Except for the Volkswagen cheating scandal, the auto manufacturers haven’t shown any real objection to complying with the California standards, either; their primary business is making cars, not increasing the profits of oil companies. This is just Il Douche trying to stick it to Obama and liberals out of sheer spite and to play to his idiot base.
4 Likes
Exactly. As long as there’s a level playing field holding all manufacturers to the same standards this doesn’t hurt their business in any tangible way.
4 Likes
4 Likes
So if California is using their market position to get essentially all cars to comply with stricter emissions what do these changes actually do that affects California?
In my opinion if California has air quality issues in the major cities then they have the right to try and fix that, but I don’t it is exactly right that they flex their economic muscle to achieve it either. Much like I’ll get to see Prop 65 warning stickers all over my Christmas lights even though I live on the other coast.
And I think NC throwing in on this is hypocritical as well. We haven’t required a real polution tail pipe emission check in close to a decade. ODBII ready check is a lazy way that isn’t telling you much of anything useful, but you know as long as the state gets its money and soneone feels like they have done some good.
What you are saying CA should have is what Trump took away- the right to regulate our own air quality.
You can’t “ban” economic clout. If companies choose to make things that comply with CA laws so they can make one product sellable everywhere, so be it. That’s not regulated either way. You seem to be going out of your way to miss the point here.
3 Likes
These changes rob California of the power to set their own air and mileage standards.
ETA: I should probably say this riles me personally because I grew up in SoCal during the worst days of L.A. smog and suffered serious asthma as a child. The turning point came when California enacted air pollution standards that were stricter than any other state in the nation at the time, including catalytic converters and bans on leaded gasoline. If California had been forced to accept the lower air quality standards that the rest of the country mandated then I might not have been able to ditch my inhaler.
3 Likes
With this action and others, Il Douche is pretending it’s possible. It plays to one of the frustrations of modern American conservatism: the most prosperous states where most people want to live are also the most liberal, while the poor states experiencing depopulation lean conservative.
It also breaks down this way within most states (including California), where the booming cities tend more liberal and progressive while the exurbs and rural areas are more right-wing.
2 Likes
This also drives gerrymandering and the sudden faux reverence of the Electoral College from the right. It’s all a way to pretend the country is more right wing than it actually is.
3 Likes
Actually, when CA first enacted its stricter pollution standards, many mfrs did just that.
For a few years, it was important for mechanics to know whether they working on a CA-std car or a “49-states” car, since the equipment was often seriously different. (My dad was a mechanic.) And early emission controls often sapped power or mileage or both, and often greatly complicated maintenance, so it made sense to build “49ers”.
But then several heavily-populated states on the eastern seaboard said, basically, “Hey, if you can build clean cars for CA, you can build 'em for us, too.” And so they adopted CA’s standards as well.
By that point, the fraction of the market permitting dirtier cars was getting too small to bother with, and as the tech advanced, pollution controls had become less burdensome (and sometimes even gave better power & mileage, since advanced pollution control starts with tight efficiency.)
So most mfrs saw no point in maintaining two separate production lines just to make dirtier cars for a shrinking market share, so they just made CA-std. for everyone.
We didn’t force anyone outside CA to adopt CA standards. We just used our market leverage to defy the conventional wisdom that “you can’t expect mfrs to make different versions for just one state”,
and in so doing, set an example that others could follow, and an effective standard they could adopt.
1 Like
This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.
