California Moves To Outlaw Gas-Powered Vehicles By 2035

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will outlaw sales of new gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks by 2035, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced Wednesday, a move he says will cut greenhouse gas emissions by 35% in the nation’s most populous state.

His plan would not ban people from owning gas-powered cars or selling them on the used car market. But it would end the sales of all new gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks in the state of nearly 40 million people.

“Pull away from the gas pumps,” Newsom said in announcing his executive order to state regulators to draw up guidelines. “Let us no longer be victims of geopolitical dictators that manipulate global supply chains and global markets.”

White House spokesman Judd Deere said Newsom’s order will hurt the economy and is “yet another example of how extreme the left has become. They want the government to dictate every aspect of every Americans’ life.”

California is the world’s fifth-largest economy and Californians account for more than one out of every 10 new vehicles sold in the U.S. — market clout that means Newsom’s order could have a huge impact on the country’s auto industry and the global effort to reduce pollution and combat climate change.

FILE - This April 16, 2020 file photo shows traffic on the Hollywood Freeway (U.S. 101) in Los Angeles. California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020 that the state will halt sales of new gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks by 2035. On Wednesday he ordered state regulators to come up with requirements to meet that goal. California would be the first state with such a rule, though Germany and France are among 15 other countries that have a similar requirement. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)
FILE – This April 16, 2020 file photo shows traffic on the Hollywood Freeway (U.S. 101) in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill, File)

California already has rules mandating a certain percentage of new car sales must be electric or zero-emission vehicles. This rule would make California the first U.S. state with a plan to phase them out completely.

At least 15 other countries have already made similar commitments, including Germany, France and Norway.

Tailpipe exhaust from cars, pickups, tractor-trailer rigs and other transportation are the single largest source of air pollution. Jessica Caldwell, executive director of insights at the Edmunds.com auto pricing site, said Newsom’s announcement “does seem like this is a significant shot fired against” the internal combustion engine.

She expects the California announcement to trigger high-level meetings at all the auto companies which were moving toward electric vehicles but didn’t expect a zero-emissions mandate in 15 years. Automakers may have to rethink manufacturing and capital spending plans because of the mandate, she said.

The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents most automakers including Ford, which Newsom lauded for its anti-pollution efforts, said that although the industry is committed to more electric vehicles and will work with California, markets can’t be built with mandates and bans.

CEO John Bozzella called for combined efforts involving local, state and federal governments as well as the auto industry and other businesses. “It will require increased infrastructure, incentives, fleet requirements, building codes, and much more,” Bozzella said in a statement.

Roughly a dozen states follow California’s lead on auto emissions standards that are more restrictive than federal rules. If those states follow suit on zero-emission vehicles, it could have a huge impact on the U.S. automobile industry.

This screen shot from pool video shows California Gov. Gavin Newsom announcing Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020 that the state will halt sales of new gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks by 2035, in Sacramento, Calif. On Wednesday he ordered state regulators to come up with requirements to meet that goal. California would be the first state with such a rule, though Germany and France are among 15 other countries that have a similar requirement. (Pool via AP)
This screen shot from pool video shows California Gov. Gavin Newsom announcing Wednesday, Sept. 23, 2020 that the state will halt sales of new gasoline-powered passenger cars and trucks by 2035, in Sacramento, Calif.(Pool via AP)

Meantime, President Donald Trump wants to roll back tougher Obama-era auto emissions standards and is battling California to force it to comply.

Newsom’s order directs the California Air Resources Board to develop and approve regulations to meet the 2035 deadline. He also ordered them to make a rule requiring all medium and heavy-duty trucks be 100% zero-emission vehicles by 2045 “where feasible.”

Phasing out gas and diesel-powered vehicles would mean less pollution threatening the health of Californians, said Fred Krupp, head of the Environmental Defense Fund.

