(C) Common Dreams
This story was originally published by Common Dreams and is unaltered.
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Free Shipping Isn’t Free for Everyone [1]
['Judith Lewis Mernit', 'Geoff Mcghee', 'Adapted An Interview']
Date: 2024-03
One of the best long-term solutions is to electrify the fleet of long-haul and heavy-duty trucks so they aren’t releasing any local emissions at all. Electric-truck technology is “light-years ahead” of federal and most states’ requirements, says the Sierra Club’s Garcia. Since trucks dedicated to moving goods from ports to warehouses rarely travel longer than 100 miles per day, they’re ideal for electrification.
Six states—Massachusetts, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, New York, and Maine—have already adopted California’s 2020 Advanced Clean Trucks rule, which requires that medium-to-heavy-duty trucks sold in the state get progressively cleaner over time, beginning in 2024. By 2035, 75 percent of trucks on the heavier end of the scale will have to run on electricity or an emission-free fuel. Several more states, including Colorado and Illinois, are considering following suit.
But the warehouse takeover of vulnerable communities won’t be ameliorated by laws and policy levers alone. “It’s not going to be solved just by public health specialists. It's not going to be solved just by engineers. It's not going to be solved just by the communities themselves,” says Nemmi Cole, a researcher at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine.
Bad air, wherever it comes from, doesn’t stay put—the emissions that damage warehouse neighbors’ bodies are part and parcel of those that heat up the planet. Global warming aside, Cole says, “Think about it: What if that was your child, your mother, your aunt, living along that transportation corridor from the port to the warehouse? What if one of the premature deaths policymakers attribute to pollution was your child?”
We need to understand the public health injuries of e-commerce “on a macro level,” Cole says, as if they’re hurting all of us.
Because, in fact, they are.
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[1] Url:
https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/free-shipping-isn-t-free-for-everyone
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