Posted on 03/17/2005 7:36:48 AM PST by SmithL
RANCHO CORDOVA - With opposition growing among Democrats statewide, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger moved Wednesday to shore up his environmental credentials by touting the reinstatement of a program to take older, polluting autos off the road.
With a Sacramento-area auto yard as the backdrop, Schwarzenegger announced that the state is again offering $1,000 to car owners who voluntarily retire older vehicles that cannot meet the state's smog control standards.
The goal is to take as many as 15,000 high-polluting vehicles off the road annually during the next 10 years.
"This will pay big dividends for California," the governor said at a news conference.
"Clean air makes our state a more desirable place to live, visit or locate a business."
The buyback program was suspended two years ago for budget reasons, but was re-established in September after the passage of a bill by then-Assemblywoman Hannah-Beth Jackson, D-Santa Barbara.
Although her bill provided $4.5 million this year for incentive payments, Schwarzenegger said he wants to increase the program's funding in 2005-06 to $16.3 million.
But the governor also noted in his press materials Wednesday that his support of the auto buyback program is just one area in which he's worked to protect the environment.
He's also called for the creation of a network of hydrogen fuel stations along major California highways.
He signed bills last year that would allow hybrid vehicles to use freeway car pool lanes; replace old diesel engines in school buses with new cleaner-burning engines; require cars built after 1975 to have smog checks every two years; and require that trucks coming into California from Mexico meet U.S. clean air standards.
Ironically, each of the bills he touted were authored by Democrats and passed despite substantial opposition from Schwarzenegger's Republican colleagues.
The governor's news conference came as labor groups and education activists protested at a Schwarzenegger fund-raiser Wednesday night in Los Angeles. Hundreds of nurses, firefighters and teachers spilled into the street outside a Century City hotel, where Schwarzenegger held a lavish fund-raiser to promote his agenda.
The opposition has been sparked by several of the governor's proposals -- including ballot measures that would privatize much of the state's public pension program and potentially cut funding for schools when tax income does not meet budget needs.
Given the growing protest from the state's majority party, some Democrats said they are not surprised Schwarzenegger wants to remind voters of his environmental record.
"If the Democrats in the Legislature are so bad, why is he taking our bills and making them part of his platform?" asked Steve Maviglio, spokesman for Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, D-Los Angeles.
"It's because his poll numbers are caving among Democrats and independents -- people who also support environmental issues."
It still makes more sense that that stupid treadmill emissions tests that got forced down our throats awhile back.
LQ
My wifes explorer, with a v-8, has an LEV sticker on the window - low emmissions vehicle.
Thanks for reminding me. I have to take my car in by the end of the month.
You lucky dog, that means you get to use the car pool lane. Would you make me a copy????????
Most will probably come off block in front yards or from Nevada.
This is actually not a terrible idea. The vast majority of auto emissions today come from a relative handful of vehicles. Its probably cheaper to "buy" them off of people than it is to spend millions on innefective smog testing systems.
I agree. Whenever I see an old beater blowing clouds of thick blue smoke I wish the police would just pull them over.
They'll get my '51 Plymouth when they pry the steering whell from my cold dead, dead hands!
Sorry, I drive an 86 Cherokee. $1000.00 would be a fair market price for it, but then I'd have to walk.
My old buggy is safe, I am a good mechanic. It is not pretty, I am a lousy painter. My Jeep is worth exactly the same to Me as Your new Cadillac is to You. Sometimes money has no meaning.
I can see this proposal having the same kind of unintended consequences as so-called "gun buy-backs", where people dredge up all kinds of worthless junk to collect the fee.
---of course,the "environmentalists" shot it down---
Oh, no! More anti-Mexican illegal criminal alien rules! Next thing, the governor will want these same criminals to have the mandatory liability insurance that legal drivers must have. Then he'll want them to have real licenses, issued by the actual state and not purchased in a parking lot from "Documents By Jose" or "Manuel the License Man!"
Well-maintained old vehicles aren't a problem, IMHO. My dad had a 1966 Buick Special that used to ace the emissions test every year, even when it was 20 years old (I grew up with that car :lol:) . You could just about eat off the engine of that car.
It's the clunkers that people don't take care of - you know the type, the ones belching black smoke so bad you can't see the bumper - that need to either get repaired or get off the road. We saw a lot of those where I grew up.
People who take care of their vehicles likely won't trade them in for a grand as they're worth more than that to them (and there's no way you can get a car in as good shape for 1000). Believe me, I know - my last car I sold at 12 years old and 130K mmiles on it but I would've kept it if the transmission hadn't checked out.
But the clunker-drivers may be willing to part with the old
heap for the money.
LQ
He's going to make me mad.
Is anybody looking at the long-term environmental impact of the "Hydrogen Economy"? Hydrogen is an extremely slippery gas to try to contain, particularly at high pressure. A piping system that would be completely adequate for containing pressurized air or refrigerant will leak like a sieve when filled with hydrogen. So we can expect that fugitive emissions of hydrogen will fairly large.
So what happens when Hydrogen escapes into the atmosphere? Well, nothing, really. Hydrogen is so light it will immediately travel up into the upper atmosphere, never to be heard from again. So we will wind up with an upper layer of hydrogen in the atmosphere. Some of this gas may actually escape the pull of Earth's gravity, or be scoured away by tidal forces of the moon.
This may or may not be benign. I'm no atmospheric scientist, but it could act like a greenhouse gas, I suppose.
But what may be worse is what is left behind. All the hydrogen that escapes will have been liberated from water through one process or another. The corresponding Oxygen that would have bound with the fugitive Hydrogen will be left near the surface. Now Oxygen is a wonderful thing, but too much of anything is not necessarily good. It will bind up with Carbon to form Carbon Monoxide and Carbon Dioxide, or who knows what. Oxygen is one of the primary actors in the ecosystem, and increasing the fraction of Oxygen in the air will effect everything in ways that nobody has examined.
LOL
Junk cars off the road?
OK.
How about fat chicks off the beach too while we're at it.
Oh, and all old people have to walk single file.
I've got an old car I could let go for the right price, but transport costs might eat into the profits.
How will the illegal aliens get around?
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