Hi, I'm a lifelong California resident,
EV journalist and I've had asthma my whole life like the 2 million
kids who get it every year globally from traffic pollution - and
whose lifetime of health costs are not paid by those
polluters.
Automakers say it will be hard to reach
the 2035 target. They've made excuses, and have touted their
insufficient actions to fight climate change. They've
questioned this regulation from every angle to slow down
implementation because "this will be too hard, we can't do it fast
enough."
But, none of this matters. In
this negotiation, the automakers' adversary is not CARB, California
voters, or the courts. Their adversary is physics. And
physics does not care about your mundane complaints, it only cares
how much carbon is in the atmosphere.
A study just came out which shows we
can stop climate change with immediate action. But even if we
lower emissions to zero TODAY - not in 2035, or 2050 - we have a
chance to go over 1.5ºC of warming, which is a target we
should not exceed and we must lower that chance.
So, again, in the face of physics,
which does not negotiate, nothing the automakers have said matters
at all. We must stop emissions not just as fast as possible,
but faster than these automakers claim is possible. They have
to pick up the pace and if they can't, then try harder. All hands
on deck, figure it out or go bankrupt, and why not also pay for all
the pollution you've caused in the last century by the
way?
The 2035 requirement is not
enough. California shouldn't be selling gasoline today, much
less 20, 30 years in the future, as 2034 gas cars will still
pollute for decades down the road. And California, with our
US and global leadership, can make automakers pick up the pace by
choosing a stronger target than ACC2.
I call on the board to implement a
stronger regulation, pulling forward targets to 100% all-EV by 2030
or even earlier, and further work to reduce car usage in general
and shift people from cars to cleaner transport methods. This
is what Norway is doing, which is nearing its 2025 EV-only sales
requirement already in 2022, and the biggest auto company in the
world by market cap has been all EV since 2008. So these
targets can be met, and California shouldn't be a global laggard on
this issue.
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