A driver fills up at the Castaic Truck Stop in Los Angeles County on March 23. A surge in diesel prices is raising costs for truckers, who drive some of the smoggiest vehicles.

It’s tough to think of the early 2020s as a particularly golden time in California. We were mostly still stuck inside during the pandemic, and historic wildfires gave us orange days and generational dread. But in those years, California finally, heroically, passed major new standards to tackle the dirtiest, smoggiest vehicles on its roads: large diesel trucks. We were finally shifting to better, nonpolluting options.

If only we had stayed on track. 

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In 2025, the Trump administration took the best swing they could at California, using gimmicks in Congress to attack the vehicle standards protecting California’s air quality. The Environmental Protection Agency, meanwhile, has turned on itself, stripping away key federal authority to protect human life. The cost to California in the coming decades will amount to $50 billion in early deaths and health care expenses alone, according to an analysis from the Environmental Defense Fund.

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Things suddenly aren’t looking so good for fixing the largest source of air pollution in California — everything running on fossil fuels that moves on wheels.

Premium gasoline prices above $6 per gallon and diesel fuel prices above $7 a gallon are displayed outside of a Shell........

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