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The United States continues to need strong clean car standards that reduce vehicle pollution and improve efficiency to protect our health, environment and climate, while strengthening U.S. manufacturing competitiveness and creating American jobs. The Alliance opposes this effort by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to weaken these standards, as it will not only cost our residents more at the pump, but hurt children, senior citizens and people living with respiratory illness. It will limit the ability of Alliance states to meet their own emission reduction targets and take crucial climate action.
Recognizing that climate change presents a serious threat to our environment, residents, communities, and economy, the Alliance remains committed to meeting its share of the U.S. emissions reduction contribution to the Paris Agreement. This proposal to roll back the standards undermines one of the country’s best climate programs and constitutes an unwarranted attack on consumers, our environment, our health, and longstanding tenets of cooperative federalism enshrined in the Clean Air Act. We urge you to withdraw the proposal.
Launched on June 1, 2017 by the governors of Washington, New York, and California to help fill the void left by the previous administration’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, the Alliance has grown to include 24 governors from across the U.S. representing approximately 60% of the U.S. economy and 55% of the U.S. population. Governors in the Alliance have pledged to collectively reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025, at least 50-52% below 2005 levels by 2030, and collectively achieve overall net-zero greenhouse gas emissions as soon as practicable, and no later than 2050.
The Alliance’s states and territories continue to demonstrate that climate action goes hand-in-hand with economic growth, job creation, and better public health. While reducing collective greenhouse gas emissions by 19%, Alliance members increased their collective GDP by 30%. The coalition’s states and territories are employing more workers in the clean energy sector, achieving lower levels of dangerous air pollutants, and preparing more effectively for climate impacts and executing more pre-disaster planning than the rest of the country.
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