Northfield, Minn.--- The Environmental Taskforce of Carleton Colleges’s branch of the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group (MPIRG) is hosting a forum on clean cars at 8 p.m. on Monday, April 13 at Carleton’s Gould Library Athenaeum, and is free and open to the public.

Scheduled to last about an hour, the forum will feature two speakers: a representative of the Sierra Club, who has been working with MPIRG to help pass the Minnesota Clean Cars Act, and Carleton’s Aaron Swoboda, who studies environmental economics and is the Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow in Economics at Carleton. The Sierra Club representative will discuss the specifics of the Minnesota Clean Cars Act, while Swoboda will address the economic implications of the legislation. Both presentations will last approximately 20 minutes, and they will be followed by a 20-minute question-and-answer session.

The forum is part of a broader MPIRG effort to educate students and members of the wider community about the benefits the legislation would have on the environment and our health. If the bill is passed, new standards will be phased in, reducing greenhouse emissions caused by cars and light-duty trucks 30 percent by 2016. Similar legislation already exists in 14 other states, including large states such as California. Minnesota’s passage of the bill would mean that 50 percent of the U.S. population would live in states with high efficiency standards.

The forum is jointly sponsored by MPIRG and the Library. For further information and disability accommodations, contact Christa Owens at owensc@carleton.edu.