The Biden administration effectively allows energy policy decisions with wide ramifications to be made by unelected bureaucrats in California. [emphasis, links added]
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) has key outstanding requests with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to enact certain environmental regulations that go above and beyond federal rules, and the EPA has granted CARB waiver requests over President Joe Biden’s first term.
Over time, these waivers and the policy outcomes they facilitate will allow CARB to alter the economies of other states, including those that do not wish to be impacted by CARB’s rules and have no influence over the agency, according to policy experts who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“EPA-granted waivers enable CARB to effectively dictate motor vehicle, trucking, and rail transport policies for the rest of the country,” Marlo Lewis Jr., a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, told the DCNF.
The Biden administration allowed CARB to pursue aggressive emissions regulations and climate policies because “it is more obvious that EPA lacks Clean Air Act authority to explicitly ban sales of combustion engine vehicles than to demonstrate that CARB lacks such authority” and because the “Biden administration would incur much greater political blowback if it tried to adopt an express zero-emission vehicle mandate,” according to Lewis.
The EPA will grant Clean Air Act waivers for California if the state proposes to impose rules that are more aggressive than existing federal standards, faces “compelling and extraordinary” circumstances, and gives manufacturers sufficient time to adjust and comply, according to CARB.
“EPA follows the prescribed process in the Clean Air Act regarding any California waiver decisions,” an agency spokesperson told the DCNF. “In this waiver review process, EPA issues a public comment period, EPA reviews the comments, and the administrator determines whether the requirements for obtaining an authorization have been met.”
CARB considers the waivers to be an important policy tool to cut emissions.
“For more than 50 years, the Clean Air Act has allowed California to seek a federal government waiver to enforce its motor vehicle standards,” a CARB spokesperson told the DCNF.
“In enacting this law, Congress recognized that California experienced significant air pollution problems and had been regulating vehicle emissions at a time when the federal government had not yet adopted comparable standards. This law is well-established and has been highly effective.”
California is the only state in the U.S. that can set its own vehicle emissions standards, according to the EPA.
The Trump administration effectively blocked California from doing so, but the Biden administration subsequently restored California’s ability to pursue more stringent auto emissions rules than those established by the federal government, according to E&E News.
With the Biden administration’s blessing, CARB has advanced its Advanced Clean Cars II rules, which will require 100% of new passenger vehicles sold in the state to be zero-emissions models by 2035.
Read rest at Daily Caller
Newsom is a total idiot just like Biden and all the Liberal Big Government Democrats who support this Global Warming/Climate Change Poppycock
Maurice Strong, who is considered by many to the father of global warming, advocated that the agenda be implemented by unelected committees. This certainly has been the case in many instances. The requirement that gas boilers be replaced by electric ones in the UK came from an unelected committee consisting of 100% members of Green Peace. The California Air Resources Board is not only unelected but is totally out of reach of any control of residents of other states.
There’s no doubts now that the late Maurice Strong was a total Globalists with the support from the M.S. Media Bottom Feeders who covered up for him