{
"type": "rich",
"version": "1.0",
"provider_name": "Action Network",
"provider_url": "https://actionnetwork.org",
"html": "",
"author_name": "ATNJ",
"author_url": "https://actionnetwork.org/groups/atnj-2",
"title": "Support ACT (Advanced Clean Trucks) Now!",
"thumbnail_url": "https://actionnetwork.org//images/generic_facebook.jpg",
"description": "BACKGROUND As New Jersey prepares to implement the Advanced Clean Truck (ACT) rule in 2025, industry players operating in bad faith are manufacturing a false crisis in the hopes of pressuring state regulators to delay implementation of the standard or pull out of the program altogether. ACT was developed as a life-saving standard to be phased in over time and to address devastating truck pollution, a significant source of climate and health-harming emissions. With the Trump administration coming into office, we need to do what we can to protect the health and way of life of New Jerseyans. The Advanced Clean Truck (ACT) rule was adopted by New Jersey in 2021 and requires manufacturers to sell gradually increasing percentages of zero-emission trucks. Implementation of the Advanced Clean Trucks standards is set to begin on January 1, 2025, and the trucking industry is claiming they cannot comply with the regulations as written for at least another two years. The claim by industry that they cannot comply with ACT is disingenuous given that the standards first passed in June of 2020, giving industry four and a half years to start to manufacture cleaner trucks in a slow and phased in approach that the rule allows for and to use credits to comply in the early years of the standards when vehicles and engines may not yet be available. Multiple states have adopted these rules. The faster the market for clean trucks expands, the faster they get cheaper, and the faster the national fleet gets cleaner. WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF DELAYING THIS FOR 2 MORE YEARS? Pollution from medium and heavy-duty trucks can cause or worsen asthma, lung disease and cancer leading to avoidable premature deaths. Over 50% of all smog forms NOx pollution, which can lower your resistance to lung infections, and can cause breathing problems for people with lung diseases, like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). 45% of diesel soot, also known as fine particulate matter, finds its way deep into the lungs resulting in early death attributed to cardiovascular diseases, like heart attacks and strokes, as well as lung cancer, reproductive and developmental harm, and dementia. New Jersey has more highways per square mile than any other state in the country. Large populations are densely clustered downwind from major highways, roads, ports, railyards, and warehouses, where they are chronically exposed to high levels of toxic diesel pollution. In 2023, diesel pollution in the state of New Jersey is estimated to have caused nearly $3.8 billion in monetized health damages, including more than 300 lives lost. Nationwide, people of color and low-income communities have disproportionately high exposure to diesel exhaust. Communities located closest to warehouses, ports, and other transportation hubs are often disproportionately low income communities of color and impacted the most by diesel pollution. Historically unjust housing policies mean communities located near major roadways are more likely to be low income communities of color. Low-income communities and communities of color bear an unfair burden of medium and heavy duty truck pollution, having suffered generations of systematic marginalization that forces frontline communities to live closer to warehouses, transit centers and highways.",
"url": "https://actionnetwork.org/letters/support-act-advanced-clean-trucks-now"
}