The same unelected enviro-ideologues at the California Air Resources Board that earlier this year were intent on shutting down California’s gas stations have come up with yet another off-the-way crazy idea as they seek to come up with the screwiest schemes to lower carbon emissions in California to comply with the state’s draconian AB 32 guidelines…
It seems like lately California, which I remind readers is in the same recession as the rest of the country (actually worse) has been drawing a lot curious looks at state government churns out dumb ideas from banning big screen televisions to looking at how the state can directly control air conditioning use in new homes. The latest remarkably dumb idea has caught the attention of none-other than America’s most widely listened-to radio talk show host – Rush Limbaugh.
So take a guess as to what he talked about earlier this week, since our state has no shortage of interesting topics to dive into? It wasn’t our budget woes, prison overcrowding or even the proposed new NFL stadium in the City of Industry.
This week, Limbaugh gave special attention to a little-noticed move by the CARB mandating that starting in 2012, all new car windows be treated with an advanced window glazing that in theory will keep cars cooler, meaning drivers will use less air conditioning — reducing our carbon emissions (by some tiny amount).
The marketing geniuses at CARB have decided to call this program, "Cool Cars."
Seriously.
I wonder if California consumers will think it "cool" that the effective "car tax increase" of $110-$250 per car? CARB says that over a dozen years drivers will recoup this by saving energy by not running their car a/c as much. Nice.
If the higher cost for cars isn’t enough reason for common-sense people to oppose this idea, that’s only the tip of the iceberg. There are a lot of logical concerns coming from the issue that glazing thick enough to keep heat OUT of the car might also keep something IN the car — most notably it may be the pesky out-going signals of a cell phone, garage door opener, your satellite radio, or your PDA that get cut off.
Here’s an excerpt from an article in The Detroit News:
(Garmin makes GPS devices — oh yeah, they may be negative effected as well!)
If this regulation goes into effect, one of two things is going to happen: Automakers sell one type of car in California, and another type of car in other states, which means only in-state car buyers will pay more … or automakers will just make all cars to fit the California standard, so every American will pay more.
While I think the entire proposal should be shelved, there are some who are trying (good luck) to get CARB to at least look at alternatives to their current proposal that have fewer negative impacts.
As was noted on the venerable Cars.com website:
But I can’t say I’m optimistic that CARB will come to its senses. After all, this is the same regulatory body that came up with a “Cool Paints” idea – a mandate to require reflective paint on cars for the same reason as the reflective windows. Since this would have effectively banned black cars (seriously), the CARB folks were forced to ditch the idea.
According to The Detroit News story, CARB plans to publish its “completed regulation” for the Cool Cars mandate by the end of this month, and then the public will have a 15-day comment period before this bad idea is set in stone next May.
Governor Schwarzenegger is getting ready to enter the final term of his administration. This kind of onerous regulation is hardly the kind of "legacy" he needs to create for himself. But I am not overly optimistic that he will stop this particularly ill-advised regulation from moving forward (he is currently supporting a ban on big screen televisions, so…). After all, if he can’t keep his wife from using her cell phone while driving, he can get the last word by passing a regulation that might very well keep her cell phone from working in the car at all!
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