Background
OSPIRG is working with the Clean Cars for Oregon coalition to bring cleaner cars to Oregon. With Oregon’s legacy of environmental leadership and innovation, we should be moving to get cleaner cars onto our roads now. This step is critical to addressing global warming, which is already starting to affect our local environment in Oregon. Solving global warming will require global action, Oregon should lead the way in curbing global warming pollution.

Oregon’s Legacy of Environmental Leadership and Innovation
Oregon has a long history of innovative state policies to increase our quality of life and protect our environment. Starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we passed some of the strongest and earliest environmental laws in the nation: the Beaches Act made all of our beaches public property, the bottle bill dramatically increased recycling and resource conservation and our land use planning laws provided a national model for preserving open space and farmland.

Oregon is also on the forefront of clean and renewable energy solutions. We are one of the largest solar markets in the country, home to the nation’s largest wind farm, and Portland has the highest per-capita hybrid car ownership of any American city.

But with the threat of global warming, we have to do more.

Global Warming Solutions
There is now scientific consensus that global warming is changing the world we live in, and the problem isn’t just far away. Sea levels are rising on parts of the central and northern Oregon Coast and spring snowpack in the Cascades has shrunk by half. That means that glaciers are shrinking in the mountain range that is home to Oregon icons like Mt. Hood and Crater Lake. Reduced spring snowpack also means summer river flows are falling, which could hurt farmers’ ability to irrigate and the salmon’s ability to spawn.

Global warming will require national and global solutions, but with the Bush administration refusing to act, Oregon should resume its legacy of environmental leadership and lead the nation in addressing global warming.

Cars and light trucks are Oregon’s second-biggest source of global warming pollution, accounting for about 20%, and because there are more cars on the road and people are driving more miles, it’s getting worse. Putting cleaner cars on the roads in Oregon will be Oregon’s first major step toward cutting our global warming pollution

Cleaner Cars for Oregon
We already know cleaner cars are available now. This includes advanced technology to make conventional cars dramatically cleaner. Technology like direct-injection engines, advanced transmissions, and improved air conditioning systems. There are also even more advanced cars, like hybrids, which combine combustion engines with electric motors that either replace the combustion engine or provide part of the power, to reduce the burning of fossil fuels.

The Clean Cars program is a policy that aims to put cleaner cars on the road in two ways. First, the program requires automkakers to use existing technology to cut global warming emissions by a third from cars and light trucks to cut their emissions by a quarter by 2016. Second, it drives technological innovation by requiring that automakers put a minimum number of advanced-technology cars on the roads. Starting in 2009, car-makers would have to sell about 7,000 hybrids per year in Oregon and about 30,000 high-technology clean conventional cars.

Bringing Clean Cars to Oregon
The State PIRGs have helped to establish Clean Cars programs in nine states so far; Oregon will be the 10th. In Oregon, the Governor has the authority to establish the program and has already instructed the Department of Environmental Quality to do so by drafting rules for approval by the Environmental Quality Commission later this year.

The auto industry is pushing back hard, however, so OSPIRG is working to build the political support necessary to make sure they don’t succeed in blocking or delaying the program.

Detroit Spending to Block Oregon’s Leadership
Unfortunately, the auto industry is determined to spend as much as it takes to block global warming solutions. This past spring, the Washington legislature decided that they’ll adopt the Clean Cars program, but it only goes into effect if Oregon does the same. So now the auto industry wants to stop both programs and stopping Governor Kulongoski from following through is their last chance. For more information on the auto industry’s backdoor tactics click here.

Our Plan to Win
OSPIRG has a track record of winning public interest victories. Just this summer we helped pass bills to expand solar energy in Oregon and increase energy efficiency. So OSPIRG is going to make sure the auto industry doesn’t succeed in blocking or delaying the Clean Cars program. To do that, we are building a coalition of influential leaders and organizations, getting the word out to Oregonians through the media, and making sure he hears from Oregonians who support Clean Cars and addressing global warming.