We’ve seen Democrats on an electric power trip the past few years — banning anything they don’t view as “green” in favor of electric vehicles, appliances, you-name-it. In some egregious cases, we’ve seen elected officials cooking on gas stoves while attempting to ban our own.
Now, Governor Murphy is taking us for a ride with his proposed ban on gas vehicles, and New Jerseyans have taken note.
A new poll shows that residents have concerns about both the affordability and feasibility of such a mandate. Jim Appleton of the New Jersey Coalition of Automative Retailers said, “Unrealistic mandates are certain to hinder — not help — electric vehicle adoption and will have serious negative impacts on the state’s economy and the finances of working and middle-class consumers.”
I couldn’t agree more.
The Press of Atlantic City news outlet called the mandate “authoritarian.” It’s also terrible economic policy.
The Governor’s ban on internal combustion engine vehicles threatens livelihoods and consumer choice. Forcing electric vehicles on a market that doesn’t want them (they’re expensive to buy, expensive to repair, slow to charge, and their range is very limited) with an infrastructure not yet ready to accommodate them (we can’t get buy or transmit enough electricity to power the 2.5 million cars registered in New Jersey) will have disastrous results.
Rolling summer blackouts, a lack of air conditioning to blunt dangerous heat waves, and significantly impacted commutes are just a handful of unacceptable but foreseeable consequences of the Governor’s misguided mandate. I fear the policy’s unforeseeable consequences will be even worse, as they often are with wrongheaded environmental policies.
