CA Gov. Newsom Announces Ban On All Gas-Powered Cars By 2035

Last week saw California plunged into red-darkness during the day amid raging wildfires, and Governor Newsom decreed that:

“The debate is over, around climate change… This is a climate damn emergency. This is real and it’s happening.”

“I have no patience, and I say this lovingly, not as an ideologue but as someone who prides himself on being open to argument, interested in evidence…but I quite literally have no patience for climate change deniers,” the governor continued.

He said skeptics’ point of view is “completely inconsistent…with the reality on the ground.”

He did briefly acknowledge failings in forest management in recent decades, but added: 

“That’s one point, but it’s not the point.”

Oh, but as David Stockman recently noted, drastic forestry mismanagement and negligence, which has turned much of California into a dry wood fuel dump, is exactly the point. The purported global warming has nothing to do with it…

But that has not stopped Newsom from signaling just how virtuous he is by announcing that California will be phasing out all gasoline-powered cars by 2035 in a major effort to reduce the state’s emissions.

The governor signed an executive order that requires all new cars and passenger trucks sold in California be zero-emission vehicles by the 2035 deadline.

“This is the most impactful step our state can take to fight climate change,” said Newsom in a press release.

“For too many decades, we have allowed cars to pollute the air that our children and families breathe. You deserve to have a car that doesn’t give your kids asthma. Our cars shouldn’t make wildfires worse – and create more days filled with smoky air. Cars shouldn’t melt glaciers or raise sea levels threatening our cherished beaches and coastlines.“

As ABC7News.com reports, the executive order lays out several other priorities, including:

• New health regulations regarding oil extraction and the communities it impacts

• Directing the legislature to no longer issue hydraulic fracking permits by 2024

• Directing agencies to create a plan for a statewide rail and transit network

The path forward on Newsom’s newly-announced initiative is likely to be a challenge, politically and legally. President Donald Trump has previously tried to bar California from setting auto emission standards that are different from the country’s standards.

We have a couple of quick questions for Mr. Newsom:

• So what will you do with the 1000s of gas stations and their 10s of 1000s of workers?

• And what happens when we get blackouts and no one can charge their EVs…work from home day?

Probably not your problem, right?

Interestingly, after its “Battery Day”-dud, TSLA’s share price has done nothing on the Newsom announcement…

Perhaps it’s because – as Newsom notes – California has 34 EV makers in the state… and competition is coming for Elon.