Comments on: California Car Wars: EPA, CARB, and Unintended Consequences

By: Meme

Meme — Sun, 17 May 2009 07:48:17 +0000

Well, golly, darn it! You people make me giggle.

Neither California’s car standards, nor the finer points of AB32 have been implemented yet. Hmmm. Mebbe it’s due to pending fear of energy cost increases.

Giggle.

By: E.M.Smith

E.M.Smith — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 06:46:22 +0000

Tax beatings will continue until business morale improves…

By: Tom Tanton

Tom Tanton — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:32:25 +0000

Mr. Winham—the competitive experiment has been going on for decades, with CA imposing one more onerous regulation after another. The end result is CA ranks #1 in business outmigration.
see for example http://www.ocregister.com/articles/california-taxes-state-2310198-highest-business

By: Marlo Lewis

Marlo Lewis — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 14:31:54 +0000

Thanks Tom for your blog about my blog. A point I did not mention in the blog, all-too-briefly discussed in a recent op-ed I did for Human Events (http://cei.org/articles/granting-emissions-waiver-will-lead-de-stimulus)
is that granting the waiver would arguably make CO2 a regulated pollutant under the Clean Air Act, triggering the economy-chilling regulatory cascade discussed in EPA’s Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR). For a more complete discussion of the administrative and economic perils of regulating CO2 under the Clean Air Act, see my comment on the ANPR (http://cei.org/node/21367).

By: rbradley

rbradley — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:54:55 +0000

The “Bradley Thesis” would probably have to be renamed the “Simon thesis” for Julian Simon.

I do think that the hydrocarbon family of energies is improving in virtually every dimension and that the “sustainability” challenge is government intervention in markets, not nature (“peak oil”) or carbon-content (climate-change).

By: Donkatsu

Donkatsu — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:56:40 +0000

Based on the “Bradley Thesis” of increasingly sustainable fossil fuel economics, based on improved combustion and transmission technologies, the impacts of the CARB proposals could be truly perverse. Once people purchase the very high fuel economy vehicles the marginal cost of driving will fall dramatically. Even when the price of mogas rises significantly. Only the imposition of truly revolting extreme vehicles standards (>75 mpg), resulting in cars that no one will want to be in for more than the ride to the train station, will get people out of their cars once they cost little to operate.

By: Wes Winham

Wes Winham — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 20:14:56 +0000

It seems to me that by allowing these standards to be implemented, long-term good could be done. Proponents of these regulations sell it to the public as a “free” regulation with no cost or even as some sort of green job nirvana whereby imposing extra costs will somehow make the state more money. There’s no better way to discredit those arguments than to let people see the real results in the more limited selection and or higher costs in their states. It seems like competition amongst the states could pick a winner that balances acceptable regulation with actual costs.