Biden’s Proposal to Ban Gas-Powered Vehicles Sparks Economic Concerns

When future historians decide to write the definitive treatise on the downfall of the state of California, we can be sure that the final days of August 2022 will feature very prominently.

It was on August 25 that the state announced a bold plan to ban the sale of gas-powered vehicles by the year 2035. Everything had to be electric from that point forward. What would that do to the economy of the state of California, given how expensive electric vehicles are? Where were we going to get the materials to manufacture all of these new EV batteries? No one seemed to care.

Local news anchors, however, were elated. Watch: 

When the news broke, a lot of commentators on the Right made the point that the euphoria would probably be short-lived. But no one quite had any idea just how short-lived it would be. Just six days after California’s big announcement mandating electric vehicles, the state’s power grid failed. And it failed in spectacular fashion. The state declared a level-one power emergency.

For seven days, residents were ordered to conserve power whenever possible, including by shutting off appliances between 5:00 and 10:00 p.m. (They call that a “Flex Alert” in California, because it happens so often that they need a catchy brand name for it).

Watching this debacle from the safety of their air-conditioned living rooms, many Americans thought: “Well, that’s probably it for California’s lofty EV mandate. Surely they’re going to rethink things after this.” After all, if the state doesn’t have a reliable power grid, to the point that people have to disable their toasters in the evening, then there’s no way the grid can possibly tolerate millions of new electric vehicles that start charging all at once. You can’t tell people to turn off their cars at sundown. No one will go for that, especially when they have reliable gas-powered cars already. That’s not a knock against EVs; it’s just true. Without infrastructure, there’s no reason to buy one of these cars.

WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show

But that’s not how California’s local media responded to these power outages. It’s not how Gavin Newsom responded, either. They didn’t pause and rethink anything. Instead, they all doubled down on California’s commitment to so-called “renewable energy,” even as they acknowledged that this renewable energy was responsible for the brownouts. Watch:

As of 2022, when that footage aired, more than one-third of California’s energy came from renewable sources, including solar and wind power. Gavin Newsom has said he wants that number to be 100% by 2045. And, as you saw, Gavin Newsom acknowledges that these “renewables” are one of the reasons that California’s grid had just collapsed.

But despite all of that, he doesn’t roll back the EV mandate. He doesn’t change his plan for renewables in any way. In fact, just a couple of weeks after he declared a statewide emergency due to a lack of power caused by renewable energy, Newsom again reiterated his commitment to the EV mandate and to a “renewable” energy grid.

We know why that is. It’s because Gavin Newsom lacks any capacity for shame or self-doubt. What you may not know — and what’s truly hard to believe — is that California’s bad ideas are no longer confined to California. Somehow, seven other states, as well as the District of Columbia, have signed onto California’s plan to rid the world of gas-powered vehicles, which is known as the “Advanced Clean Cars II rule.” The states that have signed on include Rhode Island, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, and Washington. And to be clear, when I say they’ve adopted California’s plan, I mean they’re explicitly adopting it by name. The Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management, for example, says it’s eager to adopt the quote, “California standard.”

Each of these seven states, like California, now plans to ban all sales of new gas-powered cars starting in 2035. 

Specifically, the rules say that only cars with zero emissions, including EVs and a small number of plug-in hybrids, can be sold. And by the way, there’s a gradual ramp-up to the total ban. California’s rule requires a third of new car sales to be “zero-emission vehicles” by 2026, and roughly 70% of new car sales to be “zero-emission” by 2030. Existing gas-powered vehicles aren’t affected.

There are other states that have adopted rules to limit the number of gas-powered vehicles on the road, including New Mexico, Delaware, and Colorado. So they won’t ban them all outright, although it’s clear they’re getting there. But the state-by-state discussion is becoming moot, because the Biden administration has just quietly issued its own rule that will essentially have the same effect as California’s ban. The federal government is trying to phase out all gas-powered vehicles — and they’re going to do it in the same undemocratic, ham-fisted way as all of these states.

They’re not going to pass a law, or let voters decide the issue.

Instead, the feds have issued new “emissions standards,” which function as a de facto ban on many gas cars. Watch:

It’s a very sing-songy segment. The reporter assures us that this EPA rule isn’t anything like an EV mandate, because it doesn’t strictly require that automakers only manufacture EVs. Technically they can make hybrids and “hydrogen” cars too, although those don’t really exist right now — a small problem you’re not supposed to concern yourself with.

Incidentally, that happens to be the same line that the EPA administrator trotted out when he announced these new rules. He claimed that the agency is simply expanding “consumer choice.” But of course they’re doing the opposite. That talking point completely obscures what’s really happening here. The Biden administration is using the EPA to effectively pass a law banning the sale of most gas cars, without ever consulting the voters.

