Morons. Say it again: Morons.

havana, 2023, hartford, 2030

CT could phase out new gas-powered cars by 2035, faster than President Biden's plans call for

Converting the nation’s internal combustion auto and truck fleets will require car makers to completely remake their industry: new factories must be built, new manufacturing processes developed, new supplier networks created, and new sources for the raw materials required, including copper (200 lbs per car), lithium, cobalt, rare earths, and new processing factories for them. Mining is almost completely prohibited in the United States and will be for the foreseeable future, so manufacturers will have to either beg the Chinese for access to the existing mines in China and the African mines they control or discover and develop new sources in other third world countries not already in thrall to the new colonizers from the east. Literally, hundreds of thousands of autoworkers’ jobs will be destroyed.

None of this can be accomplished in 10 years — not even close — and we’ve yet to discuss rebuilding the country’s energy grid to allow two-way flow, instead of the one-direction flow we have now, and (shhh!) the source for all the new electricity that will be required.

This won’t be done; it’s impossible, but by the time that’s realized, it will be too late: you can’t undo it. This is precisely why the maniacs have pushed so hard to accomplish this, why they have worked for decades to block the construction of natural gas lines and power plants and eliminate hydro and nuclear power options. It’s solar and wind power or nothing, and if that means “nothing” they’ll be perfectly happy with that. Remember, in their Western civilization is a scourge on the earth, and the quicker it is destroyed, the sooner godly perfection will be achieved.

Does any of this stop the stupid? Do they, can they, see past their lint-coated navels to the catastrophe their masters are creating? Well, no. No, they can’t.

The new national timeline for phasing out gas-powered cars announced by President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday will rapidly accelerate the switch to electric vehicles for millions of drivers — and yet it is still likely to lag behind efforts underway in Connecticut and other states. 

The new tailpipe emissions standards unveiled by the Environmental Protection Agency this week aim to ensure that two-thirds of new cars sold by the year 2032 harness their power from electric engines, a vast improvement from the roughly 6 percent share of the market that EVs currently hold. 

Still, experts say that Connecticut will have to outpace even that performance to meet its existing climate goals. 

That’s because Connecticut is part of a coalition of over a dozen states that abide by the stricter rules established by the California Air Resources Board, which aims to phase out all new sales of gas-powered cars by 2035, several years ahead of the EPA’s timeline.

“The reality is as California, Connecticut and numerous other states have determined, it’s not enough,” said Greg Cunningham, the director of the Clean Energy and Climate Change program at the Conservation Law Foundation. 

“It’s not enough to avoid the worst effects of climate change, and at least in Connecticut it’s not enough to comply with Connecticut’s Global Warming Solutions Act,” Cunningham added, referring to a state law mandating that carbon emissions be slashed to 80 percent below 2001 levels by mid-century.

Under the federal Clean Air Act, states can opt to follow either the California standards or the less stringent EPA regulations. Connecticut lawmakers voted to adopt the California standards on cars and light-duty trucks in 2004, and the law was signed by then-Gov. John Rowland, a Republican. 

Last year, lawmakers went a step further and voted to adopt the California standards on medium and heavy-duty trucks. 

California has since opted to speed up its own goals for electrifying all vehicles from cars and pickups to eighteen-wheelers, virtually ensuring that other states will have to follow suit. 

While Connecticut has yet to formally adopt the newest standards, Cunningham said that law gives regulators no other option unless lawmakers vote to leave the California coalition and revert to the less stringent EPA regulations, which would likely run afoul of the climate goals that have also been written into law. 

Neither the new EPA rules nor the California regulations will prohibit owners from keeping, maintaining or re-selling gas-powered vehicles well beyond the 2030s. For that reason, Cunningham said that the states should act sooner to ensure that all or most carbon-spewing cars are off the road by mid-century. 

“Climate change is an ever present and disruptive force in our lives,” DEEP spokesman Will Healey said in a statement on Wednesday. “Cars and trucks of all sizes represent the largest source of climate–warming pollution in Connecticut and we strongly support EPA’s action that will build upon the work of California and 13 states, including Connecticut, who follow California’s emission standards.”

[I]t is unlikely that Connecticut’s Democratic-controlled legislature would vote to do away with the California standards in the near future. 

Supporters of the stricter California standards, meanwhile, said that the EPAs announcement on Wednesday would ultimately benefit states that have opted for a quicker timeline by spurring auto-makers into ramping up producing more EVs, while also speeding up the deployment of public charging stations. Even before the Biden administration’s announcement, General Motors had said that it would stop selling gas-powered vehicles by 2035, in line with the California standards. 

Despite booming sales of electric vehicles in Connecticut, officials say Connecticut continues to face a number of hurdles en route to phasing out gas-powered vehicles entirely. 

For one, drivers must currently travel out-of-state to purchase a car from the most popular electric vehicle-maker, Tesla, due to the state’s franchise law. [Score one for Connecticut’s auto dealers, who are as powerful as the state employee unions and small liquor store owners in thwarting competition — FWIW]

In addition, improvements must be made to the regional power grid, ISO New England, to ensure adequate capacity to recharge all of those electric vehicles on a daily or weekly basis. 

“Between now and [2035], we’re going to have to address the grid issue, the grid reliability issue,” said state Rep. Joe Gresko, D- Stratford, who serves as co-chair of the Environment Committee. “It’s great that it’s on our radar screen, now we’ve got to do it.”