What did California do?

In late August, the California Air Resources Board approved a new rule banning the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035.

The regulation does not ban Californians from driving vehicles with internal combustion engines, but it mandates that any new vehicle sold in the state with a model year of 2035 or later must be free of fossil fuel emissions.

What did Buttigieg say?

The transportation secretary told KTTV-TV last week that he is "really interested" in regulations like those in California. In fact, Buttigieg suggested such a policy may be considered nationally.

"It’s interesting to see how the states are trying to go above and beyond what we’re doing at the federal level," Buttigieg told the news station.

"I’m really interested in these developments, while we continue to set a national policy that’s the baseline for all of this. We need to move in the direction of electric vehicles," he added.

As they push for a global transition to a “green economy,” the World Economic Forum (WEF) is seeking to dramatically reduce both meat consumption, and the number of cars on the road worldwide.

The globalists say steps like eliminating car ownership need to be taken to reduce reliance on critical metals in the coming years.

“This transition from fossil fuels to renewables will need large supplies of critical metals such as cobalt, lithium, nickel, to name a few,” the forum said in a report earlier this month. They added that “shortages of these critical minerals could raise the costs of clean energy technologies,” which include cellphones, electric vehicles, wind turbines and efficient lighting.

Wall Street Journal reporter Rachel Wolfe recently ventured from New Orleans, Louisiana to Chicago, Illinois in a brand-new Kia EV6 to test America's current electric vehicle capabilities and public-charging infrastructure. By the end of her exhausting trip, she said the fumes of gasoline — though particularly expensive at the moment — "never smelled so sweet."

Never again. Well, at least not for awhile, Wolfe would likely say if someone asked her to make a lengthy EV road trip another time.

In a column for the newspaper published this month, the reporter chronicled the difficult journey with all of its pitfalls. It included a shorter range than expected, finicky charging cords, loads of slower-than-advertised charging stations, and large swaths of the country without any "fast" charging stations at all, among other hardships.

Tesla has told users in Texas not to charge their cars during a heat wave.

The alert comes as the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which operates the state’s grid, is calling on residents to conserve energy – in order to stop the grid being pushed to near-emergency conditions.

“A heat wave is expected to impact the grid in Texas over the next few days. The grid operator recommends to avoid charging during peak hours between 3pm and 8pm, if possible, to help statewide efforts to manage demand”, an in-car alert sent to Tesla owners reads, as reported by Electrek.

Average gas prices in the U.S. reached a new record high Tuesday, according to AAA's gas price calculator.

The national average cost of a regular gallon of gasoline hit $4.523 early Tuesday morning. This topped Monday's record of $4.483, which in turn had beat Sunday's record of $4.470.

The price comes as the European Union edges toward oil sanctions on Russia amid the Kremlin's invasion of Ukraine. It also comes amid record-high inflation, with the consumer price index reaching 8.3% in April, hovering near March's 40-year high.

The White House has blamed Russian President Vladimir Putin for the record-high gas prices in the U.S., even coining the surge as the "#PutinPriceHike" and vowing that President Biden will do everything he can to shield Americans from "pain at the pump."

BIDEN ADMIN CANCELS MASSIVE OIL AND GAS LEASE SALE AMID RECORD-HIGH GAS PRICES

Biden, last month, announced that the Environmental Protection Agency will allow the sale of E15 gasoline – gasoline that uses a 15% ethanol blend – across the country this summer. Biden has also moved to release 1 million barrels of oil per day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve for the next 6 months. The president is also calling on Congress to make companies pay fees on idled oil wells and non-producing acres of federal lands, aiming to incentivize new production.

Yet critics have claimed that Biden's actions on energy policy have created a "supply problem" in the market.

Within his first week in office, Biden signed an executive order temporarily suspending new oil and gas leases on federal lands. The administration resumed the new leasing last month following court challenges against the ban. The administration is appealing a ruling in which Judge James Cain, a Trump appointee, struck down the ban. 

US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg's plan to 'promote speed safety cameras' is raising the troubling specter of ubiquitous automated traffic enforcement in the style of the UK, where the cameras are widely despised.

Buttigieg's 42-page road safety plan that was unveiled on Thursday and is backed by $14 billion in funding from the new infrastructure bill contained only brief mention of the speed camera plan, but it was enough to set alarm bells ringing for worried motorists.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson slammed the plan as a misuse of the funds in the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Bill, fuming that 'you're about to get a lot more speeding tickets from robots.'

'When the country applauded $1.2 trillion going to fixing the roads, bridges and buildings, a lot of us were dumb enough to think that's what might actually happen,' he said.

Nonpartisan motorist advocate groups are also against the plan. The National Motorists Association has a top 10 list of why speed cameras are bad, arguing 'they can actually make our roads less safe.'

Washington State Democrats have enacted a plan that would aim to ban most non-electric vehicles in the state by 2030.

By Chris Pandolfo
March 29, 2022
The Blaze

'Gov. Jay Inslee (D) signed a bill last week that sets a target for all vehicles of the model year 2030 or later that are sold, purchased, or registered in the state to be electric.

"On or before December 31, 2023, the interagency electric vehicle coordinating council ... shall complete a scoping plan for achieving the 2030 target," the new law says.

The bill was passed as part of a $16.9 billion "Move Ahead Washington" package signed by Inslee on Friday. The governor said this legislation will combat climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

"Transportation is our state’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions. There is no way to talk about climate change without talking about transportation," Inslee said in a statement. "This package will move us away from the transportation system our grandparents imagined and towards the transportation system our grandchildren dream of."

Democrats have frequently criticized transportation as one of the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, there's been a 22.9% increase in fossil fuel emissions from transportation between 1990 and 2019, the largest increase of any economic sector.

The sweeping legislation includes funding for several infrastructure projects designed to facilitate a larger transition to electric vehicles, including building thousands of new electric vehicle charging stations. The transportation package will also fund four new hybrid-electric ferries, 25 transit electrification projects, and free fares for riders 18 and younger on public transportation systems, the governor said.