Vision2020: An Achievable Plan to Save Us All from Air Toxins, Diesel Pollution & Climate Change!

Advocate for policy

Digital organizing or activism

Trainings and/or in-person engagements

Increase participation in political processes

Influence individual behavior

In 2007, LA County Metro had no money to address its soul-crushing traffic. Move LA was created to build a broad coalition to support a grand bargain on transformative change: Measures R and M will now fund the largest public infrastructure investment in the country.

We now face an even greater threat from exposure to air toxins, diesel pollution and climate change. Transportation accounts for 90% of our NOx emissions, 80% from heavy-duty vehicles, most powered by diesel engines, resulting in the dirtiest air in the country. The heaviest exposure to diesel exhaust is experienced by low-income communities of color who live along the goods movement corridors of Southern California. It is a public health and an environmental justice imperative that we seek to replace diesel with clean technologies.

In addition, transportation sources in Southern California account for 50% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions known to cause climate change. Rising seas and worsening droughts threaten our community and our world, today and for future generations.

But we now have a chance to save the world from climate change and clean our air because of decades of California leadership, leadership which has resulted in a growing array of zero-emission and advanced hybrid light-duty vehicles and the imminent deployment of zero and near-zero emission trucks. We are now poised to play a powerful role in the worldwide efforts to abate climate change while helping free our region from exposure to air toxins; all we must do is find the strategies to accelerate the deployment of these clean vehicles significantly.

Move LA has a plan: “Vision 2020: A Plan to Clean Southern California's Air and Abate Climate Change,” and we have launched a regional dialogue to build a coalition capable of addressing these two most significant challenges.

Move LA will activate 100,000 Angelenos and Southern Californians to finish our clean air and climate change mission, utilizing our innovative and successful civic engagement model to build the coalition and develop the strategy to do it.

Help us fund a two-year public outreach and coalition building effort that will:

- Identify and champion a grand bargain to win the funding needed to implement the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s mobile sources plan, which would dramatically accelerate the deployment of zero and near-zero emission light-, medium-, and heavy-duty vehicles to abate climate change and end air pollution in fifteen years.

- Implement an all-electric regional Metrolink commuter rail system and create a much more efficient goods movement system.

This effort will, we hope, culminate in legislative or ballot initiative action in 2020 (hence "Vision 2020"); when joined with the efforts of the State of California, it could create the economies of scale needed for clean transportation to be cost and performance competitive with gasoline and diesel vehicles in markets around the world.

There is little doubt that all of Earth’s communities, including and especially the coast of California, are now at risk from climate change. There is little doubt that diesel air pollution is toxic and that disadvantaged communities living along our goods movement corridors bear a devastating burden. A program and strategy will, without a doubt, make Los Angeles, and many other communities, a healthier, more just and far better place to live.

Our method of activation is both old-fashioned and innovative. It is both face-to-face and makes use of advanced social media tools. It was successfully used to engage constituencies from across the county that represent business, labor, environmentalists, environmental and social justice advocates, affordable housing organizations, faith-based groups, seniors, students, and people with disabilities for the passage of Measures R (2008) and M (2016) with support from over 2/3rds of the population. As part of our activation, we will do it again by:

- Building broad-based coalitions throughout the county, especially with environmental justice constituencies and leaders in the Inland Empire and Southeast LA County.

- Organizing regional events focused on specific issues related to clean air and climate change (one is already planned on April 19).

- Communicating electronically with hundreds of thousands of Angelenos and Southern Californians to discuss, debate, and provide input through online groups, blogs, and social media sites.

We will define and measure outcomes by:

- Success in the creation of a broad-based coalition that brings together business, labor, environmental and social justice advocates, faith, health, student, senior, persons with disabilities and under-represented groups from disadvantaged communities to the policymaking table on air pollution and climate change strategies.

- Recognition by appointed and elected leaders that we can clean our air and abate climate change while enhancing our economy by supporting the right public investments in clean technology and modernized infrastructure.

- Identification of a preferred strategy to raise the $15 to $20 Billion needed over 20 years to address the transportation-related emissions challenges at the core of this effort. This could entail legislation in Sacramento and/or going to the ballot in 2020.

- The number of people, either through their vote, in-person advocacy, or other means of engagement (such as online) who expressed their support for Vision 2020, the regional coalition or legislative/ballot initiative.

We will also measure our success by the inspiration for this project — our Executive Director’s 22-year-old son who believes that we are too late to turn back the tide on air pollution and climate change. If we can convince him that local change can have a global impact, then maybe he and we will all be able to breath easier.

In five years, we believe that leaders in California and voters across the region will have agreed on a transformative effort to finally clean our air and abate climate change. The legislature will have approved legislation and voters will have gone to the ballot in 2020 to approve funding at the level needed to accelerate the deployment of zero and near-zero emission vehicles. The agencies tasked with addressing toxic air pollution and greenhouse gases will be allocating money to accelerate deployment of clean vehicle technologies to where economies of scale enable these technologies to out-compete gasoline and diesel counterparts in the marketplace without subsidy. Our regional transportation authorities and Metrolink will be building electrified regional rail and clean truck-only lanes to further reduce toxic and GHG emissions.

While the benefits will not be immediately apparent, Southern Californians will be dumping diesel and making the transition to non-polluting vehicles. The deployment curve for zero emissions will bend ever upward to where the end of petroleum-based transportation can be seen in our skies. Move LA will continue to engage supporters to advocate for the policies necessary to further reduce emissions caused by transportation. We believe change starts locally and if we can model it here in Los Angeles, we can do it across Southern California, throughout California, around the country, and around the world.