Washington, D.C. - Maryland is a wonderful place to live—except when you have to breathe.
Maryland has the fifth-worst smog problem in the nation. Further, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has found that on average the air in Maryland exceeds by a factor of 10 its recommended standard for cancer-causing chemicals. In 2003 half of Maryland’s counties received an “F” for air quality from the American Lung Association.
What’s the source of all this unhealthy air? Anyone who has sat in Beltway traffic on a hot summer day knows a big part of the answer: vehicle emissions. Vehicle exhaust is responsible for a staggering 60 percent of airborne carcinogens in Maryland and about a third of smog-forming nitrogen.
The result is awful if unsurprising. Each year Maryland sees one new case of cancer for every 1,812 of its residents, far exceeding the EPA’s benchmark of one case permillion residents. Smog and soot are responsible for 20,000 asthma attacks and 900 premature deaths in Maryland every year.
Other states provide a model for taking care of a big part of this problem. Rhode Island, for example, recently became the eighth state to finalize legislation that reduces polluting emissions from cars. The legislation, modeled after California’s exhaust rules, requires that gasoline-electric hybrid vehicles make up about 5 percent of all in-state sales and that roughly 30 percent of all new vehicles are equipped with cleaner conventional engines.
The Clean Cars Act, already introduced in Annapolis, would cleanup tailpipe emissions and increase the number of cleaner cars in Maryland using the same reasonable regulations put in place in Rhode Island and elsewhere.
Demand for hybrid vehicles already far outstrips supply in Maryland. The Clean Cars Act would help Maryland car dealers meet demand by requiring that automotive manufacturers supply more hybrids to our state. Hybrids also are popular in the District, Virginia and Pennsylvania. Having more hybrids for sale in Maryland likely would help the state’s auto dealers by attracting out-of-state buyers.
Nevertheless, some Maryland car dealers worry that the legislation might drive buyers out of state to purchase cars that do not meet the legislation’s stronger clean-air requirements. Those fears are unfounded, though.
Under the proposed legislation, only new cars that comply with the Clean Cars Act standards could be titled in Maryland. Moreover, car dealer associations in states that already have clean car standards—such as California, Connecticut and Massachusetts—report no decrease in sales or other problems because of the tighter exhaust regulations. As an added benefit to taxpayers, the Clean Cars Act standards require almost no public dollars for implementation.
Low-emission cars make good economic as well as environmental sense. Our nation’s heavy reliance on petroleum now leaves us susceptible to spiking oil prices and vulnerable to supply disruptions.
By increasing the availability of low-emission cars in Maryland, the Clean Cars Act would improve both the quality of Maryland’s air and the profits of our state’s car dealers. Its passage would mean that our state could be as proud of its great air quality as it is of all its other wonderful attributes.