Deregulating climate change policy and the war on cars
Trump deregulates climate change policy:
This last week, the Trump administration reversed a 2009, Obama-era finding that climate change endangers human health and the environment, thus effectively ending the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that, so the New York Times says, “is dangerously heating the planet.” …
… [T]he post-2009 regulations are not just about those ethereal “greenhouse gases,” a sprawling phrase that’s vague for a reason. Probably the parts of the regulations most perversely effective and annoying deal with what kind of car you can buy and how it runs.
That includes something called the “start/stop” feature, which turns the engine off at red lights and the like.
The article continues:
I’m not a scientist, but I don’t need to be to know that anyone’s estimate of what’s going to happen worldwide over the next 30 years is just so much baloney, and that this would be true even if the prediction were coming from a neutral source rather than a bitterly anti-Trump, scare-mongering advocacy group.
And at Instapundit today, more about the left’s war on cars. Coming to a state near you?:
Here in the U.S., blue states are pivoting toward mileage caps, which would establish maximum “vehicle miles traveled” (“VMT”) allowed for an entire state, with regulators then creating “incentives” to reduce individual driving so as to achieve the VMT objective. From News Nation: “Massachusetts bill aims to reduce driving to meet climate goals”:A bill in Massachusetts aims to reduce how much driving occurs as part of the state’s climate strategy. The legislation, spearheaded by Democratic State Senator Cynthia Stone Creem, would require transportation officials to set goals for “reducing the number of statewide driving miles.”
Because this is such an unpopular idea, Democrat politicians in Massachusetts are trying to hoodwink their voters by naming this legislation the “Freedom to Move Act.” There is just an amazing level of duplicity in the name of that legislation, since the specific intent is to limit individuals’ freedom to move about as they choose.
As Lauren Fix correctly notes about The Freedom to Move Act, “When reducing driving becomes a formal state objective, personal mobility inevitably becomes something to be managed.”
The freedom to drive isn’t in the Constitution, but most Americans believe it’s one of our most cherished liberties. More and more, the left uses “science” to rob us proles of our freedoms, from the implementation of COVID lockdowns to regulations that supposedly deal with climate change – while they feel free to defy the rules they’ve made.
Last year the GOP set aside the filibuster with 51 votes in order to remove California’s EV mandate. That the interests of auto manufacturers aligned with the interests of voters probably helped them find their spine. Unfortunately no such alignment exists on election integrity so they’re pretending the filibuster is a hallowed Senate tradition again.
More and more, the left uses “science” to rob us proles of our freedoms, from the implementation of COVID lockdowns to regulations that supposedly deal with climate change – while they feel free to defy the rules they’ve made.
Not just science of course, the Left does this with any system of rules that the rest of us agree to, really.
But on climate, and other environmental issues before that, the Left has no objection to rich people getting to be exceptions. They never have. A few hundred or thousand billionaires or even hundred-millionaires buying an first class plane ticket for their hat isn’t enough to do anything. Hundreds of millions of middle-class people eating beef and throwing away plastic straws and flying from Podunk to Branson MO or wherever those people go, have the numbers to create real problems. There is a kind of logic to it, which is reinforced by the ability of the rich to influence the writing of the rules.
So they want to take our guns, cars, and beef. And the Muslims want to take our dogs. What else?
Discuss.
“More and more, the left uses “science” to rob us proles of our freedoms, from the implementation of COVID lockdowns to regulations that supposedly deal with climate change – while they feel free to defy the rules they’ve made.”
No amount of controlling the proles will ever really be enough, which is why that path eventually leads to H.L. Mencken’s aphorism, “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.”
@IrishOtter49: What else? Freedom to move and otherwise do as we please. In other words, everything.
Francis Menton at Manhattan Contrarian noted that part of the rationale of the EPA’s reversal of the human endangerment finding is that whatever the US does to reduce a gas that is 0.4% (or maybe 0.04%) of the atmosphere is futile.
Something like what MA wants to do is, apparently, happening right now in Europe. But the MSM never reports that.
