What’s Happening

By: Elizabeth Cerceo and Catherine Chen

All across New Jersey, people are breathing in dangerous amounts of exhaust pollution known to lead to a myriad of severe health problems, including increased risk of asthma, lung disease, and cancer. We have become so accustomed to seeing, smelling and breathing in exhaust from cars and trucks that we don’t recognize the imperative to clean up our air and protect ourselves, our children, and our neighbors from this harmful, toxic pollution caused by gas-powered cars.

New Jersey is one of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the country and the transportation sector is our state’s largest emissions source, making up nearly 42% of New Jersey’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Cutting emissions from vehicles as quickly as possible will save lives and bring tremendous economic benefits to the state.

Close to 20 years ago, New Jersey became a leader in cleaning up tailpipe pollution when it passed the Clean Cars Act, and now is the time for the Murphy administration to continue that leadership with the adoption of the Advanced Clean Cars II (ACC II) standards. These health-protective standards require manufacturers to dramatically ramp up production and sales of electric, plug-in hybrid and hydrogen fuel cell cars over the next decade.

Coupled with incentives on the state and federal level, it will be easier for everyone, including lower- and middle-class families in New Jersey, to purchase electric vehicles. In our region, ACC II has been or is being adopted in New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine, Maryland, Virginia and Vermont because these states understand the urgency of the transportation pollution crisis. It’s past time for New Jersey to follow suit with full adoption of ACC II this calendar year.

According to the American Lung Association, the adoption of clean transportation policies, including ACC II, will provide enormous health benefits for New Jerseyans through 2050, including $43.6 billion in public health savings, 3,960 premature deaths prevented and 92,400 asthma attacks prevented. We can no longer afford to slow-walk the transition away from gasoline and diesel-powered vehicles. It’s time to sprint to a zero-emissions future.

We, along with hundreds of thousands of our physician colleagues across the globe, are extremely alarmed about the impact of fossil fuel pollution on public health. If you have heard people downplay the health impacts of tailpipe pollution or the seriousness of the climate crisis, consider how the tobacco industry misled the public for decades with a well-funded misinformation campaign about the health impacts of tobacco.

The fossil fuel industry learned its lessons from the tobacco industry well, spending billions of dollars over decades to misinform the public about climate change and the health harms of air pollution that spews from the tailpipes of cars and trucks all across our state.

No one is safe from polluted air and children, pregnant women, frontline communities, the elderly and those with other illnesses are being disproportionately affected. At least 8.7 million premature deaths occur annually due to fossil fuel pollution. Many times more people experience poor health with everything from heart disease to cancer and increased hospitalizations.

In California, the health impacts from air pollution and asthma prompted the public and physicians alike to demand EV adoption to protect public health. Within a short period of time, as air quality improved, asthma-related ER visits declined. At the zip code level, for every 20 EVs per 1,000 people, there was a 3.2% decrease in asthma-related ER visits along with decreased nitrogen dioxide (NO2) levels, a traffic-related air pollutant that worsens asthma and other respiratory conditions and harms the heart, brain, and other organs.

New Jersey’s proposal of these Clean Cars standards by this spring and adoption of ACC II by the end of this calendar year will ensure a well-managed and smart transition to the inevitable reality of a fully electrified transportation sector. With sales targets for new zero-emissions vehicles reasonably increasing over time, this program adopting ACC II in full in 2023 is not only environmentally just and the healthier choice, but also financially sound for New Jersey.

Electric vehicles are the future. We need to ensure a safe organized transition to clean transportation by adopting ACC II. The death knell for the internal combustion engine has already sounded. So, what are we waiting for?