The left has always hated cars — or at least the idea that there should be a car in every driveway. Now, it is stepping up its assault.
In 2035, every car purchased in California, with its nearly 40 million people, will have to be an electric vehicle. Why? The automobile is arguably the most liberating invention in history, or at least is in the top five of all time. It allows people to travel anywhere at any time at fast speeds. The increase in mobility from mass auto ownership has been a major driver of increased incomes and wealth. One of the best ways to help low-income people out of poverty is to get them a car so they can drive to jobs that may be located far outside their neighborhoods.
Perhaps it is the very independence and autonomy that cars give individuals that the collectivists on the left hate. Liberals have been trying to push Americans into mass transit buses and trains for decades to no avail. Today, less than 5% of all trips are using mass transit. Except for those in major congested cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles and New York, everyone wants their own car.
Under the new California law, after 2035, you will have to either buy and drive an electric vehicle, take the bus or lace up your sneakers and walk to work.
This may seem detached from any sense of reality, given that there is no place on the planet that is more car-crazy than the Golden State. This is the place that virtually invented the hot rod. There is a memorable scene in the Steve Martin movie “L.A. Story” in which a group of Beverly Hills residents can’t get a car to take them four blocks away. Someone suggests, “Why don’t we just walk?” and Martin’s character bursts out laughing, saying, “WALK? In L.A.?”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom says that banning cars is necessary to save the planet. About one-third of greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation. That’s true, but real pollution levels (like lead and carbon monoxide) from cars have been reduced by about two-thirds over the last 50 years. That’s why the brown L.A. haze that Jimmy Buffett sang about has been largely eliminated.
California is the land of nuts, so dealing with the heavy hand of regulators is their own business. But what’s scary is that The Economist predicts that as many as one-third of other blue states may soon follow Newsom’s lead. Washington state lawmakers have already announced they are all-in with the California plan. Legislators in Virginia want to adopt the California standards as well, but fortunately, Gov. Glenn Youngkin has said hell no. But because of red state opposition, don’t be surprised if a federal ban on cars isn’t forthcoming in the years ahead.
The American auto companies are in on this scheme, too. GM and Ford have both said they will soon stop making gas-powered cars and everything will be EVs, which are vehicles that will eventually be powered by batteries made in China and recharged with windmills. The car companies are going all-electric because the government — i.e., the taxpayer — is practically paying people to buy EVs. They’ve also made a multibillion-dollar bet that Americans WANT EVs.
Ahh. But that is where they are dead wrong.
Americans are divided on EVs — only about 5% of new car sales in recent months are electric — even with all the financial enticements from Uncle Sam. Polls have shown that more than three out of four Americans want to make their own choices on what kind of car they can buy. They don’t want politicians like Newsom making these choices for them. But the state lawmakers are acting like Henry Ford during the early days of rolling the Model T off the assembly lines: You can have it any color you want, as long as it’s black.
Even the environmental case for EVs is dubious. Where do the greens plan to bury the toxic waste from tens of millions of dead batteries every year? The irony of this debate about banning cars is that back 100 years ago, gas-powered cars were heralded as the greatest environmental inventions of all time. Why? Because they replaced horses. You think carbon dioxide emissions are a problem? Try living in crowded cities when people rode horses around and the streets were filled with smelly manure.
I have nothing against Teslas; they are wonderful machines. But forcing people to buy them is a different matter altogether. Americans want freedom to choose.
The mandate to buy EVs is going to cause a revolt by the common man. They don’t want the government taking their T-Bird away.
Newsom is now boasting that he has “no peers” when it comes to combating climate change. But he also has no peers when it comes to devising cockeyed policies that are out of touch with voters.
This is the dumbest transportation idea I’ve heard of since the Edsel. It will end just as badly.
Stephen Moore is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and an economist with FreedomWorks. His latest book is “Govzilla: How the Relentless Growth of Government is Devouring our Economy.”
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King Henry IV of France (1553-1610).” If God keeps me, I will make sure that there is no sharecropper in my kingdom who does not have the means to have a chicken in the pot every Sunday!”
Joe Biden/Gavin Newsom – “If the gods of government keep me in office, I will make sure there are few cars in every driveway in my kingdom of dumb socialists, and a chicken in every voting booth come election day.”
I guarantee you he will not get the votes of the little old Ladies from Pasadena, nor the Beach Boy/Jan and Dean Drag racers of the 60s. In a Great America Cars always equaled FREEDOM.
“But parked in her rickety old garage
Is a brand new shiny red Super Stock Dodge”
“And everybody’s saying there’s nobody meaner
Than the little old lady from Pasadena
She drives real fast and she drives real hard
She’s a terror out on Colorado Boulevard”
He who controls the means of energy to run them controls THE PEOPLE of the society. Power OVER not OF THE PEOPLE is all these Slime-bag un-American Socialists disguised as American Democrats seek to control. Do not be deceived.
When Joe’s Chinese owning puppeteers make war on America, just forget the nukes and take out the already antiquate debilitated energy Grid and you own the day. No ticky no shirty, no gasoline, no capability to defend your country nor your freedoms.,,American Style.
“Under the new California law, after 2035, you will have to either buy and drive an electric vehicle, take the bus or lace up your sneakers and walk to work.”
Maybe not, look at Cuba it still has 1950 cars still on the roads, They just keep rebuilding the old cars and they look like new 1950’s cars.
Americans want freedom to choose.
The treasonous Democrat Party wants to dictate every facet of your life, from what you drive, what you eat, where you live and who or what you worship.
