Latest California Proposal Features Gas Rationing

Latest California Proposal Features Gas Rationing

Apparently, there is no economy-crushing law the state of California won’t consider.

The latest in legislative insanity comes from Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de Leon, and is entitled Clean Energy and Pollution Reduction Act of 2015 (SB 350). Ultimately, should it pass, it will give one of the most aggressive state agencies in the nation the power to impose “fees” and ration gas.

De Leon’s SB 350 is ultimately a gasoline-rationing act. The bill gives the California Air Resources Board free rein to enact a mandatory 50 percent gasoline and diesel fuel restriction (8 billion gallons annually) by the year 2030.

To meet the mandate, the state air resources board will be able to ration gas, place mobility restrictions on state residents, place surcharges on family mini-vans, trucks and SUVs, and even monitor individuals’ fuel consumption records.

You have to wonder how these mandates and restrictions will affect not only the state’s economy but its people.

…Californians need to know and act to protect themselves from the devastating effects of this bill on their lives.

The California Air Resources Board [CARB], an unelected group of bureaucrats, will be given full authority to meet the restriction mandate in any way its members see fit with no oversight permitted by our elected representatives.

This is on top of the CARB’s efforts to force 100% of cars on California’s road to run on something other than gasoline:

California drivers will have to change their car-buying behavior by quite a bit between 2025 and 2030 if California Air Resources Board (CARB) chief Mary Nichols gets her say. Nichols wants to make emissions-spewing vehicles almost completely off of the Golden State’s roads in 15 years, Bloomberg News says in a feature on Nichols. In 2025, the state is looking for “just” 22 percent of its new cars to be battery-electric, plug-in hybrid or hydrogen fuel cell. Five years later? Around 100 percent. That’s a pretty dramatic change of habit in five years.

So far, the only result of CARB’s emission demands is the production of “compliance” vehicles like the Fiat 500e and Honda Fit EV, reluctantly produced and even more reluctantly purchased. Should the California legislature pass SB 350, there is little likelihood it will achieve anything but even more harm to the state’s economy.

California State Senator Bob Huff blasted the proposed measure:

In fact, it is being so poorly received, even Democrats are coming out against it:

…The bill is expected to have a more difficult time in the Assembly than in the Senate, where it passed the Senate with the support of all but two Democrats: Sen. Cathleen Galgiani of Stockton and Sen. Richard Roth of Riverside. The Assembly contains more moderate Democrats who have historically been friendly to the oil industry, which has launched a television ad dubbing the bill the “gas restriction act of 2015.”

The ads target a select group of lawmakers and are running on web sites in their respective districts, said Beth Miller, a spokeswoman for the industry group called California Drivers Alliance.

“It is a method of communicating to legislators about an issue we think is of concern to their constituents,” Miller said.

Sen. de León emphasized that fossil fuels were not going away. Nor, he said, would everyone need to immediately buy an electric car or hybrid. (In his official capacity, de León is chauffeured in a Chevrolet Suburban. For personal use, he leases a Chevrolet Impala and said he aspires to a hybrid.) Establishing targets, he said, is vital to encouraging California down the path toward clean energy, but the policy would not result in banning or rationing gasoline.

“If we don’t meet this goal,” de León said, “no one’s going to jail.”

Our former gun-running senator, Leland Yee, may need the company.

(Featured image from King Rose Archives video)

Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.