California’s Radical Effort to Transform America’s Auto Industry: Not Your Forefathers’ Idea of Federalism
28th January 2023
Gov. Gavin Newsom and his climate regulators at the California Air Resources Board, or CARB, have promised to phase out all gas-powered cars and force automakers to sell 100% electric vehicles by 2035.
CARB’s purpose is not really to improve local air quality in any part of California but rather to fight the specter of global climate change by using the coercive power of one big state to achieve a complete transformation of the U.S. auto industry.
CARB has issued regulatory edicts to do just that: the so-called “greenhouse gas emission standards” in CARB’s Advanced Clean Car rules and its “zero-emission vehicle sales mandate.”
CARB is able to pursue this transformational agenda only because the Biden administration has reinstated an extraordinary waiver of federal law—a waiver available to California and no other state.