California Moves To End Sales Of New Gas-Powered Cars

Speaker 1: 00:00 Using California's devastating wildfires. As a springboard, governor Gavin Newsome has taken a dramatic policy leap to reduce future carbon emissions yesterday. He issued an executive order to require all new cars. So then California, to be zero emission vehicles by 2035, the most aggressive clean car policy in the United States Speaker 2: 00:21 Of all the simultaneous crises that we face as a state. And I would argue as a nation from a global perspective, none is more impactful. That is more forceful than the issue of the climate crisis. And that's exactly what we're advancing here today is a strategy to address that crisis. Head-on Speaker 1: 00:42 Joining us to look at the implications of the governor's radical plan is David Victor, who is professor of international relations at the school of global policy and strategy at UCS de San Diego. Uh, Victor was also climate policy advisor to presidential candidate, Pete Buddha judge, by the way, David, thank you for joining us. Speaker 2: 01:02 It's a pleasure to be back with you. Speaker 1: 01:04 So now I put this into context. How big a deal is this ban on new gas, power vehicles by 2035? Does it tackle climate crisis head on? Speaker 2: 01:14 Well, so it's potentially a big deal. The governor is under enormous pressure to act on climate change. He was before the wildfires, the wildfires have made that more salient. And this is what California does is we have in effect an industrial policy where we push new technologies. Uh, we, we make California the biggest market for them. That's what we've done with clean vehicles in the last 20, 30 years. And then we hope that those technologies are gonna diffuse around the rest of the world. And I think that's the key here is that he's laid out a very bold vision for, uh, making all vehicles in California, clean all new vehicles clean, and then we've got to work hard to make sure that those same technologies spread out in the rest of well it's California is only less than 1% of global emissions. And so if we want to stop climate change, we ultimately have to have what happens in California, not stay in California, Speaker 1: 02:01 But, uh, transportation and vehicles does account for a very large percentage of emissions, right? Speaker 2: 02:07 Yes. And it's an area where emissions are going up and the only sector where we're starting to see reliable progress in parts of the world is electric power. Even here in California, we're seeing emissions go down because of more efficiency, uh, in particular in California, more renewable power. And so in the electric sector, we have emissions going down, transportation emissions have remained stubborn, uh, industry, uh, emissions continue to go up. And, and so in effect, this is part of a larger strategy to electrify as many energy uses as possible and vehicles at least light duty vehicles are a good candidate for that. Speaker 1: 02:43 So how likely is it that other States will follow suit? How will this affect the rest of the country? Speaker 2: 02:49 Well, I think we're seeing a real disconnect across the country. We're seeing the blue States behaving like California and in fact, many of them, uh, have, uh, air pollution regulations that are identical to California's air pollution regulations, and then the red States are not. And so there's really, you know, like in all of our politics right now, we're seeing a polarization. And so I think these rules will, uh, will have an impact across much of the rest of the country. And if they result in electric vehicles getting a lot cheaper and that looks promising, it's not a guarantee that looks promising, then the market on its own is going to push more of the electric vehicles into service Speaker 1: 03:25 And globally speaking, how many other countries are already ahead of California on this? Speaker 2: 03:30 Well, the Europeans for the most part are ahead of California and that they have announced bands on internal combustion, new, new, internal combustion engine vehicles. The governor's order yesterday, uh, requires that those vehicles be cleaned. So it's not necessarily a ban on internal combustion, but it's likely to be neat electricity. Um, and that'll put us in line with what's happening in Norway. For example, Norway is a huge market for electric vehicles, much of the rest of Europe, France, Germany, and so on. Uh, and, but you know, the, the Europeans are in the similar situation that we're in here in California, which is they're only 14% of global emissions and shrinking. And in fact, the more they do to control their own emissions, the less relevant they become to the global problem. And so they also have to be pushing these vehicles out of the Chinese. Market's very important. The Indian markets going to be very important. Speaker 1: 04:14 How will this play into the state's battle? California's battle with the federal government over environmental regulations? Speaker 2: 04:20 Well, elections have consequences. This is going to be extremely important. Uh, uh, this is what the governor signed yesterday was actually something that had been working through the California resources board for awhile. And they had already adopted a similar rule, but for, uh, medium and heavy duty trucks, uh, uh, out to the year 2045. And the playbook is the one that California set way back in 1990, when we first started to push zero emission vehicles into the California market. So that playbook though hinges on our ability to continue to have freedom in California, to set our own air pollution regulations. And the Trump administration has been trying to roll that back. There are legal