Colorado Embraces EV Tar Baby

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Colorado has become the 13th state – plus the District of Columbia – to embrace the fatuously titled “zero emissions” electric car tar baby.

This will ” . . . protect the quality of our air and safeguard against returning to the days of the ‘brown clould,’ ” warbled Governor John Hickenlooper – whose name sounds like a villain out of an Ayn Rand novel.

Actually, it won’t do any such thing.

What it will do is place another and probably insuperable obstacle in front of the Trump administration’s efforts to dial back federal fuel economy regs – which Colorado and those 12 other states plus the District of Columbia (and the EPA) now also characterize with a combination of illiteracy, dishonesty and halting effrontery as emissions regs.

Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission – the Golem-like facsimile of California’s Air Resources Board (CARB) – decreed these new “emissions” standards for light- and medium-duty motor vehicles sold in Colorado beginning with the 2022 model year.

In other words, for both cars and trucks.

Especially trucks.

The claim is the new fatwas will “…reduce carbon dioxide emissions by nearly 2 million tons per year by 2030.” Italics added.

Indeed.

Carbon dioxide “emissions.”

In other words, not actually emissions.

Which are things like unburned hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and particulates – things which the EPA (and other regulatory apparats) have statutory authority to regulate under things like the federal Clean Air Act of 1970.

But carbon dioxide isn’t dirty – and has nothing at all to do with clean air, much less Hickenlooper’s risible “brown cloud.”

To characterize C02 as an “emission” – i.e., to suggest it is basically the same thing or even a thing similar to unburned hydrocarbons, oxides of nitrogen, carbon monoxide and particulates or anything which in any way contributes to “brown clouds” is despicably dishonest as well as a usurpation of authority never granted legislatively.

That is, which the people never voted to approve. The regulatory apparats simply expanded their power – and decreed.

And mark the date: 2030.

If you do just a little digging, you will find that 2030 is a very significant date in “urban planning” circles – which circles have been working sub rosa to purify the roads of cars for a long time and – at last –  see their end goal in sight. The year 2030 is the year by which they hope to have throttled the car – at least, our cars – and finally nudged most of us out of them by making them exorbitantly expensive to produce (see more below) and thus impossible for most people to afford – and nudged us into forms of transportation more amenable to being controlled.

Electric cars.

These aren’t being pushed because they are less expensive and more efficient or more practical than non-electric cars.

Ever wonder why they are being pushed?

EVs are less mobile.

They are much more dependent on facilities to plug them in. These are nowhere near as abundant as gas stations, which means people are tied – literally, via an umbilicus – to a restricted radius of action.

Also, electricity itself is easier to control – to just turn off.

EVs are also very expensive – in addition to being very inconvenient – which will automatically make owning a car economically or functionally impossible for millions of people who can currently afford their own (non-electric) car.

And EVs are much more amenable to being automated – partially or wholly. Such cars will be less and less under our control in proportion to the degree they are automated.

But despite all the nudging, most people “cling” stubbornly to their non-electric cars. Thus, a reason was needed to justify a firmer nudge, to get people out of them. The major reason, of course, has historically been tailpipe exhaust exhaust emissions – the real ones, at any rate. The ones that caused air quality and human health problems.

These were chiefly the byproducts of incomplete/imperfect combustion – emphasis on were.

While combustion isn’t yet perfect, it is very close. And emissions – the harmful ones – are now very slight. So slight that the government is parsing fractions of wholes.

There is no meaningful emissions problem anymore, in other words.

And without it, there is no longer any legitimate reason to further throttle cars that aren’t electric.

Thus, a new problem had to be invented. Voila, carbon dioxide as an “emission.” C02 can’t be eliminated – from the tailpipe – without eliminating the tailpipe. Hence, the strict regulation of C02 tailpipe “emissions” amounts to a de facto mandate for electric cars.

Turbo-boosting this evil business is the redefinition of mileage standards as emissions standards.

This happened by osmosis over just the past five years or so – and it wasn’t accidental. Gas mileage requirements (CAFE) used to about . . . gas mileage. Federal Corporate Average Fuel Economy fatwas set “x” MPGs each car company’s fleet had to average.

But it never had anything to do with emissions, C02 or otherwise.

And now, suddenly, it does.

The why is – or ought to be –  obvious.

First, the original justification for CAFE – to “encourage” the car industry to build high-mileage cars because of an energy crisis and rising fuel prices – has gone away. Gas is abundant and cheap. There is no energy crisis. America is almost self-sufficient, barely imports any oil from the Middle East and is on track to export it within five years – largely because of the Orange One’s efforts, it’s worth a mention.

Second, even if the car industry managed to keep pace with fuel economy mandates – which are on track to ascend to 50 MPG – there will still be the manufactured “problem”of C02 “emissions,” now conflated with mileage standards.

It’s a way, in other words, to outlaw all cars except electric cars without technically outlawing them.

The CEO of the Colorado Automobile Dealer’s Association says the new fatwa “… will add $2,110 to the sticker price of new vehicles in Colorado, a tax that will be even higher on the SUVs and trucks that Coloradans prefer.”

Exactly. It’s the point of the thing, you see.