[Alex Cohen:] And I'm Alex Cohen. In a few minutes, Illinois governor Rob Blagojevich is staying put for now. There are moves to force him out. We'll have the latest.
[Madeleine Brand:] But first, California is talking a big step to clean up its air. Regulators approved a plan to cut the state's greenhouse gases back to 1990 levels over the next 12 years.
[Alex Cohen:] It's the country's first comprehensive plan to deal with the issue, and it could affect nearly every industry in the state. Among the changes, new limits on diesel exhaust from trucks and buses on California roads. David Gorn of member station KQED reports on the reaction to these new restrictions.
[David Gorn:] It is 3:00 in the morning in the industrial outskirts of Hayward... East of San Francisco Bay, and the nearby freeways are empty. But here at Road Star Trucking, business is cranking up.
[Unidentified Man:] Ready to go.
[David Gorn:] Trucks are loaded up early in this yard so they can get to stores across Northern California before they open.
[Unidentified Man:] Thank you, sir.
[David Gorn:] This is Bob Ramarino's company. He's also head of the California Trucking Association, and he says his industry is now in big trouble.
[Mr. Bob Ramarino:] I've characterized it as a watershed turn of events. It's going to fundamentally change the way that trucking operates in the state of California.
[David Gorn:] That fundamental change is a requirement for all diesel trucks and buses traveling California's roads to meet new diesel emission standards by 2014. Out-of-state trucks are mostly long haulers and tend to be newer trucks, so they're not as affected by the regulation. However, older vehicles that is, all pre-2010 vehicles must be retrofitted with filters that dramatically reduce emissions of soot and other pollutants at a cost of anywhere from $10,000 to $25,000 per truck. The grand total of the bill to the trucking industry? It's expected to top $5.5 billion. But the cost of not setting tougher standards for diesel... Could be even higher.
[Dr. Thomas Daley:] This is one of the most toxic substances known to humanity. This particulate matter penetrates the lungs, penetrates the cardiovascular system, heart and blood vessels.
[David Gorn:] Dr. Thomas Daley is chief of pulmonology at Kaiser Permanente in Santa Clara. He's sitting in one of his exam rooms, and says this is where he sees the effects of diesel exhaust firsthand. Kids are at highest risk, he says, and heavy doses of particulate matter from diesel engines are particularly dangerous, he says, to everyone living and working in the urban corridor.
[Dr. Thomas Daley:] The greatest risk is those who are adjacent to freeways. If you look in the state of California, 50 percent of the California population lives within one mile of a freeway. This is all of us.
[David Gorn:] According to the state Air Resources Board, California loses about $40 billion every year in health cost and lost time on the job due to illness attributable to diesel exhaust. Dan Sperling is head of the Institute for Transportation Studies at UC Davis. He's also on the Air Resources Board. He says this transition into cleaner to truck technology will be a bumpy ride for the trucking industry, but only because it's been in the technological slow lane for so long.
[Dr. Dan Sperling:] We've been aggressively regulating cars since 1970, much more so than we have trucks. Trucks really got a buy for almost 20 years while we were intensifying the rules against the cars.
[David Gorn:] The Air Resources Board has set aside $1 billion in state bond funding to help truckers and bus operators by paying for part of the upgrade. Which might not be enough for Bob Ramarino, who runs a fleet of 30 rigs. He says retrofitting his trucks isn't worth the expense because he won't own them long enough to justify paying out that kind of money. Instead, he says, he'll junk the old ones and try to buy new trucks. Ramarino remains hopeful he can pull it off, and really scared he won't.
[Mr. Bob Ramarino:] For 30 trucks, we're looking at about $3 million of investment within five years. That's incomprehensible.
[David Gorn:] About half of the 200,000 vehicles that will need a retrofit, Ramarino says, belong to mom-and-pop operations of just one or two trucks. For those people, he says, in this economic climate, the new requirement might be a tipping point that shuts down their engines. For NPR News, I'm David Gorn.