An executive order was forcing passenger vehicles sold in California starting in 2035 bans fossil fuels in the largest car market of the United States.
The progressive government of the State of California —the US largest car market— will ban regular gas cars by 2035, in an ambitious democratic move that governor Gavin Newsom announced this Wednesday. This decision sets the stage for a new regional standoff with Washington DC, whose lobbying against carbon emissions in California has been dragging for years.
This initiative comes in the middle of a climate crisis, as record flash fires ravage the entire United States’ west coast. California already planned to reduce carbon emissions. They’re the state with the most strict carbon emissions in the Union. The woke legislature of California —the same one that removes the statue of Queen Isabella of Spain from its State Capitol in a Black Lives Matter iconoclast rampage— plans to make of California a state which energy needs come in their entirety by renewable sources.
Gavin Newsom considers that the current situation requires legislators to accelerate making California go gree as fast as possible. Flash fires have burnt nearly 1.3 million hectares.
While the governor’s mandate sets a goal, it doesn’t regulate the situation. What it does is that the governmental institution in charge of regulating environmental issues have to do the work to make it happen. That mandate also includes freight trucks, a tough challenge for the automotive industry.
The fierce flash fires that ravage the western United States also make the electoral debate even more furious because the Trump train is skeptical on the matter while not being openly in denial. California has problems with the quality of its air because of its car culture. For fifty years, it has federal provisions to be tougher on climate issues than any other state within the US, a fact that forces carmakers to adapt to what the government and its whimsical leadership wants.
California car sales account for 11% of the entire market, so that means that the state sets the rules for carmakers in the US. In fact, the trends start in California and expand all over that nation.
The Trump Administration eliminated California’s state provisions on the limits of its carbon emissions. This pending matter will end up likely in a Supreme Court with a favorable opinion towards the current Oval Office occupant as Trump will nominate a conservative judge and have it approved by a Republican-dominated Senate. The California anti-fossil fuel move was also frowned upon by a powerful lobby, the oil and gas industry, whose presence in neighboring states and deep hands in the pockets of many Washington politicians from both sides of the aisle —but more on the republican side— consider the mandate unfair.
California’s environmental authorities blame the transportation sector for half of the pollution and carbon emissions in that state. A direct consequence of living in the crowded metropolis that the sunny liberal government creates and fosters.
It is astonishing how a state that gave two republican presidents can become so backwardly to the Left regarding politics.
