The LA Times reports that The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted California the right to set its own, independent CO2 standards for car and truck emissions. The controversial waiver comes with a proviso: they can’t toughen the tailpipe regs—de facto mpg requirements—until 2017. Which is no big deal, ’cause the feds have adopted California’s standards until that date. “It preserves California’s role as a leader on clean air policy,” EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson said in an interview. “It feels good to know that we are able to move past — address — this issue, responding to the president’s call.” Move past, address now, kick it down the road, satisfy the President’s pre-election pledge, whatever. Meanwhile and in any case, the non-waiver waiver is something of a relief for automakers . . .
Lest we forget, Uncle Sam’s new MPG rules are so full of holes they make Swiss cheese look like a block of cement. Does this grand compromise represent their hopes for a new administration willing to lay the dirty on CA . . . later? Politics has go nothing to do with it. EPA’s Jackson says that today’s decision stemmed from a careful reading of the Clean Air Act and EPA history. “This decision was based entirely on the law,” she said, “and not at all on politics.”
I have a solution to California’s budget crisis: invite California to join the United States. How much money has the state pissed away doing its own thing the past several decades? L.A. is still smoggy.
I just got back from a few days vacation in San Francisco and I noticed that everywhere I went; every gas station, every hotel, public transit, everywhere, there was a placard that read:
“This [thing] contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer and birth defects or other reproductive harm”
What maddens me the most is that when I buy products at home in Connecticut that are on California’s “Prop 65” list, I have to read that same stupid disclaimer. Doesn’t the federal government already handle such things? How much money does California spend on these redundancies?
Two ways to look at it: CA liberals run amuck or a victory for states’ rights. Betting that the wingnuts will take the former view.
No comment on the story, but I’m glad I live in the country now and don’t have to drive thru the maze anymore.
I have a solution to California’s budget crisis: invite California to join the United States.
The rest of the US gets far more from California than California gets from the US. If they secede, it’s to their benefit and the detriment of freeloaders like, oh, most of flyover country.
They’re the sixth largest economy in the world, give or take. If they go, the rest of the US, excepting Texas and New York, amounts to a less economically significant entity than Canada.
How much money has the state pissed away doing its own thing the past several decades? L.A. is still smoggy.
LA used to be much worse. I don’t think people who weren’t witness to it can really appreciate what a huge benefit CARB regulations have been, or how awful it would be if we allowed diesels or NOx/SOx-spewing land yachts to rule the basin.
Put it this way: the LA basin is just that, a basin; a great, big climate sink. There are few cities that have such an unfortunate geographic and atmospheric condition. No city in western Europe has it this bad (which is why Europe does not crack down on diesels; if Munich or Paris had LA’s climate, people would die), nor any in North America save perhaps Toronto.
I suggest you get a time machine and travel back to August of 1975. Go to LA and take a deep breath. When you finish coughing up lung fibres and your eyes have stopped watering, tell me CARB hasn’t done a good job
I DID live in L.A. from 1980 to 1992. Yeah the smog was the pits.. BUT,
The smog only cleared up along with the traffic when major firms such as Hughes Aircraft, Lockheed, various government agencies, and other firms started moving en masse from L.A. to Arizona, New Mexico and the like.
The traffic patterns and the smog cleared at the same time, no mystery there at all.
LA still has smog, that must mean that the CARB regulations did nothing. Or perhaps you would like to dismiss any evidence that doesn’t reinforce your worldview. Can anyone really argue that having cars pollute less does not equate to less pollution? It’s pretty damn simple, you pollute less you get less pollution. Now where you want to draw that line, balancing pollution with economics is certainly up for debate. But don’t act like it doesn’t make a difference.
psarhjinian, for the love of God check your numbers.
If California, New York, AND Texas were to leave the union, the remaining 47 states would still be the largest economy in the world, and would twice as large as the next nation (Japan).
