You are correct in saying that the bill has been amended to make it more "moderate", but there is one factor that is key: the new bills gives CARB the right to determine what manufacturers must do to sell their cars in California. While they can not outright ban SUV or increase gas taxes as the original bill enabled them to do, they can impose strict requirements on manufacturers before a car can be sold in California.
What this means is that either the price of cars will increase because manufacturers will comply with new rules and pass the cost of compliance on to the consumer, or there will be fewer automobile choices to consumers.
I'll need to look at the bill again -- I have read it -- because I'm sure that there's something else insidious in there, otherwise they wouldn't be pushing so hard for it when the public is obviously opposed to it.
Some points:
- We've been down this road before. The State of California mandated that 10% of all cars sold be powered by electricity by, I think, 2000 or thereabouts. The automakers claimed this was impossible. It became rapidly clear that, despite heavily subsidized products, public interest in electric cars was virtually zero. As a result, the state had to back down.
My hypothesis is that the exact same thing would happen with these mandates. If they are too tough to make, they will be weakened. So my contention is that, even in 2009, this bill is a paper tiger.
- A Coward's Bill. So why did they push so hard for this bill? It has the stamp of Gray Davis all over it: Take the PR credit today, push off the tough decisions for tomorrow when he won't be here anymore. In short, it's a coward's bill, signed quite deliberately by someone who won't be around to take the consequences.
He lit the firecracker in the statehouse; by the time the fuse is used up and the fires start, he's absent with leave.
So what do they gain from it? Well, the Greens think it's revolutionary, and even though they're wrong, this is bound to strengthen their hard-left base which really doesn't like Davis much.
"You can't like Davis' environmental record, and this bill probably has little to no concrete consequences, but at least he threw us a bone. Simon won't even do that!"
He should think twice. The Simon stand on offshore drilling, however misguided, is a pretty juicy bone.
I would normally say that something as transparent and futile as this bill shouldn't save Davis from the anger of the Left, but for some reason the Left loves the bill. I have to believe they simply haven't done the hard thinking I have that reveals that, in reality, it's a paper tiger likely to have little to no effect.
D