1 Corinthians 10:23 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but not everything is constructive.
IF americans really wanted the freedom to choose, WHY DO THEY KEEP ELECTING LIBTARDS in commiefornia!
I think people on the Left are victims of Voting Booth or Voting Ballot amnesia.
It’s not unnoticed by them that things get worse every time the Libs are in charge, but when faced with a ballot, they see the “D” next to a candidate’s name, and like a slobbering Pavlovian dog, they check the box.
Either that, or they really are blindly stupid.
I believe the 2035 deadline only applies to new cars. But in this day and age, how long will used cars be available? Ten years maybe? Unfortunately there just aren’t enough 1950s cars left. Remember the Cash for Clunkers fiasco. Instead of stripping those old cars for parts, they mandated they be crushed. Go to a junkyard and try to find used part for a pre 1990s car. They are few and far between. Cars built after around 1980 are not as easy to rebuild as a 1950s car assuming you can even get parts.
Back in 1976, I bought a 64 1/2 Ford Mustang from my Dad’s friend for $500. I drove it for years before I sold it to my sister, who still owns it.
It’s seen it’s share of garage time as parts wore out, it needs new brakes right now, but it still runs and compared to the late model Chevy Impala my Dad bought before he died, in the shorter time we’ve owned the Impala, it’s had to go to a garage more often, because these newer cars for the last twenty plus years were not built to be serviced at home. You have to take them in even for a simple oil change. You look under the hood, and all you see is multicolored spaghetti and tubing.
The average person wouldn’t know where to even start trying to work on it themselves.
By comparison, you pop the hood of the Mustang, you clearly see the engine and its easily accessible supporting parts, and you can see the driveway underneath it!
Simpler times.
That’s a valid point. Add to that, the # of foreign countries where folks LOVE building/rebuilding older cars, and the market can get sparse for older parts..
This is no accident. It is by design. This is part of the “transition” away from fossil fuels which is based on a man-made climate change hoax. This is how stupid our leaders are. Force people to buy electric cars when there is no way to charge them all. At the same time eliminate the fossil fuels that are used to produce most of the electricity. Not to mention most of the components for electric cars come from China.
We must not overlook the mega-wealthy Liberals who are betting huge amounts of investment and have made sure the Dems have done everything possible to eliminate competition from the traditional fossil fuel infrastructure. They are still furious about Obama’s bungling failure of the notorious Solyndra deal.
We might have been seeing lawsuits on TV by now for toxic metal poisoning cases if THEY had survived.
We must not stop pointing these things out and demanding answers, real answers to Our concerns.
It’s important, and We deserve these answers. And when they admit they don’t have those answers, we’ll take it to the next level of discussion, where We are doing the talking.
And at a risk of sounding like a broken record, I’ve yet to see or hear about any blueprints for a sustainable power source to energize the grid to charge all these new rechargeable battery packs (which are anything but green, as we all know by now).
Windmills and solar are not the answer, they simply cannot supply the electricity needed and also suffer from not being at all green either.
Once the public thoroughly discusses this in the coming years and they see where the Lib Progressives are taking us, the backlash will be loud and demonstratively focused.
With such a large Country that is able to function the way it does because personal transportation is available to the most common of common people, the Government cannot just outlaw it without a credible replacement to offer.
And the EV is not that. At all.
BUT what’s there to PREVENT THEM DOING just that?
Us. If we have the courage.
We have the righteous indignation, and common sense on Our side.
We just need the courage and the backbone not to whither when the Left tries to scold Us and threaten Us.
Who are they to tell Us We don’t know what We’re talking about when We do? And We do know what mistakes have been made, and by whom. And it isn’t Us!
Until they try to outlaw being a Free American, officially, We do have a voice, and if they do try to outlaw being a Conservative, that’s a whole new can of worms, and there are many True Conservative Patriots that simply will not take it passively.
Not a threat. Just a fact.
And We do know Our answers to the problems We’re facing are correct because it’s been proven.
LOL!!! Right now the governor is demanding people not to charge their electric junk because the electric grid is over taxed. Just think how it will be in 2035. California’s electric grid is in worse shape than Puerto Rico’s.
AND YET as i look at my power bill, i see FEES AND “Riders”, for Improvements and repairs to the grid.. SO WHERE EXACTLY has all those billions the power companies have MADE with those fees, gone??
Those fees have gone the same way as the every two to four year California tax hike has gone for every time they said they wanted to improve Our schools with new carpeting, re-enforcing the roofing and air conditioning.
Every two years! Since the late seventies to even the last election.
The money is typically added to the general coffers and transferred to other “more important” problems the Government feels need immediate attention, like raises in the State Congress, and payoffs to political donors.
And they always bet on the voter’s bad memory and their concern for the children to carry on every two years with this shakedown, and that’s what they’re banking on, literally, with these riders and fees.
It’s their way of saying just because they haven’t done anything up to now, doesn’t mean they won’t.
Even though they won’t.
OR it’s been going into their executives BIG BONUS checks…
In response to Wilddog:
Sadly, yes it is.
Ever since Gov Moonbeam Brown banned any future dams being built. A decision he refused to reverse during his second, stolen eight years, and that Gov Sunstroke Newsom still refuses to consider, despite that new reservoirs would not only increase the amount of water the State needs, but would be the greenest thing they could do to re-enforce the grid.
But they won’t.
Why?
Because it doesn’t effect them.
It only effects the common citizen/taxpayer, who they only have one use for: Revenue. For their supporters and interests.
Period.
Otherwise all they want from Us is to shut up and cooperate, and pay your taxes.