Sure, you can say that California has a bigger economy than Canada or some developed Western European countries, but it also has around 37 million people, which happens to be about 4 million more than Canada. So yeah, I’d hope that California’s economy is bigger.
As a citizen of so-called “flyover country”, I would like to remind everybody that having an ocean does not make you special, because if I really wanted I’m very close to a body of water that goes as far as the eye can see as well. And, as an added bonus, I can take a drink from it too*!
(*Drink from Lake Michigan at your own risk)
I remember visiting L.A. in 1977 when I was a kid. I also remember my last trip there in 2000. It was better in 2000 than in 1977, but relative to what?
I understand that California represents a good chunk of the U.S. economy. That doesn’t change the fact that state itself is at this point bankrupt and that the state has spent a lot of money doing stuff that the rest of us rely on the federal government for. Might I add that their parallel regulation does make things like cars more expensive.
psharjinian: The rest of the US gets far more from California than California gets from the US. If they secede, it’s to their benefit and the detriment of freeloaders like, oh, most of flyover country.
Some states receive more money than others because they are host to military bases, have federal waterways within their borders and have large numbers of retirees living there (which means that large numbers of residents receive Social Security and Medicare benefits).
The reason California can’t balance its budget is not because it is a “donor” state. States cannot use federal money for any purpose, particularly to plug holes in their budgets. The reason California can’t balance its budget is because it has decided to spend heavily, particularly on education, welfare and public employee pensions. Even with a high tax burden on citizens and businesses, it still cannot balance its budget.
I’m sick and tired of California’s asinine, backwards way of running the state keeps infecting the rest of this.
First this. I also had caught wind about some sort of federal building inspection that is part of this bogus climate change bill that just passed the house. Of course, the federal standard is just the copy of whatever California’s standard is.
There is no coincidence that the states in the worst shape are those that are run like California. They’re an infection.
And if the federal government uses all our tax money to bail out California….oh man….
Sure L.A. still has smog Never said they don’t.
But, when I first moved there, the freeways were universally deadlocked by 2:30 P.M. and stayed that way until 6:30 or 7:00 P.M. Trying to get out before 9:00 A.M. was also futile. I know. I did field service work and I spent every day on the freeway for hours at a time. Traffic and smog were a nightmare.
Funny thing happened within 10 years. Major aerospace firms started leaving in droves. Next went a lot of the support services and industries. Traffic tie ups eventually went to maybe a hour a day or less and the air went from a constant grey/brown haze to actually blue.
Sure as new standards came in to play the air would get better. But I saw a direct correlation to traffic and smog. Yup “fewer cars” does mean “less pollution”. People moved, less traffic, less cars, less pollution.
Sure L.A. still has a problem. Geography is working against it. No doubt.
But there is a law of diminishing returns. New cars are clean. Keep them in tune and they will stay clean. But the latest round of rules is about raising fuel economy and saving the planet from global warming and not primarily about pollution.
There was a movement for a while to use “sniffers” to find those top polluter cars. The yearly auto examinations would not stop heavy polluters if the cost to fix them was above a certain amount. One old polluter was worth a couple hundred regular cars or more if I remember right. But it got shot down. The sniffers would “unfairly punish those who couldn’t get their car fixed”.
I left in 92. Best move ever.
California on the brink
California shuts down at midnight… or drops into the ocean. I don’t know which for sure but either way it sounds dire.
They’re the sixth largest economy in the world, give or take. If they go, the rest of the US, excepting Texas and New York, amounts to a less economically significant entity than Canada.
Not true at all by size of the economy. I suggest looking at this comparison of US states to countries by GDP measured in Purchasing Power Parity.
California is, give or take, around 9th or 10th. (If you also included US ex California as first in that list, 10th.) Note that nominal GDP measures look a little better than PPP, because they don’t adjust for cost-of-living as much. (Since services, though not goods, are cheaper in a poorer country.)
