Watchara Phomicinda/The Orange County Register via AP
A semitruck turns into an Amazon fulfillment center in Eastvale, California, November 12, 2020.
The Revolving Door Project, a Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org.
The Clean Air Act (CAA) has been fiercely opposed by polluters and their allies since its passage in 1970. Industry has never quite stopped fighting to prevent the government from protecting American lives and communities at the expense of even a bit of their profits. But over the past few years, opposition to the law has reached new feverish heights. Multiple cases seeking to gut the CAA have been filed by (or with the support of) oil and gas organizations, their dark-money front groups, and their political allies since 2022.
The ringleaders of this effort are the usual trade groups driving climate apocalypse, including the American Fuel and Petrochemical Manufacturers (AFPM) and the American Petroleum Institute (API), as well as oil giants themselves, like ExxonMobil.
Yet the coordinated attacks on this lifesaving, popular, and historically successful regulation go beyond the singularly destructive interests of the oil industry alone. And they go beyond the federal rule too, and are working their way into litigation against state enactments of the CAA.
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Of course, many of the companies driving these suits are some of the biggest names in corporate greenwashing, like Amazon, FedEx, SoCalGas, and more.
These companies have continuously insisted that they are committed to leading the clean-energy transition, even while they fight for the right to poison the general public for profit, and have endeavored—at every turn—to destroy any opportunity the public may have to pursue recourse for it.
Truckers Suit Up
Last year, the Truck and Engine Manufacturers Association (EMA) threatened a lawsuit against the California Air Resources Board (CARB) over the state regulator’s Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) rule.
The rule, which would mandate a “phased-in transition toward zero-emission medium- and heavy-duty vehicles,” threatens the transportation sector’s historically noxious way of doing business; the sector accounts for more than 35 percent of California’s nitrogen oxide emissions and nearly a quarter of California’s on-road greenhouse gas emissions. CARB’s rule could go a long way toward actualizing rapid reductions in the state’s annually generated emissions.
However, later that year EMA and some major truck manufacturers reached an agreement with CARB not to sue over the rules, in exchange for the state’s loosening of some near-term emissions reductions standards.
EMA has by and large kept its promise to not intervene with the regulation in courts, but litigation challenging CARB’s rule would soon be picked up by the California Trucking Association (CTA). Enforcement of the rule has since been on hold, as CARB waits to be issued an ACF-related waiver from the EPA in return for CTA not filing for preliminary injunction against the law.
Even despite these agreements, some of EMA’s own members—and even some of those specifically signed on to the CARB deal—pop up on CTA’s member rolls, as per CTA’s own 2023 membership directory. Daimler Trucks North America and Navistar, Inc., are specifically listed as Allied Members of CTA for 2023.
CTA has not disclosed what differentiates its membership levels (with listings available for “Carrier Members,” “Allied Members,” and “Allied Members—Products & Services”). But whatever it may involve, Daimler and Navistar’s financial and associative support of CTA—the latest front group to attack California’s emissions regulation policies—is both notable and condemnable.
It’s also par for the course for CTA’s membership. CTA is little more than a public face for the advancement of polluting corporations’ shadowy, destructive interests, even while corporations attempt to label themselves as “partners” in building a green future.
In truth, CTA is inextricable from the corporate offenders that populate its membership books, and corporations themselves are inextricable from the poisonous policies their membership fees enable CTA to pursue.
The Broken Climate Promises of CTA Carrier Members
Amazon is listed among CTA’s Carrier Members, while separately making routine promises to be a partner in the fight against climate change. While Amazon announced its “Climate Pledge” in 2019 of reaching net-zero emissions by 2040 to great fanfare, and has since branded itself a climate leader, the Center for Investigative Reporting has detailed how the e-commerce giant is overselling its green credentials by drastically undercounting its carbon emissions.
In truth, Amazon’s emissions have increased more than 40 percent in the time since it issued the pledge. Amazon also remains the largest emitter of the “Big Five” tech companies, producing no less than 16.2 million metric tons of CO2 every year. Without question, the corporation should be regarded as an industry leader in greenwashing, rather than in actual climate action.
FedEx is also a CTA Carrier-level member. Like Amazon, the company has also made promises “to achieve carbon neutral operations by 2040,” an initiative FedEx has labeled “Priority Earth.” In the years since, FedEx has funneled intensive time and resources into lobbying directly against climate action while pushing its net-zero greenwashing narrative.
UPS is another CTA Carrier-level member. UPS has historically been less effusive in its climate promises than have other corporations on this list, but the delivery giant has continuously reinforced its stance that “everyone shares responsibility to improve energy efficiency and to reduce GHG emissions in the atmosphere.”
UPS also claims that it “supports global and national efforts to mitigate the impact of climate change.” This, too, is not quite true. After offering “broad [public] support for the electrification of transport, [UPS] directly advocated against measures to support the electrification of transportation in a May 2020 Comment to the California Air Resources Board on its proposed Advanced Clean Trucks Regulation.” UPS also settled an environmental suit in just 2021 for polluting communities in five different states with hazardous waste.
What’s more, in 2020 alone, Amazon, FedEx, and UPS together “emitted as much carbon dioxide as burning 4.5 billion pounds of coal.”
The Broken Climate Promises of CTA Allied Members
CTA’s polluting membership rolls don’t stop there.
Bridgestone Americas is a CTA Allied Member that labels itself as being on the path to carbon neutrality and celebrates itself as a “responsible steward of the environment.” Yet Bridgestone Americas’ parent company and its subsidiaries have faced more than $11.5 million in environmental violations since 2000, including $3.94 million related to its improper disposal of hazardous waste in 2022, $3.35 million in Clean Air Act violations in 2022, and another $3.35 million in CAA violations in 2021.
The multinational law firm DLA Piper LLP is another CTA Allied Member. DLA has previously “set its own science-based target to halve all emissions by 2030, including indirect emissions from the firm’s supply chain.” Yet it is notoriously friendly to fossil fuel interests, scored a D on the Climate Scorecard released by Law Students for Climate Accountability in 2023, and has routinely represented global polluters such as Shell, ExxonMobil, and BP. Climate group DeSmog found that “in 2013, DLA Piper defended ExxonMobil over an alleged 2006 gas leak in Baltimore, Maryland, and in 1989 it defended Occidental Chemicals Corporation over the historic burying of toxic waste in Love Canal, Niagara Falls—considered one of the biggest corporate environmental disasters in history.”
Another CTA Allied Member is the Southern California Gas Company. SoCalGas has a stated “aspiration to achieve net zero greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in our operations and delivery of energy by 2045.” Yet in recent years, SoCalGas has faced governmental action for misleadingly claiming that its natural gas was “renewable,” and enacting “appreciable harm” by fighting energy efficiency guidance at all levels of government. Of course, it wasn’t long ago that SoCalGas faced down a nearly $120 million fine in 2018 for releasing up to 109,000 metric tons of methane into the environment from a ruptured well in its Aliso Canyon Natural Gas Storage Facility.
In short, CTA is littered with greenwashing corporate polluters who publicly proclaim their support for climate action while privately polluting their communities and engaging in direct and indirect attacks on actual climate regulation at every level of government. They should be held accountable for it.