I can see the rationale for taxing electric vehicles by miles driven. Gas-powered vehicles pay tax at the pump, which goes towards road maintenance and repair. Electric vehicles don’t pay this tax, but drive the same roads, and they are heavier than the gas-powered ones, so somehow they need to pay for the roads. The alternative is much, much higher annual registration fees for EVs.
None of this, though, should justify limits on miles driven.
(sorry, duplicate)
How can it be that Democrat voters are so steadfastly naive? It seems very clear to me to be perversely worded and perversely premised, intentionally. The low information voter, representing the majority of voters, would say to himself:
‘Freedom to move? Nobody’s taking that away from me ! I’m voting ‘Yes’ ! for Freedom to Move !
How could anybody that supports such legislation ever be a member of a political party that operates from a place of such Bad Faith? How could one ever be part of that, and think it represents good governance? How can one coexist with such people, so willing, even eager, to deceive?
Well it’s not as though the news media here in Mass are going to lift one finger to hold the dems accountable. A couple years ago we had a vote that passed for a millionaire’s tax. The thing is they tricked people into voting for it by saying the money would go towards education and roads. I never saw even one reporter point out that money is fungible, the state already does a budget every year, and the state already spends money on that. If you know all that you know how easy it is to spend it on something else while making it look like you’re spending it on education and roads. (I even heard a host on NPR question the governor where he must have knows about this but let her keep on with the ruse) If anybody wants I can explain the idea with an analogy.
From my law school days (over 30 years ago!) there was a SCOTUS ruling that requiring more than 30? days before establishing residency in a new state for welfare purposes violated Americans right to move/travel.
No, I don’t remember the name of the case.
IrishOtter49: Goats are OK.
Climate “science”: as a professional in the field (one of the 3%), I can state that “global/climate change/warming/cooling” are polite terms for the more correct “horse puckey”.
DT: Lol!
…
I wish, however, that discussions on climate “change” would always clarify up front if the participants are blaming humans as the cause of the changes — anthropomorphic climate change — or actually discussing the eons long cycles and changes that planet earth has and will exert.
But moreso, discuss the smart goal to make progress on smart adaptations to the weather.
Better predictions. Better energy delivery & reliability. Better insulation, etc.
NOT the goal to exercise more power grabs to control humans.
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Talking to the choir, though.
I would say “give it to them good and hard” but people who didn’t vote for progressive micro-managed life have to deal with the insanity too.
People opposed to statism and a micro-managed life better wake up. To let Democrats regain power after the shitshow of the Biden era would be a grave mistake. How much more evidence does one need to see?
Cornhead @ 6:19 pm:
“Something like what MA wants to do is, apparently, happening right now in Europe. ”
I assume you are referring to the “15 minute cities”. I read a recent article of the push for that in Europe. Can’t recall exactly where. UK??
The peasants are supposed to work, live, go to school, shop, … et al, all and only within a 15 minute commute area.
Else … there are penalties. Fines? I can’t recall.
Totally anti-freedom on steroids.
So. Here in America, MA is going there first, eh?
I hope people are waking up, and angrily.
@Kate:Gas-powered vehicles pay tax at the pump, which goes towards road maintenance and repair.
If only it did, but money is fungible. I have never known a state government that carefully calibrated its gas tax to its road maintenance, rather than the other way around, or just spent the surplus, if there were any, or subsidized the roads with other taxes, which is the usual case.
“Freedom to Move Act.”
Hey, what was that “Biden” Inflation-Fighting bill called again?
Line-Our-Pockets Back Better?
Oh, wait, that was something else…but it’s ALL related, isn’t it…
(Essentially, it’s ALL the same bill!)
Them Democrats sure are imaginative!
At the “big event” in UK, gov newsome signed a Memorandum of Understanding, for more “green deals” between UK and CA.
Some say that is a violation of the Logan Act.
I hope Trump’s people are looking into it.
If not the Logan act, it still seems wrong.
Sparkle Barbie Ken strikes again.
Are the Labor Brits that stupid to sign anything with the state of California?