The USA, minus California, Texas, and New York, would still in 2005 have a GDP (PPP) of $8.840033 billion, which would still be more than China and would be #1 in the world.
Canada, by comparison, was $1.061236 billion, a number similar larger than that of Texas or New York alone but smaller than California alone, an impressive number, but still less than one-eighth that of the smaller 47 states combined.
Of course, if California really were so dominant, that would actually create more of a problem, as California would be able to de facto set standards for the whole country. As it is, California is large enough that manufacturers will deal with its regulations, but not so large that it actually imposes its will on the entire country.
So this “wingnut” has no problem with this ruling.
Of course, people also care about the per-capita numbers as well (which is why, say, we’re not impressed with Mexico, despite it having the same size economy as Canada and somewhat larger than Texas or New York), but psarhjinian didn’t bring up that issue.
Certainly, though, the rest of the US would be perfectly fine by that measure without California as well.
The US does much better as a whole on PPP measures than nominal measures, as does, e.g., Singapore. Compare here and here. For example, land and housing is cheaper (though not in coastal California), as are many other things, than compared to other wealthy countries.
@psar & Commander:
I thought someone posted something showing that the southern states were getting the most benefit per dollar.
psarhjinian, for the love of God check your numbers.
Well, shit, if I didn’t miss a whole order of magnitude. Is my face red or what?
The original point, though, that California, and to a lesser degree, New York, are looked upon with resentment and derision by the rest of the union while simultaneously footing a huge portion of the economy is not entirely fair. Despite being a minor financial basketcase**, it represents, along with New York, one of the few areas of serious wealth creation, and one of the few pockets of industry (technology, infotainment) where the US still has a huge lead.
Every time this story comes up, what I hear sounds a lot like sour grapes being aired.
I will agree that regulating CO2 is perhaps not in CARB’s jurisdiction, but the reason they can is because they preceded the EPA by several years and the law is on their side. Don’t like it? Get the law changes or pressure the automakers to not sell cars in California and the CARB states, or make different fleets for both CARB and non-CARB zones. Don’t hold your breath, though, since the CARB states are worth a good chunk of money—more than the non-CARB ones—this isn’t likely to work.
** Could the collapse of the housing and credit markets possibly have had anything to do with this? Could it be that, perhaps, California had a lot further to fall than more agrarian states would?
There is no coincidence that the states in the worst shape are those that are run like California. They’re an infection.
As above, you don’t think it might be because those states had the most to lose in the event of an economic collapse?
This is like Volkswagen crowing about how it’s the only carmaker not posting sales losses. They’re not posting losses because they had no North American sales to speak of.
Something that psarhjinian finally touched on in his 4:23 post that nobody else brought up was what effect will these new CARB regulations have on smog in the LA basin. The answer – none. CO2 emissions have absolutely nothing to do with smog. Yes the air in LA has gotten much cleaner over the past 20 years (the limit of my experience with LA air), and yes, I appreciate it. BUT, the new CARB regualtions will have no effect on ozone/smog creating emissions. So, the smog arguemnt has no relevance to this story. And, California would not be in the mess that they are in if it weren’t for their attitude that more stringent regualtion or just more regulations = better. If it’s true, I find it interesting that California’s economy has dropped to 10th in the world. I sware it was 7th not more than 10 years ago. Seems to add more credence to the common statement that California is driving businesses to other states that think the federal standards are just fine.
P.S. Nice picture I was there in that traffic yesterday from 4:30 to 5:15 PM. 45 minutes from the 280/Hwy 1 interchange to the Oakland side of the Bay Bridge (~11 miles). Fun, fun, fun.
Generally speaking, I tend to stay away from anything with “California” on the label, mostly due to these type of shenanigans. However, I recently purchased a rather industrial looking (function over form) 9mm pistol. Due to the large capacity magazines, the outside of the case had a large sticker with rather bold lettering stating, “Illegal in California.” To me, it was a selling point.
psarhjinian : This is like Volkswagen crowing about how it’s the only carmaker not posting sales losses. They’re not posting losses because they had no North American sales to speak of.
