Does California Need A ‘Green New Deal’ Of Its Own?
The world has just 12 years to limit global warming to moderate levels, according to a recent United Nations report. In response, Democrats Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed Markey laid out a grand plan for the nation to address climate change: the Green New Deal.
The state's goal of 5 million electric vehicles on roads by 2030 is a good example, according Austin Brown with the UC Davis Policy Institute for Energy, Environment and the Economy.
"Like any new technology, the adopters of these vehicles tended to be higher-income,” Brown said. “Since then, the Air Resources Board has updated the approach.”
There's now an income cap for electric vehicle subsidies and increased rebates for lower-income buyers. But as of December 2018, consumers have only bought enough electric vehicles to make up about 6 percent of that goal, according to the California Center for Jobs and the Economy.
That means Californians will have to buy five times the number of zero-emission vehicles before 2030. To reach the state’s electric vehicle goal, Brown says the state will need to look to policies that will push the envelope even further.
“We have the technologies to get to these kind of emission reductions, but they require a kind of a pace of change that our energy, transportation and land use sectors are really just not accustomed to,” Brown said.
...Read the full story by Ezra David Romero