Banning Gas Cars Is Good, but It’ll Take More to Save the Planet

The officials of the California pollution regulators were hailed as climate heroes when they voted to ban the sale of gas-powered cars in the state by the year 2035. The move will prevent an estimated 1,300 deaths from heart and lung-related ailments, according to the state. The ban is the first of its kind in the US, and one of the most aggressive in the world. The Golden State is a great proving ground for environmental policy. The whole thing seems to have taken the whole industry by surprise. More than 16 percent of new cars sold in California this year were zero emission, and experts say the goal should be doable.

The bad news is that. The good news is that California still has a lot of work to do to fight climate change. Reducing the number of miles that Californians drive every year was one of the things the Air Resources Board looked at in a draft report. It is still necessary to reduce driving to meet state climate and air quality commitments even with improvements in clean vehicle technology and fuels.

For one thing, it will take a long time for all California cars to become zero-emission. Today's average age of cars on US roads is more than 12 years, despite new purchases and old cars being scrapped. After new car lots ban gas-powered cars, existing gas-powered cars will stay. There are a lot of emissions associated with cars and driving that don't come out of a tailpipe, as well as stuff that cars drive on. Some 3,500 tons of carbon emissions are created by building and maintaining just one lane mile of highway.

California has not succeeded in reducing driving. Californians drove and rode in cars at a higher rate in the last year of strong data than they did in the previous 14 years. They commuted, walked to work, and biked to work. Since the beginning of the Pandemic, the number of people taking the bus or train has gone down. The state wants to reduce the miles traveled by vehicles by 19 percent by the year 2035. Preliminary data shows that the number moved in a different direction in 2019. A number of regional agencies have argued that they have reduced driving miles more than the Air Resources Board has calculated.

The rest of the country needs to reduce their driving. The US needs to reduce the miles it travels by car by 20 percent by the year 2030. The experience of living on Earth is going to get worse.

The inertia from a century of US urban planning has made it hard to live without driving. Susan Handy is a professor of environmental science and policy at UC Davis. We need to rebuild and adjust our communities so that we can drive less.