By Chris Powell
Never has the cart been put farther before the horse than with the environmental regulation the Lamont administration would have adopted this week except for the clamor raised by Republican state legislators, talk radio, and ordinary people paying attention. The regulation would have prohibited the sale in Connecticut of new gasoline-powered cars after 2035.
The regulation’s premises were beyond presumptuous. Among them: that the exhaust of internal-combustion engines is a primary cause of climate change, that future climate change is certain and knowable, and that it is bad.
Critics of the regulation didn’t need to dispute that. Instead they posed basic questions, noting that a complete transition to electric cars would require an enormous increase in the capacity of Connecticut’s electrical system and the installation of thousands of car-charging stations at a cost likely to reach many billions of dollars, and that the cost is yet to be reliably calculated and appropriated for.
The critics also noted that the regulation failed to take into account the environmental damage from the manufacture and disposal of electric vehicle batteries, the damage done by mining the minerals needed for such batteries, the insecurity of the supply of those minerals, and the weaknesses and high expense of electric cars.
Changes this momentous, the critics said, require full review, understanding, and assent through the ordinary democratic process. But Governor Lamont, his commissioner of the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, Katie Dikes, and many Democratic legislators wanted to command the changes short of democracy and confirmation of their practicality and cost. The governor had the regulation withdrawn just a day before the General Assembly’s Regulation Review Committee was to vote on it, when he learned that some Democrats on the committee didn’t want to support it.
Offering some sense from the Democratic side, House Speaker Matt Ritter argued that while setting a timely objective for conversion to electric cars is necessary, “we have to do more.” That is, Ritter said, “We have to demonstrate to Connecticut residents that this switch not only will save the environment, lives, and our planet, but not leave you in a position where you can no longer afford a vehicle.”
Even more assurance than that is needed: assurance about the cost and source of the electricity that hundreds of thousands more electric cars will require.
The cost of electricity in Connecticut is already nearly the highest in the country. More pipelines bringing natural gas into the state could increase generating capacity. So would more nuclear power plants, hydro-electric dams, and solar-panel farms. But these sources of generating capacity would be opposed by many, especially by people insisting on conversion to electric cars.
Indeed, the more that the answers necessary to a democratic decision prohibiting gasoline-powered cars are sought, the more expense will be discovered, even as poverty in the state is rising as real incomes fall.
Yes, as advocates of the ban on new gasoline-powered cars say, advances in technology may reduce the expense and increase the functionality of electric cars. But there is no guarantee that such advances will be firmly in place by 2035. Huge changes shouldn’t be required by a particular time before there is complete confidence that they will be practical and before their cost is fully understood and accepted.
The regulation that was put aside this week was just politically correct authoritarianism, and the people behind it remain in power.
At least the state may celebrate the conscientious opposition to the regulation mounted by leaders of the Republican minority in the General Assembly. The Republicans mastered the details, calmly posed the big unanswered questions, and engaged the public. If the Republicans ever made a habit of this, they might restore competitive politics to the state. For state government remains full of mistaken premises and arrogant claims that deserve to be punctured.
But if Democratic legislators continue to think that grand commands enshrined in mere regulation, unsupported, can transform society, how about a regulation requiring Connecticut’s students to master high school work before being given diplomas?
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 
Spot-on, Chris! Thank you!
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