In general, I’m not a huge fan of the LCFS as an approach; it effectively requires blending biofuels into gasoline and diesel. This has some serious scale limits and doesn’t cut emissions as much as getting people to not burn stuff in the first place.
I appreciate California’s efforts but these kind of half measures are at best nearly useless in terms of fighting CO2 emissions and are likely to be counter productive.
Nearly useless because vehicles only account for 25% of emissions. So even if CA replaced 100% of their gasoline and diesel with 0 carbon fuels it would reduce nationwide CO2 by about 3% (assuming California is 12% of the population and 12% of the 25% of emissions from vehicles). That’s nice, but really not something that will move the needle on climate change. So best case scenario there’s no meaningful changes in global emissions.
Even under this best case co2 reduction this is going to increase transportation and food costs. This pisses people off, further alienating them from the Democratic party. This will push the electorate towards Republicans who will promise to lower gas prices that the Democrats are pushing up with useless policies to fight the global warming hoax. This further hampers other efforts to address co2 emissions and climate change.
To live and work nearly anywhere in the United States, California included, you will almost always be dependent on your car. Since there’s no real substitute good to buy when fuel prices increase there’s no practical way to avoid the finacial hardship caused by this misguided policy. Raising fuel prices without viable alternatives to car travel won’t change anything and will make people angry and resentful towards those that are responsible for raising fuel prices.
We need to stop chasing half assed non-solutions and start building solutions that are viable alternatives to car travel. Build roads that are safe for pedestrians and micromobility. Build reliable and safe public transportation wherever it’s feasible. Reduce the number of cars trips by incentivizing work from home.
Who knows, maybe these steps will decrease demand for cars and fuel so much that prices of electric cars and 0 carbon fuels will come down enough that we’ll be able to 100% replace co2 emissions where public transit isn’t feasible without causing a financial hardship. Until then this is another poor political choice with no real upside by Democrats.
baby steps.
if you don’t make little changes that lead to more little changes, which turn into big changes, because you can’t get all the way to where you want to go in one step… you won’t get anywhere–ever.
Baby steps are great, and I’m a huge fan of the strongtowns mentality of “what is the next smallest thing we can do that will make progess”.
Unfortunately this is a baby step nowhere, and most likely a big boy step backwards. It won’t meaningfully reduce carbon emissions even if everything else stays the same. Unfortunately things probably won’t stay the same, instead prices for food and transportation will increase leading towards resentment towards climate change policies and those that enacted them.
I agree with your end part that infrastructure to enable alternatives is preferable but your numbers at the start would acutally be a massive effect from the efforts of just california. Im really surprised you crunched those numbers and came to the nearly useless conclusion.