“California Dreamin’” Or Perhaps Hallucinatin’.

California, always trying to be an environmental leader, has recently enacted SB 350 which will require that, by 2030, electrical utilities must get 50% of their power from renewable resources. The bill also requires greenhouse gases emissions (GHGE) be reduced by 40% by 2030 and 80% by 2050 versus the 1990 GHGE baseline. Dropped from the bill were measures to compel a 50% reduction in petroleum use by 2030.

These reductions are more stringent than those that failed to get accepted by the nations of the World at the COP21 meeting in Paris. California against the world. Further, even if these SB350 mandated changes are met, they will be too small to even be measureable. That is the definition of futility.

The Sacramento Bee, thinking Weather is climate, has posted “Four ways to gear up on climate change.”  From the posting:

“Californians drive 330 billion miles per year, the vast majority on gasoline and diesel engines whose exhaust generates about 40 percent of the state’s contribution to global warming. Just getting those greenhouse gas-spewing motorists into cleaner cars, let alone mass transit, would make a huge difference in air quality and set a powerful global example.

But so far, of the 24 million or so cars on the road here, only about 600,000 are gas-electric hybrids and only about 163,000 are zero-emission. That’s more than any other state, but not even close to enough.

Only about 8 percent of new vehicles sold here are hybrids, and only about 4 percent are plug-in electric vehicles or fuel cells. Meanwhile, Gov. Jerry Brown has set a goal for zero-emission vehicles alone of 1.5 million more such cars on the road within the decade.”

One of the author’s four ways is to increase the purchase incentives for zero-emission-vehicles (ZEV). Now the ZEV 2015 Nissan Leaf MSRP begins at $29,010 and is eligible for $7,500 from the Feds and $2,500 from California. And he thinks that $10,000 is not enough. To get from 163,000 ZEDs now on the road in California to Gov. Brown’s goal of 1.5 million over the next 10 years will cost about $1.3billion. Oh, by the way, USA Today recently ran an article titled “Leaf ranks worst in resale value after driving off the lot.” The article says that the Leaf’s resale drops 48% when you drive it off the lot.

The author’s other ways are to expand charging stations which is supposed to be part of SB350; he believes that car salespeople need to be required to push the customers into buying ZEVs; and he thinks the customers have to “branch out”.

On that last point he offers this:

” It’s disheartening that even as climate change has wrought havoc this year across the landscape, 56 percent of U.S. vehicle sales were of SUVs, crossovers and pickups, up from 53 percent for the same period last year. According to Toyota, the RAV4 SUV is on track to surpass the Camry as its top-selling U.S. model.

Yes, trucks are becoming more fuel efficient, and some drivers need them to haul things. But most are gas hogs by comparison with ZEVs and hybrids.

We have miles to go if we’re going to make a dent in the heat pollution that’s wrecking the planet. There’s no way we’re going to get there without an all-in strategy, and that means cleaner traffic.

Besides, Californians, doesn’t a part of you yearn to stick it to OPEC? Or Texas, at least?

The price of gasoline is down at this time and that surely has an impact on the customer’s choices when obtaining their means of transportation.   Gasoline prices will rise over the next decade, but polls suggest that Global Warming is way down on the American people’s list of things they are worried about. They are not convinced that spending more money on transportation is going to solve some distant problem like catastrophic global warming.

cbdakota

I hope the “Momas and the Popas” forgive my use of their song in this posting’s title.