Tell Senators: Stop the Illegitimate Attacks on our Clean Air

Republicans in Congress are attempting to grab power from states and gut vehicle standards that keep our air clean and reduce our fuel costs.

Senate Republicans are planning to try to override the rules of the Senate to push these states’ rights-trampling resolutions through — and they could vote within just a few days. Senators need to hear from you TODAY: Tell them to stop the illegal overreach >>

Friend,

Cleaner vehicle standards save families money at the pump and reduce respiratory illnesses, prevent heart disease, and safeguard against premature death. Yet, the House voted to overturn existing clean air protections and block states from setting stronger tailpipe pollution limits in the future for trucks and cars that reduce the costs of owning and operating vehicles. And now Republican senators are signalling they’ll override the rules of the Senate and defy the Clean Air Act to push these resolutions through. 

The Senate could vote on these illegitimate resolutions within just a few days. If they succeed, it would be a catastrophe for clean transportation and clean air protections. What’s more, it could open the floodgates to attack hundreds of other state programs to provide Medicaid, SNAP, education, and more.

We need your voice TODAY: Urge your senators to stop these illegitimate attacks on our air and public health.

If Congress overrides these state standards, people across the country will face severe health, economic, and environmental consequences:

1. Hurting Consumers at the Pump: Blocking standards that encourage fuel-efficient vehicles will cost consumers more than $89 billion in increased fuel costs through 2040. These standards are also key to accelerating the domestic supply chain for battery and electric vehicle manufacturing.
    
2. Harming Air Quality and Health: Cars, SUVs, and trucks are the single largest source of fine particulate pollution, which causes asthma attacks, heart attacks, strokes, premature births, lung cancer, and premature deaths. Preventing enforcement of states’ clean air standards would allow more than 1.6 billion metric tons of climate-harming emissions to be spewed into the air. More pollution means more children suffering asthma attacks and missing school, more grandparents dying prematurely, and more death and destruction from extreme weather.
    
3. Ceding Global Leadership to Other Countries: Businesses require certainty for investments in clean transportation. Overturning states’ clean air standards will kneecap companies that are investing billions of public and private sector dollars in new job-creating factories — primarily in areas like North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Michigan, Ohio, and Arizona. U.S. companies led the world auto industry for a century, and they should be leading the global clean vehicle transition now underway. This will leave domestic manufacturing behind.

Breaking these Senate rules and trying to cancel tailpipe pollution limits would affect all of us and make our planet less healthy. Tell your senators: Do NOT take away our right to clean air.

Thank you for joining us in the fight, Friend.

Darien Davis
Government Affairs Advocate, Climate Change & Clean Energy
League of Conservation Voters