Or, it could be because they are selling a ton of cars in China and even a few in Germany.
http://media.vw.com/index.php?s=43&item=448
@psarhjinian
I love California – especially San Diego county!
But, you know, the thing about unrestrained socialism is that – at some point – you’ll run out of other people’s money to spend. The rich folks in Cali ought to move to AZ or FLA, just like the ones here in RI do.
What the hell good is the sixth largest economy in the world when it is bankrupt because it spends wastefully – and can’t stop doing so?
Californians need to get their priorities straight and re-kindle that economic machine out there.
The Asians are laughing at the West’s commitment to shoot off its own economic feet (both of them) with asinine, growth-stunting policies and Cali is the poster child in that regards!
But the Pac Coast 101 is a great drive.
I’m sick and tired of California’s asinine, backwards way of running the state keeps infecting the rest of this.
The reason California can’t balance its budget is not because it is a “donor” state.
That’s excellent. I’ve always wanted the the coastal states plus maybe the midwest to split with the backwards nation that would be the rest of the US.
These states would generally run an annual surplus of around 100 billon dollars. Have fun the rest of you’s dealing with your 200 billon dollar deficit.
We also get pretty much all the great institutions of higher education as well as higher tech industries.
Please, please, continuing to support this idea. We need an effort from both sides to make this work.
RickA: your theory is sadly incorrect. I still live in LA and the traffic is worse now than it’s ever been. Would that what you said was true, but it isn’t.Those traffic patterns are the same and the span of time where the freeway is moving smoothly and unimpeded shorter than ever.
I have driven it every day from the Valley to Hollywood and back for the past 10 years, believe me:I plan my life around the flow of traffic to avoid as much of it as possible
Air quality is vastly improved since I moved here in 1974, with a couple of dozen days a year or more where the AQMD gave warnings to essentially curtail outside activity because of the unhealthful status of the air. You could see it, taste it, feel the grit and sting in your eyes back then. It used to lie in a grey haze across the quad at the college I attended. Just recently there were only a handful of ‘smog alert” days, even though traffic has increased.
That improvement has been on the back of the motorist. The contribution of the automobile to the pollution mix was 30% in the 90s. The current decade the portion is 20%. The rest is from industrial sources, refineries and trucks and buses.And of that 20% total only a small # of poorly maintained automobiles contribute to the bulk of it.
The automobile is 90% cleaner than it was in 1970 in what it emits. What will the cost be to get that final 10% ?
Also remember that the AQMD rigs it’s own game so that when “goals” are met the acceptable amounts of pollutants are changed and lowered, or something new found that the crew deems a “pollutant”. No chance of the AQMD being made obsolete any time soon.
Should be a safe job as the Native American tribes in the area were describing the haze over the LA territory back in the 1800s,well before the adoption of the automobile and population boom, so there will always be “pollution” to battle.
Regardless, I have my doubts that CA’s special standards helped clean up the problem here, but that federally mandated pollution controls themselves did the bulk of the improvenment. More redundant micro managing from CA and at a great cost to the consumer to have conflicting and overlapping laws.
I was here when CA decreed their own state smog device that was required for cars built before 1970, IIRC. The kits were built by STP, Fram and the like. They came with a sticker that said: “Do not use this vehicle over 60 mph for sustained periods of time” as it wasn’t good for your engine. And the devices also did not work. In testing, the rags found that they increased pollutants and caused the cars to run hotter and less efficiently.
Can we say “epic fail” ? But it was just the slob trying to get to work that paid the price and the requirement was abandoned not long after. And no one got a refund.
Follow the money trail: the OEM made money, state made money with taxes on the devices, installer made money, everyone made out under the plan. Except the consumer who has and continues to pay the price for CA’s dabbling. I am sure what ever group lobbied to require the device benefitted as well.