Marlene on February 16, 2026 at 8:37 pm:
Cornhead @ 6:19 pm:
“… the “15 minute cities”. …”
Some years ago I read that most accidents happen within 25 miles of home. It seems we generally arrange our lives to not have to travel more than that distance most of the time.
My commute here in FL was about 15 miles (5 of which was in low density semi-rural areas) and took 20 to 25 minutes or so. My bicycle commute in grad school was maybe 30 minutes. My commute working in downtown Chicago (maybe 20 miles away?) was rather more, either driving or taking the train.
“Totally anti-freedom on steroids.
So. Here in America, MA is going there first, eh?”
And here we learned in history class that the Mass. colony was the first to feel the real boot of the British Army/Navy on their throats. Maybe we can and should move Samuel Adams grave to a more sympathetic state (Texas, Florida, etc.)
If it wasn’t so serious, Leftist law naming is always the opposite of what it pertains it will be.
A prudent government has to contrive ways to address externalities. That’s going to involve making unmetered costs foisted off on other explicit to an economic actor which benefits from the activity. This, regrettably, irritates people. The trouble with this notion from the Massachusetts state government is that the posited externality – emissions generating global warming – is a dubious one.
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It would be agreeable if people rebalanced their travel between various modes. One generator of excess weight in this country is we’re not doing enough walking. However, you do need the infrastructure. That means sidewalks and it means urban planning which aspires to have commerce proximate to residences and seeks to order commercial thoroughfares so that they’re pleasant to walk along. It might also mean bike lanes. The notion urban planning should encourage this bothers the usual neuralgics on this board.
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You also have issues with traffic congestion because public thoroughfares are a commons. One way to ameliorate that is to have maintenance and amortization of limited access roads financed by tolls and to have the same in re ordinary roads financed by motor fuel excises – IOW, people finance road maintenance in their capacity as motorists rather than in their capacity as earners, income recipients, or general consumers. Each ordinary road would be assigned to the state government, a county government, a municipal government, or a special district authority. Each has a dedicated road fund which can only be used for road maintenance and amortization. The state collects a motor fuels excise and then distributes it among the road funds on a per acres of macadam basis. Motor vehicle registration fees go in to a dedicated fund to finance the registry’s operations with the residue distributed to the road funds. Governments can add to the road funds from their general revenues, but they cannot raid them.
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The federal government can remove the prohibition on imposing tolls on Interstate Highways. The federal government can also institute an excise on motor fuels with the proviso that a vendor’s actual liability to the federal treasury is the value of said excise less what he paid to the state treasury, provided the state in question has a compliant system of road funds. In states without a compliant system, the vendors’ remittances are placed in a holding fund which also holds the proceeds of fines, restitution, and forfeiture paid to the federal government; holds the proceeds of Pigou levies assessed by the federal government; holds tariff revenue collected by the federal government; holds miscellaneous excise revenue collected by the federal government; holds unclaimed deposits paid to the federal government &c. At the end of the fiscal year, the contents of the holding fund are distributed on a per capita basis to those who file personal income tax returns.
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NB, if you impose these motor fuel excises, you might dispense with the command-and-control regulations which mandate CAFE standards.
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One way to address emissions might be to dispose of certain command-and-control regulations and establish a federal Pigou levy on new cars. A federal laboratory selects at random 30 vehicles of a given model, tests drives them, and measures the rate at which they generate each of a menu of emissions. An excise is imposed for each emission which is a function of the rate measured. The sum of these excises is the excise placed on a vehicle when it is sold new. The revenue generated by the excise is then placed in the federal holding fund (whose contents are remitted to the public on a per capita basis at the end of the fiscal year).
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You’d have to have fuel excises on electric charges as well. Some safety issues with electric vehicles and internal combustion vehicles would have to be addressed via administrative regulations (in addition to the tort system and the strictures of underwriters).
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Ideally, sectoral preferences would be removed from the codes defining personal income taxes, corporation taxes, general sales taxes, and value added taxes &c. An eschatological idea, I know.
I think it’s regrettable that metropolitan centers allowed their light rails systems to rot during the postwar period. Bus service has never been an adequate substitute and hardly anyone takes an interest in mass transit anymore. Just not salvageable at this point, except in the largest and most densely settled metropolitan centers.
