At a time when America has gained not only energy independence, but global dominance of the energy industry, which is improving the lives of untold millions upon millions of people, making the cost of living less expensive and improving the quality of life for the nation's poorest and least well-off, California's Democrats are pushing in the exact opposite direction, pushing a fad technology that has not shown to reduce so-called climate emissions.
What a total disaster.
This is the problem with living in a one-party state. The majority becomes diabolically infected with the most ugly hubris, thinking their notions of "what's best" is the only way things should be done. For example, how's that bullet train working out, pfft?
And these freakin' electric vehicles leftists are promoting? People will die driving those human death traps. People will die!
In any case, I swear I'll move.
At LAT, "At Jerry Brown's climate summit, one deadline will overshadow all the others":
California plans to ban sales of internal combustion cars by 2035, outlaw them completely by 2050; assuming anyone will still be living there https://t.co/m0ERMMdZuP— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 12, 2018
from my cold dead hands, motherf***ers pic.twitter.com/rfbt7rk4ZS— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) September 12, 2018
The political leaders coming from around the world for Gov. Jerry Brown’s climate action summit this week will grapple with a lot of urgent deadlines to drive down emissions, but one date is especially exasperating.Still more, if you can stomach the idiocy.
It is 2035 — the year advocates aim to kill off production of gasoline- and diesel-powered vehicles.
Keeping global warming to levels society can tolerate could hinge on meeting that target. But even clean-tech-nology capital California has no clear path for getting there.
The question of whether drivers should be gently persuaded or forced out of their internal combustion engine cars and trucks over the next 17 years will weigh heavily on the landmark summit, which runs from Wednesday through Friday in San Francisco.
States, cities and companies will try to chart a course to carry the country and the world toward meeting the goals in the 2015 Paris agreement on climate change, which President Trump has disavowed.
Transportation is the most vexing problem the summit will confront. The sector sends more greenhouse gases into the air than any other, recently outpacing power plants, which are getting cleaner every year. Internal combustion engine cars need to be off the roads altogether by 2050 to meet the Paris goals. Dealers would need to stop selling new models 15 years earlier.
“Even during the Obama administration, when the country was pushing as hard and fast as it could onclimate policy, it still wasn’t enough” to meet the goals on auto emissions, said Kate Larsen, a director at Rhodium Group, a Bay Area research firm.
Rhodium’s modeling shows that just 8% of U.S. drivers will be in zero-emission cars, pickups or SUVs by 2025, a depressing projection for the climate movement.
The urgency is not lost on Brown. Last year, he directed the state’s chief air regulator, Mary Nichols, to look into stepping up the state’s timetable to phase out gas and diesel vehicles. It gnaws at him that other nations are already catapulting ahead.
Electric vehicles account for 5% of cars sold in California and 1% nationwide. In Norway, they make up 40%. Bans on the sales of new gasoline- and diesel-powered cars are scheduled to take effect there and in several other countries as soon as 2025. China has put automakers on notice that a ban is on the horizon.
But it is a much tougher sell in America, even in California. A state legislative proposal this year to ban the sale of new gas-powered cars and trucks by 2040 went nowhere.
“You want me to issue a press release saying, ‘No more combustion engines’?” Brown said in an interview Monday. “There are 32 million in California. It doesn’t work that way. We have to provide an alternative…. We have to get that in place.”
The shift toward electric vehicles in parts of Europe and Asia is bolstered by government subsidies and tax structures that few American politicians would consider. They include tough gas-guzzler penalties for those who drive high-horsepower, climate-unfriendly pickups and SUVs, and large cash grants and tax breaks for those who buy electric.
The U.S. approach is grounded in requiring automakers to meet steadily more ambitious mileage-per-gallon targets, a process that has gone a long way in cutting carbon emissions...