Union 76 and the other refineries got away with an early version of “cap and trade”, avoiding pollution fines by having their own scrappage programs and selling credits to each other to avoid paying fines [or having to clean up their own sources of industrial pollution].
While I see the improvement and am all for clean air, having 2 sets or 3 or 13 or 50 different standards doesn’t help fix the problem. I am hesitant to believe that CA’s extra special standards and regulations were the overarcing reason for the improvement in air quality in the state over the past even 20 years, but that the Fed ones alone would have created the same result and for a lot less cost to the consumer.
Sorry, but just because CA does it doesn’t mean it’s a good idea for the rest of the country, or even the state itself. That $300.00 “Smog Impact Fee” that was charged to people moving here from out of state turned out to be totally illegal and had to be paid back, with interest BTW.
Another great CA idea to feed it’s voracious appetite for money. Not a damn dime went to battling “smog”. Be thankful that wasn’t adopted as pollution fighting device by other states. There are more instances of this sort of public fleecing in the name of addressing “environmental concerns”, but these were just the ones I could remember.
Wait there’s another one : the methanol additive that was supposed to “clean the air” during winter driving months and that was so unstable it was leaching out of the holding tanks and into wells and groundwater and poisoning whole towns and other water supplies. Another mandate the public paid for, in more ways than monetary ones.
And also, RickA: How I envy your move. Believe me I’d do it in a heartbeat if I could afford to leave. Anywhere but here looks good right now. Even Bugtussle. And I was born in CA.
Another in a long series of self-inflicted wounds. I hope the adults take over again before its too late, but I am not so sure.
DweezilSFV,
Your thinking of MTBE. First the drivers paid for it in increased gasoline prices and reduced gas mileage. Now the country is paying for it through the cost of clean-up efforts, and individual communities are paying for it through the cost of treatment to remove it from the well water before supplying the water to their customers.
Your thinking of MTBE. First the drivers paid for it in increased gasoline prices and reduced gas mileage.
Yeah, that’s why we should switch back to lead in fuel.
agenthex: These states would run an annual surplus of $100 million dollars.
That doesn’t change the fact that California is running a whopping deficit, and the problem rests with the California state government, not that it is is a “donor” state.
That doesn’t change the fact that California is running a whopping deficit, and the problem rests with the California state government, not that it is is a “donor” state.
It absolutely does. Californians could care less about some useless base in the south (to protect us from the invading mexicans I guess). If they didn’t have ~$50 billion dollars in fed taxes stolen every year, they’d be much better off.
Perhaps we could trade California to Mexico inexchange for a fixed price on every barrel of oil they sell us….
You might as well get rid of all 16 states that joined in the original lawsuit against the EPA. Just let those states leave the rest of the US with their coincidentally also ~100billion surplus. You can even get rid of obama with Illinois perhaps. McCain presumably goes with Arizona, but look on the bright side, you have palin and plumber joe to lead what’s left (you also get Rush. joy).
agenthex :
July 1st, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Your thinking of MTBE. First the drivers paid for it in increased gasoline prices and reduced gas mileage.
Yeah, that’s why we should switch back to lead in fuel.
Nice straw man argument. I say one thing and you attack something that I didn’t say. Now try to defend the use of MTBE in California fuel blends. Not as easy is it?
Now try to defend the use of MTBE in California fuel blends
MTBE was a lead substitute. Oil companies used it because it was cheap/convenient. After problems were found, it was banned in Cali in 2003.
You don’t seem to understand what a straw man argument is. It would be applicable had it not been used to replace a known toxic substance, and had you not referenced it implicitly yourself: “First the drivers paid for it in increased gasoline prices and reduced gas mileage. “ That’s you.
I’ve been to LA many times, starting from 1981. In 1981, the air was orange, and had an acrid taste which made your eyes water.
In 2001, the air was sort of blue, but at least it didn’t hurt to breathe. In 2007, the air was blue and had no taste nor any major haze during the heat of a hot (June) summer’s day.
