No! California Voters Said No Such Thing at All - Unelected, Unaccountable, and Unassailable Bureaucrats Said No More Gas Cars - Granite Grok

No! California Voters Said No Such Thing at All – Unelected, Unaccountable, and Unassailable Bureaucrats Said No More Gas Cars

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As I’ve said, I read a lot of sites during the day and one of them is yet another eco-Sustainability type site, not named TreeHugger, but “Inhabit“. Think of it as “Treehugger-lite” because the writing is rather light-weight – big on pictures, not much “stuff” behind its short posts, and the comment section tends to mirror the posts.  So when I saw this headline, I knew it was only time that it would get worse (reformatted, emphasis mine):

California voters say no new gas vehicles by 2035

California, a notoriously car-loving state, has voted. And the future is not gasoline. By 2035, the sale of new gas-powered cars will be forbidden.

“This is the most important thing that California Air Resources Board (CARB) has done in the last 30 years. It’s important not just for California, but it’s important for the country and the world,” said Daniel Sperling, a member of the CARB, as reported by CNN.

It goes to show that California is a trendsetting state. As goes California, so may go the world. Many other states have already followed California’s earlier regulations around zero-emission vehicles. Alex Stack, a spokesperson for California Governor Gavin Newsom, predicts the “majority of states to follow.” Oregon, Washington and New York are already planning a similar zero-emission target, according to CNN. These new regulations will affect the auto industry. Many car companies have already embraced the zero-emissions movement.

“This is a critical milestone in our climate fight, which is why Washington is poised to institute these same requirements by the end of the year,” said Washington Governor Jay Inslee in a statement, as reported by CNN. “We look forward to partnering with other states and the Biden Administration to rapidly reduce the country’s primary source of greenhouse gas emissions.”

No, not all trends are trend-setting in positive ways (re: the “eat Tide-pods” fad was “trend-setting” a while ago, too). Yeah, this is the State that has outsourced its electricity generation to other States so that it can thump its virtue-signaling chest to say “Look at us, what good boys (or <insert “whatever” here, /sarc>!”).  And it was just a few weeks ago that in with this announcement, California officials were telling people, the small 12% wealthy folks that had Electric Vehicles, to not charge them. Kinda shocked a bunch of folks (see what I did there?) about their notion of Progress vs Reality.

All that said, my point isn’t about the stupidity of the announcement and the surrounding reality.  It’s about the headline – let me repeat it:

California voters say no new gas vehicles by 2035

No, California voters did NOT do any such thing.  They had no say in this decision whatsoever. CARB’s makeup is strictly appointive – not elected:

CARB’s governing board is made up of 16 members, with 2 non-voting members appointed for legislative oversight, one each by the California State Assembly and Senate. 12 of the 14 voting members are appointed by the governor and subject to confirmation by the Senate: five from local air districts, four air pollution subject-matter experts, two members of the public, and the Chair. The other two voting members are appointed from environmental justice committees by the Assembly and Senate.[3]

We here at GraniteGrok write often about the “Administrative State” in which bureaucrats can make enormously large and life-altering decisions all on their say so. We also call it “the Deep State”.  No oversight necessary in that One-Party State (er, Democrats, who are perfectly fine with this realization of a decades-long end goal).  And that “trend-setting” is a feature, not a bug, in this way. Did the ordinary citizen get a chance to weigh in?  Was public opinion in generalities taken into account or only “Environment FIRST!” special interests?  How about the cost – can the middle-class citizens (those that are left, that is) afford this mandate?

And given what I mentioned above, the lack of grid capability, how is this going to pan out (and note that California is ready to ban diesel powered rigs for moving cargo around the State and they can’t even finish their years-over-estimate, and billions-over budget, and only two-city destination bullet train?

Or figure out their drug-infested, crime-ridden, and poop-map famous homeless issue? Nor even able to fix their current rotten road/highway infrastructure?  Sorry, this whole thing is yet another top-down, centralized command without citizens deciding for themselves decision.

As many of us keep saying all the time, if such a thing was all that great of an idea for almost everyone, why does government have to get involved in the first place?  Wouldn’t consumers have been clamoring for such vehicles for years now?

Nope, nope, and nope.

So once again, we have those special interests (GAIA worshippers) pounding on Government with their “Bright Idea” in order to force everyone else to adopt it. By fiat.

Not by free choice.

And I thought that Democrats were always the “pro-choice” Party?

Sadly, it’s always overshadowed by that old (but true) phrase “Within every Progressive is a Totalitarian yearning to break out”.

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