Thursday: At 2019 Washington Auto Show, Activists to Denounce Ford’s Collusion with Trump Administration to Roll Back Clean Car Standards
April 2, 2019
MEDIA ADVISORY
Thursday: At 2019 Washington Auto Show, Activists to Denounce Ford’s Collusion with Trump Administration to Roll Back Clean Car Standards
Ford’s Outsized Pollution Rivals a Tyrannosaurus Rex
WHAT: As the auto world gathers in Washington, D.C., for the 2019 auto show, public interest groups – including consumer, health, faith and environmental organizations – will host a press conference to denounce Ford Motor Company’s lobbying of the Trump administration to roll back fuel economy and greenhouse gas emissions standards, popularly known as the clean car standards.
With a 10-foot tall inflatable Tyrannosaurus rex and grassroots activists dressed as dinosaurs, the groups will outline the health and environmental impacts of Ford’s pollution and the company’s effort to undo the rules.
The dinosaurs are meant to illustrate Ford’s outsized pollution; the annual climate pollution emitted from just one of the company’s Expedition SUVs (9 tons) is the equivalent of the weight of a Tyrannosaurus rex.
WHEN: 11 a.m., EDT Thursday, April 4
WHO: Representatives from Public Citizen, Sierra Club, Interfaith Power & Light and Safe Climate Campaign
WHERE: Corner of 9th Street NW and Mt. Vernon Place NW next to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center
Background: In January 2017, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) concluded that the clean car standards are working and achievable. The clean car standards are the country’s largest-ever effort to reduce climate pollution, limiting carbon pollution by 6 billion tons, saving consumers $1.7 trillion dollars in fuel costs and reducing oil consumption by up to 4 million barrels every day.
Yet last April – at the request of Ford and other automakers and without any change in the facts – then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt reversed the decision, ignoring the research and analysis that supports keeping these commonsense standards. The Trump administration has proposed a new rule that would freeze the standards at 2020 levels and revoke California’s waiver under the Clean Air Act, which allows the state and 12 others to protect their residents’ health from harmful tailpipe pollution with state standards that are stronger than those of the federal government.
Despite helping to craft the greenhouse gas emissions and fuel economy standards, since Trump’s election, automakers have pushed to roll them back. Ford has publicly claimed to care about climate and its consumers even while Ford executives have met with administration officials behind closed doors about weakening the standards.