Specifically, the EPA’s new rule demands that car manufacturers slash emissions on all new passenger cars, SUVs, crossovers, minivans, light trucks, and pickups by roughly 50%, by the year 2032. And by the EPA’s own estimates, that means that up to 56% of new vehicles will have to be EV’s, and at least 13% will need to be plug-in hybrids. That is a massive reduction on the number of gas-powered cars that will be allowed on the road.

Marlo Lewis, a Senior Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), assessed that under these rules,

…even if … Toyota scrapped all its vehicles and just manufactured its best-in-class Prius, the company’s fleet average tailpipe CO2 emissions rating would still be more than double the EPA’s 2032 standard. … Clearly, automakers cannot comply with the EPA’s ‘performance-based’ GHG program without rapidly phasing out internal combustion engine vehicle sales and rapidly ramping up electric vehicle sales.

As CEI states, this is one of the most extreme rules that’s ever been proposed by a federal agency. Similar regulations are already in the works for the trucking industry, which would of course destroy the nation’s economy. California is, once again, the leader in those regulations, with some already in effect. But CBS News has no problem with any of this. They’re happy to tell you that there will be less smog in the air, so just roll with it. The EPA has issued its commandment, and the EPA knows best.

But even if that were true, which it’s not, we still have something called the Constitution. And the Constitution empowers Congress, not a federal administrative agency, to pass laws. Agencies can’t expand their mandate so far that they become a de facto Congress. This is a lesson the CDC learned a few years ago, when it tried to prevent landlords from evicting tenants who weren’t paying rent.

It’s also a lesson the EPA itself learned just two years ago, in the case “West Virginia v. EPA.” In that case, the Supreme Court made it very clear that the EPA’s Obama-era Clean Power Plan far exceeded the EPA’s legal mandate. Now the EPA is doing it again. They’re trying to ban gas-powered vehicles, even though there’s no authorizing law passed by Congress which permits the EPA to do that.

So even if this ban were somehow a good idea, it’s unconstitutional. The Supreme Court needs to strike it down immediately.

In this country, voters get to weigh the pros and cons of a law like this — not some faceless bureaucrats in an administrative agency. And there happen to be a lot of cons of this particular rule. That’s not to say that some electric vehicles aren’t great cars. But there are obviously downsides to mandating them for everyone. For one thing, a lot of people are going to be priced out of the new car market. The average EV costs more than $5,000 more than the average gas-powered car. Typical repair costs are also much higher for EVs that are involved in accidents; that’s one of the reasons Hertz just scaled back on its massive fleet of Tesla sedans. And from a national security perspective, it’s also worth pointing out that China has enormous leverage in the production of batteries, which are obviously necessary for EV production. 

The other issue is that, even if every vehicle on the planet suddenly becomes a “zero-emission” vehicle overnight, they still have to get power from somewhere. And right now, that power mostly comes from power plants that burn coal. As the New York Times conceded recently,

If [a Chevy] Bolt is charged up on a coal-heavy grid, such as those currently found in the Midwest, it can actually be a bit worse for the climate than a modern hybrid car like the Toyota Prius, which runs on gasoline but uses a battery to bolster its mileage.

In other words, there are common scenarios in which a purely electric vehicle is emitting more carbon dioxide than a car that you fill up at a gas station. And even outside the Midwest, the differences in emissions aren’t as significant than you might think. It’s closer to 50%, in the best cases, taking into account the emissions related to manufacturing.

All of this, of course, requires that you accept the false premise that the carbon emissions from motor vehicles have any meaningful negative impact on your life, which they don’t.

As Michael Schellenberger has pointed out, the number of national disasters linked to climate and weather have declined from 2000 to 2021. The cost of natural disasters — as measured by percent of GDP — is down worldwide since 1990. The number of landfalling U.S. hurricanes has dropped in that same period. So has the global frequency of major hurricanes. Fewer people than ever are dying in heat waves. All of this is well-documented by the think tank Environmental Progress. Pretty much the only thing that’s gone up is the cost of electricity in California, which rose more than seven times higher than it did in other states.

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The reason states like California persist in pushing these mandates, even when they’ve clearly accomplished nothing and serve no purpose whatsoever, is that the environmentalist agenda has nothing to do with the environment. It’s determined, instead, to make life more difficult and expensive, not to mention uglier (as we can see from the climate alarmist attacks on famous art, for example). The point is also to make life less enjoyable, hence the push for disgusting bug-based foods.

The Biden administration is endorsing all of this not because the science calls for it, and certainly not because they want to preserve human life, but rather because they fundamentally see human life as a parasitic infestation on the planet (excluding themselves of course). It’s not the carbon your car emits that they’re after, it’s the carbon you emit, as a human being.

If this EPA regulation survives, that will only embolden them to go further. They will continue to restrict your freedom of choice, even as they tell you they’re expanding it. This is the greatest encroachment on civil liberties right now that no one is talking about. Unless you want the car you’re probably driving right now to become illegal in the near future, it’s time to change that.

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