Wisconsin Sec. of State Godlewski in La Crosse promoting electric buses in fighting climate change

A hot and muggy summer in Wisconsin could help state residents pay more attention to climate change, and ways to make the air cleaner.

Wisconsin Secretary of State Sarah Godlewski joined activists and others at the MTU headquarters on Isle La Plume on Thursday, to promote the use of electric buses and other practices to help the environment.

Godlewski spoke about her 3-year-old son being disappointed on a recent smoggy day, when he couldn’t go outdoors.

“This is what kids in Wisconsin look forward to in the summer,” she said. “They want to spend time outside. But our air quality was so bad in Wisconsin, it was worse than places like California and China.”

Godlewski is supporting national standards for clean-running cars which could sharply increase the number of electric vehicles on the road within 10 years.

La Crosse’s experiment in using electric city buses has already gotten national attention, through a visit by President Joe Biden two years ago. MTU director Adam Lorentz says the city has plans to add to the two electric buses now on the street.

“It doesn’t end with these two buses here. Our plan in the future is to grow an electric fleet by at least three more in the next five years,” Lorentz told reporters.

The federal proposal calls for those electric vehicle standards to lead to a majority of new cars in the U.S. being electric by the year 2032.