Could it be that “Freedom to Move” really means that the state guvmint’s just providing the push, the encouragement—the FREEDOM!—to move out of the state?
(‘Cuz there’s simply too many conservatives left in Massachusetts…)
Klaus Schwab of the WEF said we have to get rid of private transportation.
Peter WHosits, former secretary of transportation said we have to get rid of private cars. Neither referred to internal combustion or fossil fuels. It’s the “private” part that has to go.
Klaus Schwab of the WEF said we have to get rid of private transportation.
Peter WHosits, former secretary of transportation said we have to get rid of private cars. Neither referred to internal combustion or fossil fuels. It’s the “private” part that has to go.
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I’ll take your word for it. As long as this pair is not in charge of any local planning departments, any state highway department, and any federal regulatory agencies, IDC. My impression of Schwab is that he’s an aspirant Blofeld, but, given his life expectancy, not much of a threat anymore. As for Buttigieg, he’s an empty suit and everyone knows it.
Art.
They’re not alone. It’s why we see attempts to incrementally make private transportation more difficult or costly. Part of the Plan. Most of the Believers are still stuck in save-the-world from climate change but, as with Covid, don’t mind restricting other people’s freedom. It’s for the Cause. Lucky we have a Cause.
It’s why we see attempts to incrementally make private transportation more difficult or costly.
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Again, roads are a commons and the commons requires management if it is to remain utile. The burden of road maintenance is not currently borne by people in their capacity as motorists, but in their capacity as property owners, consumers, &c. If you actually did redistribute the burden of road maintenance, it would be more costly for those who are motorists in proportion to their use of toll roads, their consumption of motor fuel, and the weight of their vehicles. There is nothing nefarious about that. Where it gets troublesome is if you being imposing command and control regulations, imposing tax preferences, subsidizing private corporations, and having public agencies distribute benefits per occult criteria.
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Then you have urban planning, which is ubiquitous. You can encourage walkable neighborhoods with your land use plans and your waiver criteria, or you can discourage them. Why do you want to discourage them? Or is it your contention that the convenience of developers must be controlling rather than a consideration?
Nope, not by a long shot.
First, taxes associated with roads, such as gas taxes, are spend on roads or something else as the state decides.
Secondly, it’s issues like the stop-start gizmo which will save spoonful of gas over the lifetime of the car, depending on how many stoplights you encounter. But it costs a lot of money and thus, incrementally, raises the cost of the vehicle. Mileage taxes as California is proposing make driving more expensive, thus causing those of lesser means to seek whatever public transportation the state provides, depending on the dangers of actually getting on the train (see BART).
Keeping personally owned vehicles out of downtown, forcing commuter to stop short of their goal and take public transport–provided at the pleasure of the government and with endless entertainment while waiting for the next train. So maybe the commuter stays home, changes his lifestyle just a touch to comport, gets a job where it doesn’t apply, sells his car. We are retired yet so busy that we need to make adjustments to our schedules when one car is in the shop. If we were restricted by law or circumstance to one car (Only two of you and you don’t have to work and only one household!!!) which could be an issue.
The kill switch. I’ve been unable to get anybody in the government to respond about how to keep bad guys from using it. Or if I veer to miss a deer on a road at night and the car decides I’m drunk and shuts down–a proosed “improvement”, how do I get it started? Call 911. Make an appointment with the township building inspector for sometime next week?
A computer savvy kid–his degree–says he could get into another car’s controls if it has Bluetooth. The lane minder in our Toyota will take care of steering, but wants occasional reassurance that a human has some control. So from time to time on long straights, it beeps and shakes. Oops, sorry, I’ll twitch the wheel a couple of times. Automatic distance minding….. Emergency stops.
Maybe I wouldn’t let my wife drive after dark or out of town due to…. None of my elected representatives think I should see them about such tragedies. I think they would, anyway, but I’d prefer it not be necessary.
The point has nothing to do with road maintenance but with reducing individual freedom. P. J. O’Rourke had some things to say about it. Cars allow us to escape the city with its corruption, high taxes, crime, and crappy schools. It is not to be allowed.