It would be good for the state’s economy as well, Krupp said in a statement. “This plan positions California to win a new generation of jobs building affordable zero-emission vehicles — jobs that Europe and China are also hoping to capture,” he said.

Newsom also directed state agencies to speed up development of charging stations across the state and called on the Legislature to eliminate new fracking licenses by 2024.

Fracking is a technique that allows energy companies to extract huge volumes of oil and gas from shale rock deep underground. It involves injecting high-pressure mixtures of water, sand or gravel and chemicals into rock. Fracking opponents say the chemicals involved threaten water supplies and public health.

Kassie Siegel, director of the Center for Biological Diversity’s Climate Law Institute, called Newsom’s order “a big step” but said it “provided rhetoric rather than real action on the other critical half of the climate problem — California’s dirty oil production.”

“Newsom can’t claim climate leadership while handing out permits to oil companies to drill and frack,” she said. “He has the power to protect Californians from oil industry pollution, and he needs to use it, not pass the buck.”

California has a goal of relying 100% on clean, renewable energy by 2045. Gasoline and diesel-powered cars and trucks are the biggest impediment to reaching that goal as they account for more than half of the state’s carbon pollution.

The order comes as massive wildfires have burned a record 5,600 square miles (14,500 square kilometers) in California this year. Experts say the size and intensity of the fires are aided by warmer temperatures and years of drought brought on by climate change.

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Associated Press writers Tom Krisher in Detroit and Ellen Knickmeyer in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

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Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden on Wednesday accused Attorney General Bill Barr of running the Justice Department as the “Department of Trump.”

“This has been the most corrupt administration in modern American history,” Biden said. “The Justice Department has turned into the president’s private law firm.”

“It’s become the Department of Trump,” Biden said at a summit for Black business owners and educators in Charlotte, North Carolina, a key swing state in the 2020 election.

Biden said that if elected, the Justice Department will be “totally independent” of him as president.

“I will not direct them who to prosecute, how to prosecute, what to prosecute,” Biden said. “I will not enter their decisions based upon the judgments they make about what cases they bring.”

The remarks come after a New York Times report last week revealed that the attorney general had asked the Justice Department’s civil rights division to investigate the possibility of criminal charges against Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan for allowing residents to establish a police-free protest zone this past summer.

According to the report, Barr also told federal prosecutors to consider sedition charges for rioters and people who had committed violent crimes at protests in recent months.

Days after the death of Georg Floyd, Barr ordered the violent dispersal of demonstrators during the now-infamous presidential photo-op that led to the tear-gassing of peaceful anti-racism protesters in Lafayette Square.

Barr added fuel to a Trump conspiracy about the safety of the ballot box amid the expansion of mail-in voting and recently told a Chicago Tribune columnist that if President Trump is not reelected, then the nation would be “irrevocably committed to the socialist path.”

While Biden suggested on Wednesday that the politicization of the Justice Department was “the most dangerous” move made by the Trump administration, Barr went so far as to make the brazen claim that politics tempers prosecutorial power.

“The most basic check on prosecutorial power is politics,” Barr said at an event at Hillsdale College last week, as if to defend his place as Trump’s de facto personal attorney. “It is counter-intuitive to say that, as we rightly strive to maintain an apolitical system of criminal justice,” he added.

Barr lodged himself deeper into Trump’s corner by calling strict measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus “the greatest intrusion on civil liberties other than slavery.”

Earlier this month, Barr also appeared to side with Trump’s dismissal of issues regarding racial justice, suggesting that systemic racism, particularly in criminal justice, was not “an epidemic.”

“I don’t think there are two justice systems,” Barr told CNN in an interview earlier this month

Biden put himself in direct opposition to both Trump and Barr on Wednesday, telling the summit group in Charlotte that “we have a gigantic opportunity to fundamentally change the systemic racism and the systemic problems that exists.” Among other plans, Biden reissued a commitment to spend $70 billion on historically Black colleges and universities, address student debt and dramatically increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

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