California freeway at night
Credit: Robyn Beck / AFP via Getty
California’s fight with the Trump administration over its ability to shape climate policy is headed to court — again — as the state pushes to keep its authority to set stricter auto-emissions standards.
State Attorney General Xavier Becerra, along with the attorneys general of 22 other states, filed a lawsuit Friday that seeks to block the Environmental Protection Agency from stripping parts of California’s federal waiver that allows it to create its own tailpipe rules.
“We cannot afford to backslide in our battle against climate change,” Becerra said during a press conference in Santa Barbara, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. “The Trump administration continues to side with polluters instead of protecting our families, our health.”
Becerra’s lawsuit asks the U.S. District Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., to review whether the EPA can strip parts of California’s nearly 50-year-old waiver under the Clean Air Act. The waiver was reauthorized in 2013 for vehicles made through 2025 and beyond […]
I believe on having effective rules, but they must take into account how many miles a person drives pre year, not just how much pollution exhaust pipes spit out. An older vehicle like my old 1992 Chevy APV is similar to a truck as far as standards go (not very good), but I do not use it very much and put less than 1,000 miles per year on it. Let’s say it gets 20 miles per gallon. Some other person drives a newer car with more miles per gallon, let’s say 50 miles per gallon, but they drive 10,000 miles per year. I would score less pollution than the newer car simply because I hardly ever drive my car and produce 1/8 as much pollution as that newer car. IT ALL DEPENDS UPON HOW MANY MILES ARE DRIVEN, and that MUST be a factor in their calculations at inspection time. I love my old cars and want to keep them for the rest of my life, not forced by the government to sell my vehicle because it has tailpipe emissions which are not up to some arbitrary standard which does not take into account how many miles I drive the vehicle. I refuse to give up my car for those nonsensical reasons. It is the same as in WW2 when they had signs along the road saying “IS THIS TRIP REALLY NECESSARY?”, to save fuel so the military aircraft would have enough fuel to go bomb another country. The difference is now they would take my only source of transportation away for a mathematically unreasonable solution, and I will not stand for it.
P.S. I was speaking of aircraft. Why not take aircraft into consideration: they produce 100 times more pollution than cars do in general (maybe even more) and before I take my car off the road, I want to see every airplane out of the sky. They are not a practical way to commute because they waste so much gas.