My wife and I are planning a lengthy trip this fall. Michigan to some of California’s parks. Driving allows us to pack what we want, leave when we want, side trip as we wish, change plans as seems like a good idea, see the country, visit friends along the way. There is a national philanthropic organization which raises funds in several ways, one of them being some chapters have someone offering B&B to members of other chapters, Met some interesting people, both as hosts and guests.
Imagine trying to accomplish this by train or plane. Meantime, when we feel like it, it’s off to see granddaughter in a powerlifting competition or a volleyball tournament, all over. Or a late run to the store for some item we think we need.
The Big Shots don’t like this picture. Nor do their allies, the Little Hitlers. See the Covid crapola. The six-foot rule was so much fun that some folks were nearly drooling at “corecting” people who weren’t Doing Right.
Exceptions for the nomenklatura, goes without saying.
First, taxes associated with roads, such as gas taxes, are spend on roads or something else as the state decides.
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IOW, we cannot have a system where motor fuel excises are distributed to dedicated funds because reasons.
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Keeping personally owned vehicles out of downtown, forcing commuter to stop short of their goal and take public transport–provided at the pleasure of the government and with endless entertainment while waiting for the next train.
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You have a limited quantum of space. You require a system to allocate that space. You can ration the space in a number of different ways as with any commodity where scarcity and cost applies. You’re telling me the only legitimate way to ration the space is to have people sitting in their vehicles stuck in traffic so as to discourage them from traveling downtown.
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The point has nothing to do with road maintenance but with reducing individual freedom. P. J. O’Rourke had some things to say about it. Cars allow us to escape the city with its corruption, high taxes, crime, and crappy schools. It is not to be allowed.
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(1) The roads require maintenance and their use rationed whether you want to contemplate such issues or not. (2) The city as a settlement extends beyond the boundaries of the core administrative unit. I grew up in a county where municipal boundaries were fixed in 1924. The metropolitan settlement actually extended over 13 municipalities, eight of which had exurban territory in addition to suburban territory. The county had an additional 13 municipalities which had commuters but were morphologically small town / rural. You travel over the boundary of the core municipality, you’re not ‘escaping the city’, you’re traveling to a different segment of it which is under the authority of a different municipal council and a different school board. You’re escaping ‘high taxes’ in part due to the dispositions of core city politicians and in part due to the effect of intrametropolitan migration and settlement patters on the tax base of the core municipality. You’re escaping crime and crappy schools in part due to the dispositions of core city politicians, in part due to the denuded tax base, and in part because that’s where the slums are. (3) My grandfather was a suburban resident from 1926 until his death in 1966; he never learned to drive a car; he was satisfied with the commuting options he had (a mix of walking and mass transit). You don’t need a private automobile to live in the suburbs unless effective demand and / or public policy make alternatives non-viable or strip them of much of their utility. You do have more discretion over your movements if you have an automobile; in his case, he owned one and his wife chauffered him around to various places other than work. (4) Driving to a suburban residence may be what people prefer to do; it has a certain utility for them; it doesn’t do much to suppress crime or school disorder. There are policy mixes which can act to suppress crime and school disorder, but these involve transferring responsibility for the police to county governments (or consortia of counties), transferring part of the responsibility for school finance to the state, and replacing brick-and-mortar schools in core municipalities with voucher programs.
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My wife and I are planning a lengthy trip this fall. Michigan to some of California’s parks. Driving allows us to pack what we want, leave when we want, side trip as we wish,
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Ordinarily, inter-city roadways are not that crowded unless there’s a construction project or an accident. The issues you have with them are (1) how to allocate the costs of their construction and maintenance, (2) health and safety issues associated with motor vehicle operation and what to do about them, and (3) how to address other externalities which might arise from inter-city motor travel. Being pissed off at the Sierra Club or some Democratic pol is not going to address those issues.
The peasants are supposed to work, live, go to school, shop, … et al, all and only within a 15 minute commute area. Else … there are penalties. Fines? I can’t recall. Totally anti-freedom on steroids.
