By Anton_Lutsenko @ Shutterstock.com
Gasoline is one of the most important things Americans buy each week. Access and competition are what make gasoline purchases fast and inexpensive. Now California politicians are banning new gas stations in an effort to achieve their green dreams by taking away one of the most essential commodities Americans buy. Grace Toohey reports for Yahoo! Finance:
Without realizing they were starting a movement in green energy policy, leaders of a small Sonoma County city seem to have done just that when they questioned the approval process for a new gas station — eventually halting its development and others in the future.
“We didn’t know what we were doing, actually,” said Petaluma Councilwoman D’Lynda Fischer, who led the charge last year to prohibit new gas stations in the city of 60,000. “We didn’t know we were the first in the world when we banned gas stations.”
Since Petaluma’s decision, four other cities in the Bay Area have followed suit, and now, leaders in California’s most car-centric metropolis are hoping to bring the climate-conscious policy to Southern California.
It opens a new front in California’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions and already is generating opposition from the fuel industry, which argues consumers would suffer.
“It’s really up to cities to turn around climate change,” said Andy Shrader, director of environmental affairs for Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz, who proposed L.A. work toward its own ban on new gas stations. While the motion hasn’t gained traction, Shrader and other council leaders expect a hearing on the matter this summer.
“L.A.’s enormous and damaging ecological footprint really helped set us on this path,” Shrader said at a recent conference about gas station prohibitions across California. “If you have lung cancer, you stop smoking; if your planet’s on fire, you stop pouring gasoline on it.”
While Petaluma officials at the time called its new gas pump ban “completely uncontroversial,” it’s unclear how such a policy would go over in Los Angeles, a city with about 65 times as many people and a transportation infrastructure that still heavily relies on vehicles. Lobbyists for gas stations said they will oppose the motion in L.A. if it moves forward.
But Koretz said such a ban would better prepare the city for a future that doesn’t rely on fossil fuel-powered vehicles, which California has pledged to stop selling by 2035.
“Given Gov. Newsom’s timeline to end the sale of gas vehicles by 2035, gas stations are a dying business,” Koretz said. “Their toxic chemicals take years and millions of dollars to clean up.”
Action Line: Who are these politicians banning gas stations for? Certainly not for their constituents. For an example of how policies like these could affect Californians, take Los Angeles as an example. Residents of Los Angeles, have an average commute of 30.8 minutes. Less than 1% (2020 numbers) of LA’s vehicles run on electricity. Who exactly are these politicians trying to help? The answer is obvious. Like ESG, and other green dreams, the politicians want everyday Americans to pay for their follies. You invest, and they win. It’s policies like these that drive Americans crazy. Their perception of risk has dramatically heightened as they realize politicians aren’t working to help them, but instead to help themselves. Click here to subscribe to my monthly RAGE Gauge alert, and you’ll be the first to see just how risk is affecting Americans today.
P.S. California is one of my “Escape States.” People who can escape, are doing so. Instead, they’re finding new lives in my Super States.
E.J. Smith - Your Survival Guy
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