The past year has been all about protecting ourselves and our children from a serious respiratory illness: COVID-19.

But as schools reopen and children return to in-person classrooms,许多孩子每天都会在造成的有毒环境中度过一部分harmto young lungs and minds: diesel-powered school buses.近乎全部的approximately 480,000iconic big yellow buses in the United States are exclusively fueled by diesel and produce diesel exhaust,已知的致癌物.

电动校车在停车场等着。
像狮子一样的电气校车可以改善数百万儿童的生活。图片由UCI可持续性/Flickr

This doesn’t need to happen. Clean electric school buses already successfully transport kids in a handful of school districts. We can and should deploy electric school buses across the nation.

这似乎是不费吹灰之力的。那么为什么开关已经发生了呢？答案是金钱。

Electric buses are便宜的操作than diesel buses over time, but initial procurement costs can be almosttriplethat of a diesel bus. Most school districts are strapped for funding, particularly in the wake of the pandemic. They can’t afford electric buses even if the证据是明确的这样的投资将使儿童健康受益，产生良好的制造业工作，并为环境更好。

Congress can tackle this problem. On April 21, 2021, theClean Commute for Kids Actwas introduced in the House and the Senate. It would provide $25 billion over 10 years to replace diesel school buses with electric, zero-emission buses. The program would be run by the Environmental Protection Agency, with the Department of Energy offering technical support. The legislation would prioritize communities that suffer disproportionately from low air quality, including and as well as low-income communities, Indigenous communities and communities of color.

该提议与拜登总统在最近发布的American Jobs Plan，这建议通过EPA的新的Clean Bus计划使至少20％的黄色校车舰队充气。在该计划涵盖的5 - 8年中，这将是约200亿美元的投资。

国会应优先考虑校车电气化的资金，如拜登的美国工作计划和《Clean Commute for Kids Act, in the next spending package. This is the moment to take action that could improve life for many millions of children and their communities for generations.

原因如下：

1.每天暴露于柴油污染中，我国最年轻的人会直接受到伤害。

Diesel buses spewpollutiondirectly into densely populated neighborhoods, but the most harmful exposure is for students who are inside the bus; pollution inside these kinds of emitting vehicles could be as much as10 times环境水平。暴露于更高水平的空气污染已关联的儿童肺发育减少。

An electric bus picking up school children.
一辆蓝鸟公共汽车捡起学童。蓝鸟照片

The magnitude of theimpact关于肺功能类似于暴露于孕产妇吸烟的功能。空气污染具有已显示通过引起导致缺勤并导致认知障碍的疾病来影响学习成绩。与交通相关的空气污染物have been associatedwith short-term fluctuations in attention for primary school students.

2.用干净的电动电动汽车代替污染的柴油校车将有助于解决美国的种族和经济股票。

空气污染的负担并非平等地分担.Twenty percent of low-income familiesdon’t own vehicles. The多数这些家庭的孩子中有公共汽车去上学。东北和中大西洋地区车辆的暴露托法污染平均是66% greaterfor communities of color than white residents.

3.在美国扩展电动巴士的使用将创造出良好的国内制造业就业机会。

副总统卡马拉·哈里斯（Kamala Harris）被电动车队包围。
Vice President Kamala Harris visiting the Thomas Built facility in North Carolina. Photo from the副总裁的官方Twitter帐户.

两个最大的校车制造商在佐治亚州（Blue Bird) and North Carolina (Thomas Built）。如果拟议的电动公交车现金注入拟议的现金注入，则两者都会增加其就业人数。增加电力校车的国内生产可以also prompt electric vehicle component suppliers to invest in the U.S. That would boost the competitiveness of the entire auto industry within the growing zero-emission vehicle market. Vice President Kamala Harris recently toured Thomas Built facilities in North Carolina, highlighting electric school buses as an important component of the Biden administration’s American Jobs Plan.

4.在美国扩大电动巴士制造业将使这些车辆更实惠。

小于1％of all school buses in the United States are electric, and the districts that use them largely do so through pilot projects that have limited funding. With the type of investment outlined in the Clean Commute for Kids Act, manufacturing costs will fall dramatically, making it more affordable for school districts to buy electric buses. Once those buses are operational, they’ll be cheaper to maintain than diesel buses. After the upfront cost,an electric school bus could save schoolsabout $2,000 in fuel costs and $4,400 in maintenance annually.

5. Replacing America’s diesel school buses with electric ones will reduce climate-warming pollution.

Imagine a world in which children grow up riding clean, electric buses to school. They’ll be accustomed to electric vehicles as the norm and expect clean-energy options as they grow up.

Electric school buses aren’t something for which we need to wait. We can deploy them now, if Congress approves the funding outlined in the legislation introduced today.

保护儿童健康应该没有任何党派。很难想象一个比对孩子的健康投资更值得的事业，因为我们建立了一个经济，这反映了一个将使我们所有人受益的未来。