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Marlene, I grew up in a core city neighborhood where you could walk to the grocery store and lived my late-middle-aged life in an inner ring suburb where you could do the same. I could also walk to the bank, to the barber, to a set of diners and restaurants. Was I ‘enslaved’, or was I just living in a place where the distribution of commercial real estate reflected earlier patterns of settlement? Please note, nothing prevented me from getting in my car and traveling somewhere else to shop; it’s just that there was an option to not do so. The question is, is it possible to have viable retail trade in areas which are ordered to accommodate the locomotion of people who are not driving?
Art, I have a relation living in NYC. Been there maybe fifteen years. Never owned a car. OTOH, he’s single and foraging by foot is simple. Had a girlfriend at one point and they were planning to drive to see his family in Texas. First, she had to take driver ed.
No, taxes are distributed as the legislature decides. For “roads” is advertising, as is the lottery for education, which has a curiously high degree of overhead.
But, as I say, it’s not merely taxes but numerous other incremental issues.
Once, going east on I85, passing the usual nose-to-tail line of semis which goes on forever, I was running 85mph for about an hour and a half. Figure a cop couldn’t see me in the left lane, much less get me/us pulled over. Earlier I’d spent about two hours on I40, what with the endless line of semis, following each other so closely that I hoped they had the reaction time of a juiced-up mongoose. From the parallel lines of fresh rubber frequently encountered, it appeared, though that a lot of them needed more coffee. And then one might wanted to pass with an overtake speed of about 1.5mph relative and nobody would slow down to give him a couple of lengths to move back right. Fortunataely, I wasn’t in a hurry. Yeah, not busy, those interstates.
No, taxes are distributed as the legislature decides.
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You seem to have the idea in your head that neither the state constitution or statutory law can create dedicated funds. I have no clue how you got this idea.
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New York City is its own place. I grew up in a low-end-of-second-tier city and was living in an inner ring suburb of a large city. Much less densely settled, but still with certain amenities (which you and Marlene insist enslave me).
@Art Deco:You seem to have the idea in your head that neither the state constitution or statutory law can create dedicated funds. I have no clue how you got this idea.
A state legislature can undo as well as do. A state constitution can be amended in any direction, or just set aside as California’s was when a gay judge made gay marriage legal and Ahnuld’s state officials refused to defend California’s constitution. “Dedicated funds” will stay that way at the pleasure of the legislature that creates them, and failing that there’s always financial emergency provisions either built into law or assumed by the executive.
My own state is currently trying to implement an income tax which has already been made illegal several times and is forbidden by the state constitution. Laws are not self-executing, they require people of good faith to abide by them, and there too few such people.
A state legislature can undo as well as do.
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Well, thank you. I just never would have thought of that.
@Art Deco:Well, thank you. I just never would have thought of that.
You’re welcome; it seemed to have slipped your mind. You now have a clue why Richard Aubrey said that “taxes are distributed as the legislature decides”. He is 100% correct. State budgets have the force of law and sometimes a state’s laws are changed by something added to a state’s budget.
Niketas,
Budgets may be changed without bothering the legal advisors,
Some years back, CT had collected a fair, annaul sum of money from gas station owners to help with massive expenses in case the underground tanks had to be fixed or removed. Neat, right? Raided it for something else and the station owners were high and dry. what were they going to do about it?
But, just for grins, let’s say all cars have a kill switch the cops can use to stop a fleeing bad guy. What, aside from optimism, guarantees a locality won’t stop every car at the same time? I know, I know. Never happen. Point is, it depends on the local authority to be good guys eternally.
And if the city council panics at a bogus CO2 report,,,,,
Make no mistake. Rolling back this bit of the climate change agenda is a huge win.
The left has hated your cars for a long time.
While this is slightly off topic, the idea of living in a small community reminded me of urban planning types. I queried Grok about groups mandating living in 15 minute zones. (Grok gets very defensive at times):
The plan is already there. Just waiting for a crisis sufficient to implement?
The plan is already there. Just waiting for a crisis sufficient to implement?
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Or there’s no intention to mandate anything outside your imagination.