Last week, the U.S. Senate voted 51 to 44 to repeal a Biden-era waiver that let California set its own standards for regulating air pollution, stricter than national standards.
Congress’s action means that California may no longer ban sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035.
With presidential prospects in mind, Governor Gavin Newsom has recently been trying to position himself as one of the less-unhinged Democrats; he has a podcast and talks (!) to conservatives. To keep up this act, he would have had to accept defeat of his autocratic attempt to circumvent markets and outlaw consumer choice in the auto industry.
Instead, Newsom is suing to overturn Congress’s good deed, which he says is all about “making America smoggy again.”
“This is not about electric vehicles,” he says. “This is about polluters being able to pollute more.” More than what? Gas cars aren’t a new thing. And electric cars, for all their novelty and appeal, come with a host of trade-offs from high price to extra weight to battery-charging problems — and EV pollution.
Slogans don’t change that.
The tradeoffs hardly make electric cars automatically preferable to consumers free to make up their own minds what kind of car to buy.
When electric cars sell and develop in competition with gas vehicles, fine; no problem. But when government makes gas vehicles disappear by fiat? The salutary incentives provided by direct competition will also disappear. And our roads become filled with ill-fit technology.
The most fundamental issue here is not electric vehicles. And it’s not pollution.
It’s freedom.
To which Governor Newsom, sad to say, remains staunchly opposed.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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One reply on “Newsom Defends Gas-Car Ban”
I actually found Newsom’s move surprising. Not only is his position silly, but it’s very much at odds with his ongoing attempts to re-make himself into a nationally viable presidential candidate.
I’m almost tempted to think he’s finally found a principle he believes in (a stupid principle, but a principle). Almost, but not quite. He’s never been anything more than a human mood ring, changing color with his perceptions of majority voter opinion in whatever contest he’s in, or about to be in. In this case, I think he’s just not perceiving those opinions accurately.
Even to the extent that a lot of voters are concerned with “climate change” as an “issue,” most of them also have an older car in the driveway (the average age of an American automobile is 12.6 years), and will not want to pay higher prices to replace that car in the future, as they will if the supply of gas cars is artificially pushed toward zero.