Aviation is responsible for over two percent of global carbon dioxide emissions and is one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonize. We discussed options for California to address the challenge in a Berkeley Law policy report released last year, called Clean Takeoff.
I’ll be on KQED Forum today at 10am PT to discuss the report and what to do about “greening” flying. This will be the first in Forum’s new series “In Transit,” where I’ll talk about key environmental challenges and opportunities facing California’s transportation sector over the coming year.
Hope you can tune in or stream live!
I’ll be a guest on today’s KQED Forum at 10am PT, discussing California’s plans to phase out sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035. The new regulations announced last week by the California Air Resource Board formalize Governor Gavin Newsom’s 2020 executive order which proposed banning the sale of cars that run on fossil fuels.
This move is a much-needed step to address climate change. The show will cover what it means for the world’s fifth largest economy and the state that invented car culture to go electric, and they’ll open it up to listener questions: are you ready to get an electric car or will you be hanging on to your gas-powered car as long as you can?
Joining me on the panel will be:
- Russ Mitchell, Automotive Editor for the Los Angeles Times
- Margo Oge, Former director, US EPA Office of Transportation and Air Quality; Author of “Driving the Future: Combating Climate Change with Cleaner, Smarter Cars”
You can stream it live or tune in via KQED in the San Francisco Bay Area!
Last week, President Biden made a major environmental announcement that his administration will be largely restoring Obama-era vehicle fuel economy standards through 2025, which had been rolled back under the Trump administration. It’s a big deal because 30% of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation.
Beyond restoring the standards, the president directed his agencies to develop more stringent standards beyond 2025 model years, for light- as well as medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. The goal should be 50% of new vehicles sales as zero emission in 2030.
To discuss the announcement, I appeared on KQED Forum on Tuesday and KTVU Channel 2 News in the San Francisco Bay Area last week. The radio audio is linked above and I’ve included the KTVU video below.
President Biden yesterday unveiled his “infrastructure” plan, but it’s really his best and greatest shot to address climate change. I’ll be speaking about the plan and what it means for the climate at 10:20am PT on KQED’s Forum. You can also hear my thoughts on the electric vehicle charging aspect of the plan on yesterday’s NPR Marketplace.
The proposal calls for transformational investments in rail, bridges, and road repair, along with a decarbonized electricity grid, incentives for electric vehicles, an end to fossil fuel subsidies, and home energy retrofits, among other goals. The plan even seeks to end single-family zoning.
Tune in this morning to hear more!
Governor Newsom made a major announcement this week, issuing an executive order that California would ban the sale of new internal combustion engine passenger vehicles by 2035, and medium and heavy-duty vehicles by 2045. I’ll discuss the order and its implications this morning at 9am on KQED radio’s Forum.
We released a report at Berkeley Law’s Center for Law, Energy and the Environment (CLEE) on this very subject in 2018, called 100% Zero. The bottom line: this is a major new announcement that is necessary to tackle climate change and should be economically and technically feasible, assuming the state takes additional implementation steps discussed in the report.
However, whether it’s legally feasible for California to implement this order will almost inevitably revolve around this or future presidential elections, as well as the composition of the United States Supreme Court.
Tune in today for more details!
