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Posted September 17, 2000
Confessions of an Eco-CriminalBy John Martin
I am no friend of clean air. Every weekday morning, I fire up my clapped-out 11-year-old minivan and drive off in an embarrassingly visible cloud of unburned hydrocarbons and oxides of nitrogen. After I pull into my parking garage just a mile and a half away, however, I become one of the best friends of the Washington, D.C., region’s urban environment, boarding our zero-emission subway system for the remainder of my commute to work.
A car that runs on batteries alone would be perfect for the kind of weekday commuting I do, as well as the typical round of weekend errands, taking kids to music lessons or picking up bags of mulch at the home center. Its limited range and meager top speed would be of no consequence under those circumstances, which encompass probably 95 percent of the driving I do. I’m typical of millions of American urbanites and suburban-dwellers.
The problem is that there aren’t many electric cars, and the ones that do exist are pretty expensive. Automakers have resisted electric cars for decades, and cost-effective battery technology isn’t really there. Electric cars remain a niche for techie enthusiasts and environmental zealots who either have generous trust funds or have scored big in tofu futures.
Another major group that embraces electric cars is the government of California. The state’s Air Resources Board adopted a zero-emission-vehicle mandate back in 1990, setting quotas for the numbers of ZEVs automakers were required to be selling in the state by certain dates. But automakers don’t want to sell electric cars — the mandate, they complain, forces them to build and sell at a loss a product people don’t want — and they have managed to delay their way to a situation where more than a decade after the mandate went into effect, just 2,300 ZEVs are whirring smoglessly along on the state’s roads. It’s hard to see how the state’s mandate of 31,000 ZEVs by 2006 can possibly be achieved.
The biggest shortcoming of the California mandate is that it is a mandate, a vestige of the top-down, punishment-powered environmental cleanup mindset of the 1970s. Meanwhile, California is having a good bit of success with another auto-focused environmental cleanup effort, offering cash to repair or retire the aging clunkers that, like my jalopy, emit more than their share of pollutants. Maybe it’s time for the state to look for ways to create a market for electric cars by offering incentives, such as a tax break (Vermont Governor Howard Dean is proposing a ZEV tax break for his state) or free vehicle registration. How many people might buy an electric car if single-occupant ZEVs enjoyed unlimited toll-free access to California’s high-occupancy-vehicle lanes? A little creativity could go a long way here.
As with so many other movements, the outcome of California’s ZEV initiative will ripple across the country. New England and New York State have hitched themselves to the California effort, hoping the Golden State’s marketplace muscle will clear the way for an invasion of ZEVs in their regions. Maybe it will, if California starts thinking in terms of stimulating demand rather than mandating supply. Success in California might lead to success in the Northeast, and from there it could be expected to ripple down the Eastern Seaboard to my region. I might be able to stop being an eco-criminal.
John Martin is editor of Governing.com.
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Reader Response:
AUTOMOTIVE REVOLUTION?
I agree wholeheartedly. As more areas go into the ozone-smog limit status and the air one breathes is noticeably laced with this chemical "dirt," many will begin to realize that the limited driving most do will work well with electric vehicles--especially if they are informed of the positive impact their participation in the EV world will do for the environment where they live, work and play. Factor the low-cost availability in many areas for off-peak electricity rates in with rising gasoline prices, and darn, you might have an automotive revolution!
Bill Brown
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I would love to become a full-time friend of my region’s air. Buying a newer, cleaner minivan, or one of those new low-emission “hybrid” cars, would help a little. But the best favor I could do for our air quality would be to emit nothing at all. What I need is an electric car.
