Unkind cut!

More than 50,000 high-polluting diesel engines have been cleaned up or removed from U.S. roads in a federal program designed to reduce smog and greenhouse gases, according to the Environmental Protection Agency. School buses and long-haul trucks accounted for almost 40,000 of the approximately 52,000 engines that were replaced or upgraded to cleaner technologies between 2008 and 2010. There are about 15 million diesel trucks and buses in the United States, according to the EPA. Now that programme stands starved of funds with the government slashing funds by more than half!

About 230,000 tons of soot and smog-causing pollutants and more than two million tons of carbon dioxide were eliminated, according to the report. In addition, 205 million gallons of fuel were saved.

Roughly 11 million pre-2006 vehicles and other diesel engines remain – spewing a harmful mix of gas and particles linked to cancer and deaths from respiratory disease and heart attacks, according to the EPA.

A 2005 report from the Clean Air Task Force, a nonprofit environmental group, estimated diesel fumes are responsible for about 21,000 premature deaths in the United States per year. About 45 million people live within 300 feet of a freeway in the United States, according to the EPA.

Diesel also is a major contributor of black carbon, a component of particulate matter linked to a short-term warming effect. The EPA estimates about 52 percent of black carbon emitted in the United States is from diesel vehicles. The 12,500-ton reduction in particulate matter attributed to the program suggests big black carbon reductions as well. Overall black carbon emissions are on pace to be reduced 80 percent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels, according to the EPA.

So why the budget cuts one wonders!