Want an easy way to make your voice heard? We’ve got you covered.
As noted in the letter below (previously circulated by 350 Silicon Valley), the US Postal Service is in a position to take a giant step toward electrification or, as they currently plan, to lock themselves into internal combustion engines for another few decades – long past the time in which we need to hit carbon neutrality. Please take a look and click through to instantly create a letter voicing your opinion.
Once again, the US Postal Service under Trump holdover Louis DeJoy is going rogue. This time he’s taking on the Biden Administration’s fleet electrification goals—and the climate.
In spite of concerted objections from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the White House Council on Environmental Quality, the California Air Resources Board, and a raft of Democratic Senators, DeJoy has doubled down on his climate-ignorant plan to replace most of the nation’s aging fleet of mail delivery trucks with gas-guzzlers that are barely more efficient than the current 30-year old, 10 mpg fleet.
The EPA’s comprehensive comments make clear that the final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) the Postal Service has adopted is fatally flawed on both factual and procedural grounds, overestimating the cost of a fully electrified fleet and underestimating the feasibility of the transition to zero emissions. And, DeJoy executed a procurement contract before the review process was complete, promising $13.5 million to a manufacturer with no experience in battery electric vehicles.
Still, there is no indication that the Postal Service’s independent, conservative-dominated Board of Governors is inclined to reverse the policy or pull the contract. That’s why we’re alerting members of Congress and writing to the Board of Governors, asking them to send the EIS back to the drawing board and pull the contract, immediately.
Transportation is the single largest source of greenhouse gases in the US, and the Postal Service’s 225,000 mail trucks are fully a third of the federal fleet that President Biden has vowed to electrify. Replacing them with gas-powered vehicles over the next decade makes no sense for the climate or for the Post Office’s ever-strapped budget. As noted by EPA Associate Administrator Vicki Arroyo,
The Postal Service’s proposal as currently crafted represents a crucial lost opportunity to more rapidly reduce the carbon footprint of one of the largest government fleets in the world.
These plans must be reversed—and you can help! Click here to ask your Congressperson to take a stand for the climate, and tell the Postal Service Board of Governors to reverse Postmaster DeJoy’s disastrous decision.
