining a series of actions that the agency will take to reduce pollution from new freight trucks and buses. The plan finalizes important federal protections against nitrogen oxide (NOx) pollution from new medium- and heavy-duty diesel vehicles—significantly reducing that pollution to save thousands of lives. With the plan, EPA also committed to moving swiftly to recognize California’s separate emission standards for new freight trucks and to adopting new standards in 2023 that will chart the path to zero emissions from the freight trucks and buses in our neighborhoods and on our roadways. By leveraging the extensive investments for deploying zero-emitting vehicles laid out in the Inflation Reduction Act, the Clean Trucks Plan presents a vital modernization of EPA’s approach to protections to public health from truck pollution.
Dozens of Moms Clean Air Force members gave testimony at EPA’s public hearing in April 2022 in support of its proposal to clean up tailpipe pollution from heavy-duty trucks and buses. Thousands more sent written comments to the agency. Thanks to our advocacy, Moms Clean Air Force Texas coordinator Erandi Treviño and 10-year-old Kids Clean Air Force member Zahra Halakhe were invited to speak at the EPA event announcing the Clean Trucks Plan.
Soot Pollution
In February 2024—for the first time in over a decade—EPA finalized new protections for soot pollution, also known as particle pollution or PM 2.5. The new protections strengthened the standard from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter—a significant improvement that will save lives, prevent asthma attacks, and avoid numerous other health harms. Soot pollution is a killer. In the U.S. alone, it cuts short the lives of well over 100,000 people per year, a staggering toll. This was an important step toward cleaner, healthier air for all children—and a hard-fought win for Moms Clean Air Force. Our members delivered 60 personal testimonies at the EPA hearing on this rule and more than 11,500 written comments.
Ozone Pollution
In 2015, we joined a groundswell of grassroots support for stronger national protections from ground-level ozone, or smog, resulting in EPA lowering the standard from 75 parts per billion (ppb) to 70 ppb. In 2020, the Trump administration declined to strengthen the ground-level ozone standards, despite robust science indicating that the standards are not adequately protecting our health, and despite an outpouring of grassroots support for more protection. We are currently advocating for the EPA to fix this harmful mistake.