EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler on Monday ridiculed California’s proposed ban of new gas cars and questioned the legality of the executive order, reports The Sacramento Bee.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued the order last week. It requires the sale of all new passenger vehicles to be zero-emission by 2035.
Wheeler in a letter to Newsom questioned how the state could add millions of electric vehicles despite having “a record of rolling blackouts.”
He said it “begs the question of how you expect to run an electric car fleet that will come with significant increases in electricity demand, when you can’t even keep the lights on today.”
“The truth is that if the state were driving 100 percent electric vehicles today, the state would be dealing with even worse power shortages than the ones that have already caused a series of otherwise preventable environmental and public health consequences,” Wheeler wrote.
Newsom’s order is an ambitious step to slash greenhouse gas emissions and is aimed at new car sales. It won’t prohibit Californians from owning or selling existing gas-powered cars.
“Of all the simultaneous crises that we face as a state … none is more forceful than the issue of the climate crisis,” he said last week. “What we’re advancing here today is a strategy to address that crisis head on, to be as bold as the problem is big.”
Wheeler said the order would likely need approval from the EPA.
“While the [executive order] seems to be mostly aspirational and on its own would accomplish very little, any attempt by the California Air Resources Board to implement sections of it may require California to request a waiver to U.S. EPA,” he wrote.
Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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