challenges around this. Uh, if we have another, uh, uh, four years of Trump plus a different Supreme court that could make it much harder to do these kinds of things in California. Speaker 1: 05:07 Now it appears that the governor is taking a leadership role, but some environmental groups are not happy with his plan and they say, it doesn't go far enough. Do they have a point? Speaker 2: 05:16 Well, I think some of this unhappiness is built in there. There, some of the groups are, are designed to be unhappy. It's important for them to be unhappy and they're particularly unhappy because the executive order yesterday doesn't go as far as they wanted to basically ban new oil drilling. So they ordered it. Two things. One is a lot on vehicles. We've just been talking about. The other is, um, it puts up for study and tightens the screws on new oil drilling in the state, but it doesn't go as far as the environmentalist wanted particular on the issue of fracking. My own view is that that's largely a symbolic debate because California produces less than 0.5% of the global production of oil. And so we're at frankly, just not that relevant for the global market, but it's a very, very important symbolic debate. And it's being used almost as a litmus test to see how green different political candidates are. Speaker 1: 06:08 Hmm. What about auto manufacturers? You know, some applaud this other opposing it, you know, what are the incentives for them to move on this or resisted? Speaker 2: 06:17 Well, so that's the industrial politics. Here are fascinating. A number of the auto manufacturers have raised questions about whether the governor has the authority to do this. And that's, you know, untested, it seems like the governor has the authority, but, but we'll see, we'll see in court there, the bigger issue is that some of the automakers are ready to do this. You know, most visibly companies like Tesla and some of them are not ready to do it this quickly. And that's basically all the big American auto manufacturers, except for those that have started to go over to, to aggressive electric vehicles VW, for example, as a big electric vehicle program, after they had caught cheating on the diesel emission scandal. And so you have this huge, huge variation in the extent to which the different auto companies are ready to move to all electric and all clean models, and that's reflected in their position on the governor's order. Speaker 1: 07:04 So now zero emissions vehicles currently amount to barely 10% of California's automobile markets. What needs to be done to, to boost the electric car market. Now, as we move towards his ambitious goal. Speaker 2: 07:18 Well, so far the strategy has been to subsidize new vehicles. There are federal subsidies, there are state subsidies. Um, there's a terrific subsidy part of managed, uh, here locally by, by an NGO CSE. Uh, and, and they ineffective help push the vehicles into the marketplace. Uh, this ban is going to help pull more vehicles into the marketplace. Um, and I think the, the number one concern is going to be the infrastructure. Uh, you need, uh, charging systems. You need charging systems in communities where people rent houses, and therefore can't really justify putting in an expensive charger in a house that they might move from in a year or two. And, and all that. As we're beginning to work, some of that out, I'm skeptical. We're going to have it worked out, uh, as quickly as needed for this order. What I'd really watch is the price of new electric vehicles because that price has come down a lot. And even without the subsidies, the price, it really come down a lot. So I think people households that used to view electric vehicles as kind of a toy for the rich are now seeing these as a mainstream vehicles that reliable they have long range and an infrastructure for charging is now emerged. So, so that's, that's what I'd watch. Speaker 1: 08:28 So you've been keeping an eye on global policy, you know, energy policy and policies to combat climate change. Is this policy what we need to combat climate change, or is it too little too late? Speaker 2: 08:41 Well, it's a step. And I think what, one of the reasons that climate change is such a hard problem is you, there's not a single sector. We have to work. You have to work on all sectors. What I like about this policy is it emblematic of, of a policy that really pushes innovation, pushes the, and then brings down the cost of those new technologies, making it easier for them to spread around the world. So we're doing that in electric vehicles. We're going to do that in medium and heavy duty trucks. Uh, we're doing that, uh, in our electric grid here in California, we need to be doing the same thing and all the other sectors that emit cement and steel and cotton, which is not a huge steel operator. So that's going to be for other countries and other markets. Uh, and, and that's gonna, that's the strategy. Speaker 2: 09:19 That's going to really bend the curve here. That interestingly enough is the, exactly the strategy that UK government is going to be putting forward to nations when it hosts the next big climate conference, uh, in November of 2021 is a strategy where you don't just get together and talk about the big picture, which you common countries put on the table. Here's what I'm doing in this sector and that sector, the work sector by sector, and that'll have an impact, but it's going to take some time. And meanwhile, we're building a huge amount of climate change. Speaker 1: 09:46 We've been speaking with David Victor of the school of global policy and strategy at UCS D David. Thank you so much. Speaker 2: 09:53 Always a pleasure. Thank you.