Editors at National Review Online take aim at a clear example of harmful overregulation in the Golden State.
In one of the battles of the progressives’ war on things that work, California is making life harder for truck drivers and everyone who depends on them.
The California Air Resources Board (CARB) was created in 1967 under Governor Ronald Reagan, and it was one of Reagan’s greatest mistakes. The CARB is an independent agency of the California state government. The federal Clean Air Act governs emissions standards nationally, or at least it’s supposed to, but the EPA waives the Clean Air Act for California to set stricter standards. Over time, a coalition of 14 other states and the District of Columbia have glommed onto California’s rules. Since California plus that coalition make up a large portion of the total U.S. vehicle market, the CARB has de facto power to set national emissions standards for the country.
It’s not only for that reason that California’s trucking regulations affect everyone. More U.S. imports come through California than through any other single state. Imports sometimes get caricatured as “cheap stuff from China,” but about half of U.S. imports are inputs for domestic production, which is spread across the other 47 contiguous states. And the effects on consumer prices are nothing to shrug off either, especially with higher-than-normal inflation.
The CARB’s Advanced Clean Trucks (ACT) rule requires truck manufacturers to sell only zero-emissions drayage trucks in California by 2035. Drayage trucks operate within ports or drive between ports and nearby rail yards and warehouses. The rule will start being phased in next year. On top of that, the CARB’s Advanced Clean Fleets (ACF) rule requires trucking companies to purchase only zero-emissions trucks by 2035, again to be phased in starting next year.
Right now, “zero-emissions” mostly means “electric,” and electric trucks are, by almost any definition, worse than diesel trucks.
