A Phil Hall Op-Ed: Climate Change, Home Building And Common Sense

A Phil Hall Op-Ed: Several states have already passed laws or are planning to enact new mandates that would prohibit the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2035 as a means of saving the planet from being destroyed by climate change.

“Our cars shouldn’t make wildfires worse and create more days filled with smoky air,” said California Gov. Gavin Newsom in voicing his support for this strategy. “Cars shouldn’t melt glaciers or raise sea levels, threatening our cherished beaches and coastlines.”

Of course, cars don’t make wildfires worse – incompetent state-level forest management policies, such as the ones in place in California, are deserving of the blame for too many of the destructive blazes on the West Coast. Nor do cars “melt glaciers or raise sea levels” – with cockamamie statements like that, Newsom is creating his own lunatic schools of meteorology and oceanography.

The gas-powered vehicle bans would not apply to cars and trucks currently on the road, nor would they prevent the sale of used gas-powered vehicles. I am not certain what would happen if you purchased a gas-powered vehicle in a state that did not have such a ban and try to register it in 2036 in a state with a ban – apparently, no one thought that far ahead.

Some regional trade groups representing auto retailers and gas station owner-operators have voiced their concern over these measures, although the major auto manufacturers have been mostly quiet on the subject. After all, it is easy to become libeled by certain politicians, media outlets and self-proclaimed experts (like that ridiculous Swedish teenager) as being a planet-hating kook if you voice any question over the claims regarding the causes of climate change and the potential strategies needed to prevent the planet from boiling itself to death.

That situation needs to change, and leading that change is the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), which has been highly and visible critical of efforts to impose onerous restrictions on builders in the name of saving the climate. Last week, NAHB Chairman Alicia Huey criticized President Biden for invoking the Defense Production Act to boost production of electric heaters as part of the administration’s efforts to rid the housing market of gas heating appliances.

“The purpose of the Defense Production Act is to expand the supply of materials and services to protect the American people, not to advance a political agenda,” said Huey, who is also a custom home developer from Birmingham, Alabama. “Therefore, it is extremely disappointing that President Biden has elected to invoke the Defense Production Act in a blatant move to promote a policy agenda seeking to push American households towards electric heating in lieu of gas heating.”

Huey made similar statements earlier this month during a congressional hearing, where she called out the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for exacerbating the work of builders trying to create affordable housing by demanding regulations that she considered excessive. She cited a DOE proposal that would require manufacturers to retool their operations to produce new transformers, noting that the current transformer manufacturing was already burdened with an 18-to-24-month backlog, and she also criticized DOE’s proposed Energy Conservation Standards for Consumer Conventional Cooking Products rule, which would ban the sale of most current gas cooktop models sold across the country, stating this would result in appliance production delays and higher costs for consumers.