In 2006, I drove from SF to Mountain View on a Monday morning, and was actually pleased that
a) traffic wasn’t backed to the nth degree – I got there in about an hour and a bit
b) drivers were courteous and actually seemed to understand this poor out of stater had to keep on making “interesting” lane changes. I was worried about the usual reports of gun play for cutting folks off.
So all in all – I’ve seen the benefits of CARB first hand. The air is nearly acceptable now. In 1981 – it wasn’t.
Honestly, at this stage, if you’re worried about CARB, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution – especially as the solution is essentially pain free.
Honestly, at this stage, if you’re worried about CARB, you’re part of the problem, not part of the solution – especially as the solution is essentially pain free.
“Essentially pain free?” What a contentless statement; I don’t know whether you’re talking about net pain or gross. How about simply saying that the benefits are worth the costs, which I agree?
I realize that the bulk of the American people like to pretend that there are no tradeoffs, and that they want, e.g., environmental benefits and lower pollution without paying more, and that they vote for politicians who promise such, but it’s ridiculous. It’s also why we’re getting as stupid of a Cap-and-Trade bill as we are. Not that it’s unusual worldwide, either, to get bills that sound good but have little in the detail.
If they didn’t have ~$50 billion dollars in fed taxes stolen every year, they’d be much better off.
That’s part of the price of having a high cost of living, which in large part is California’s fault for zoning and land-use regulation that drive up home prices, and favoring redistribution on a federal scale. It’s inevitable that federal redistribution is going to harm California; if as a rich state (exaggerated by cost of living, as $50k goes a lot less in San Francisco than Alabama) they really care about that, perhaps they should stop electing federal officerholders who favor redistribution to the poor.
It’s also, more complicatedly, part of the price for the exact way the SAFETEA-LU highway fund formula works. California, Texas, Arizona, and the Southeast pay more in gas taxes than they get back. The Northeast and the big empty states win out by that measure. (Those in the Northeast complain that they get less spending per capita, but they also drive less and hence pay less.)
These states would generally run an annual surplus of around 100 billon dollars. Have fun the rest of you’s dealing with your 200 billon dollar deficit.
I’m pretty certain that this wouldn’t happen. The richer of the separating states would fund the poorer. There would still be donor states and recipient states among each group. Anyone familiar with Canada and the complaints over equalization knows that as well.
In addition, judging from the way both California federal representatives vote in Congress, and the way California runs its own state government, a smaller country made up by Californians in a larger percentage would also run a deficit. California would possibly be sending less of that money to poorer states, but I would expect the new federal entity to run a deficit due to political pressures.
As above, you don’t think it might be because those states had the most to lose in the event of an economic collapse?
Partially, but Texas has a large economy and is not suffering the same way as the housing bubble states (CA, AZ, FL, NV, to name a few) did. Sure, the fact that the states that led the housing bubble are suffering the most from a crisis caused by its collapse is pretty important, but I find it hard to believe that the housing bubble was all worthwhile investments.
That’s part of the price of having a high cost of living, which in large part is California’s fault for zoning and land-use regulation that drive up home prices, and favoring redistribution on a federal scale.
No. California has a lot of profitable and high end industries, so its citizens make more, thus higher income taxes.
“Favoring redistribution” is written right into the constitution, where even podunk poor states get 2 senators.
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It’s inevitable that federal redistribution is going to harm California; if as a rich state (exaggerated by cost of living, as $50k goes a lot less in San Francisco than Alabama) they really care about that, perhaps they should stop electing federal officerholders who favor redistribution to the poor.
What they need is to leave a union where welfare recipients bitch and whine about the hand feeding them.
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The richer of the separating states would fund the poorer. There would still be donor states and recipient states among each group.
This doesn’t change the absolute net $ amounts. Even if they spend it all, they get something for that money instead of generally getting screwed by morons.