CityLab Daily: Electric Vehicles Alone Won’t Stop Climate Change

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Charged up: Another day means another fight between California and the Trump administration. Yesterday, Andrew Wheeler, Trump’s head of the Environmental Protection Agency, sent a letter to the Golden State saying it has the “worst air quality” and has “failed to carry out its most basic tasks” under the Clean Air Act. To boot, Wheeler threatened to withhold the state’s highway funding—a rich irony as the administration threatens to cancel the state’s fuel efficiency standards. (Sacramento Bee)

Actually, California’s plans to combat both air pollution and climate change are rather ambitious compared to the rest of the country. The agency on the receiving end of Wheeler’s letter, the California Air Resources Board (CARB), wants to reduce the state’s carbon emissions from transportation overall by 20 percent in the next 15 years. That sets a benchmark for comparing the Democratic presidential candidates’ plans to grapple with the threat. CARB says the state can’t accomplish that goal just by putting 5 million electric vehicles on the road or boosting fuel efficiency: People are also going to have to drive less. Read my take on CityLab: Electric Vehicles Alone Won’t Stop Climate Change