Clean Air, Healthy Families News Releases

Power plant pollution in the Northeast would decline by more than 20 percent in the next decade under a plan announced today by New York and other Northeast and Mid-Atlantic states.

Today the Obama administration strengthened air quality standards for particulate matter or “soot” pollution.  Soot pollution is the deadliest of the common air pollutants, causing thousands of premature deaths every year across the country through a variety of cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses.

Today the Obama administration finalized new clean car standards that will double the fuel efficiency of today’s vehicles by 2025, drastically reducing emissions of carbon pollution and cutting oil use in New York and nationwide. The standards will cover new cars and light trucks in model years 2017-2025, and require those vehicles to meet the equivalent of a 54.5 miles-per-gallon standard by 2025. A recent joint analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council and Union of Concerned Scientists projects that by 2030 in New York alone, the standards will cut carbon pollution from vehicles by more than 12 million metric tons—the equivalent of the annual pollution of 1.8 million of today’s vehicles—and save more than one billion gallons of fuel annually.

Less than a year after Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee created record flooding which devastated New York State, a new Environment New York report confirms that extreme rainstorms and hurricanes are happening 64 percent more frequently in New York since 1948. 

“As the old saying goes, when it rains, it pours—especially in recent years as bigger storms have hit New York more often,” said Eric Whalen, Field Organizer for Environment New York.  “We need to pay attention to scientists’ warnings that this dangerous trend is linked to global warming, and do everything we can to cut carbon pollution today.”