Wonder what's gonna be banned in Kalifonication next.....

Calif. regulators approve world's toughest smog rules

By TIM MOLLOY, Associated Press Writer
Last Updated 2:25 pm PDT Friday, September 24, 2004

LOS ANGELES (AP) - California air regulators on Friday unanimously approved the world's most ambitious rules to reduce the car emissions that contribute to global warming, a move that could bring sweeping changes to how the rest of the nation fights vehicle pollution.
The regulations are expected to cut exhaust emissions in cars and light trucks by 25 percent and in larger trucks and SUVs by 18 percent.

Their approval by the California Air Resources Board came after nearly two full days of debate and discussion, during which the auto industry vigorously stated its opposition.

Industry officials argued that the board did not have the authority to adopt such sweeping regulations, that they couldn't be met by current technology, and that they unfairly targeted California, which produces less than 1 percent of the world's greenhouse gases.

Heat-trapping greenhouse gases are believed by many scientists to contribute to global warming.

The proposals would require automakers to reduce emissions by using such technological innovations as better air conditioners, more efficient transmissions and smaller engines.

Among those supporting the regulations was Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's environmental protection secretary, Terry Tamminen, who said Friday he and Schwarzenegger believe California should do its part to reduce pollution. He strongly urged the board to adopt the proposals.

"We can make it clear that yes, we understand that our contribution, no matter how large or small, makes a difference," Tamminen said. "Every single action that we take -- or inaction -- makes a difference."

Gloria J. Bergquist, a spokeswoman for the industry trade group Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, said the regulations would only reduce worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases by "one-tenth of 1 percent."

"We see that as no apparent health benefit at a great cost to California consumers," she said.

Bergquist said manufacturers are already working to produce cleaner vehicles, but that introducing the technology required under the regulations would be "almost as complicated as developing the first automobile."

Asked after the vote if her group planned to sue to block the regulations, she said that was an option but no decision had been made yet.

The board's staff said the cost increases would top out at about $1,000 per vehicle by 2016. Staff members studied the automakers' estimates Thursday night, and said in a report issued Friday that the automakers' $3,000 figure was an exaggeration.

Air Resources Board Chairman Alan C. Lloyd and other board members said they were disappointed that automakers did not accept invitations to work with them on the regulations.

"The response, the silence, was deafening," Lloyd said. "We should be able to work together. I hope that we still can work together on this tremendously important issue. The stakes could not be higher."

Board member Mark DeSaulnier, a Contra Costa County supervisor, said he had slept fitfully the night before the vote because he felt "disappointment, frustration, and sometimes anger at the auto industry."

He objected to industry arguments that Washington, D.C., and not California, should lead efforts to fight greenhouse emissions -- and argued that automakers should have taken the lead themselves.

"If I had my druthers, it would be settled in Detroit," he said.

The proposals stem from a law signed by former Gov. Gray Davis in 2002 that required the board to set emission standards for greenhouse gases. The bill's author, Assemblywoman Fran Pavley, D-Agoura Hills, said Friday's vote marked the first time in the world regulations have been placed on vehicles for the specific purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

She said the fact the action had the support of Davis, a Democrat, and Schwarzenegger, the Republican who replaced him, "speaks to the unified effort among all Californians" to reduce greenhouse gases.

Board members said there is no dispute that greenhouse gases contribute to global warming that can harm California's economy in fields ranging from agriculture to tourism.

They said the emissions can also lead to serious respiratory problems, especially among children, by exacerbating the effects of smog. Los Angeles has the worst smog problem in the nation.

Board member Henry Gong, a physician, noted that many medical experts pushed for the regulations and none testified against them.

http://www.sacbee.com/state_wire/story/10854599p-11772282c.html

What the fuck is up with liberal dummycunts??

Jay Leno is a hard-core Democrat, yet when it's HIS hobby/passion that's threatened.....well, you know the rest....


CALIFORNIA
Emission responsible?
Classic car buffs upset over pending law that will cut exemptions from smog tests

Michael Taylor, Chronicle Staff Writer
Saturday, September 18, 2004  

Kurt Fischer owns a pristine Porsche 911SC -- its color is "platinum metallic," it has leather seats, it is quite fast, and it passes the state's biennial smog test handily.

In fact, Fischer, vice president of the Porsche Club of America's Redwood Region chapter, was looking forward to the day when his 1980 car would no longer have to undergo this rite of re-registration passage, the day when the "30-year rolling exemption" would allow the San Anselmo health care executive to skip smog tests on the Porsche forever more.

But if Assemblywoman Sally Lieber, D-Mountain View, has her way, and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signs her bill, then Fischer and thousands of other California car collectors and auto buffs will have to line up their quasi- vintage Corvettes, Mustangs, Ferraris, Camaros and other go-fast cars with everyone else (that mundane crowd of Accords, Camrys and Explorers) to be subjected to the state's stringent smog checks.

The bill, AB2683, would close a loophole that allows cars that turn 30 to be exempt from smog checks. If it becomes law, all vehicles of 1976 vintage and newer will be barred from Former Smog Check Heaven. Cars of 1975 and older vintage would still be exempt from having their engines minutely inspected and their tailpipes invaded by small metal testing wands.

Lieber's bill, which the Legislature approved last month, has made the state's car buffs furious -- so furious that Lieber recently heard from an anonymous smog-check hater who phoned in a death threat. The California Highway Patrol is investigating.

The normally cheerful Jay Leno, a car collector of note, has weighed in on the issue with a couple of serious calls to Lieber's Sacramento office, registering his disapproval of this new wrinkle in the smog laws. Leno's spokesman, Dick Guttman of Beverly Hills, said via e-mail that Leno "arrives at conclusions in such matters as a private citizen and does not express them to the media or, for that matter, to me."

For California's historically vocal car cultists, this bill is anathema. Auto enthusiasts, by their nature, are usually independent, a characteristic that for decades has crashed up against the state's highly restrictive smog laws. In the car world, there has always been an "us vs. them" mind-set -- car freaks against the bureaucrats.

Car buffs, by and large, have few kind words for the California Air Resources Board, possibly the most influential state governmental agency in the automotive world because of the power it wields in getting stiff emissions laws passed.

So when the Lieber bill surfaced -- a bill, incidentally, that, if signed into law, would be enforced by the state Bureau of Automotive Repair and not the Air Resources Board -- the car collectors started yelling.

"This is just an added burden on (car) owners," said Steve Banich, editor of the Web site and newsletter of the Northern California chapter of the National Corvette Restorers Society. "It's unnecessary. I wrote the governor and asked him to veto the bill, but I got no response. A lot of people in the car collector hobby are riled up about this."

Banich said many collectors of 1976 and newer cars have modified their engines. Frequently, car experts say, this involves removing the smog controls.

Older cars, especially those made in the 1970s when smog control technology was in its crude infancy, simply perform better without the smog devices. Some owners replace their engines every two years on the eve of their cars' biennial smog tests, swapping out a powerful, unsmoggable engine and replacing it, for a day or two, with a docile motor that the smog-test machinery just loves. Others hook up the old smog systems for the day of the smog test, then remove them after the car passes.

But there are some owners who, anticipating that their cars would be exempt from smog tests, have thrown away the old smog controls. If they can't find replacement parts for the smog systems, they may have a problem when it comes time to re-register their cars.

Lieber, a bit surprised by the fuss she has caused -- she said she has received "thousands of angry calls, letters and e-mails" -- said she was simply trying to get old polluting vehicles off the road. She pointed to her staff's research showing that "an average 1976-model-year car emits about 155 times more hydrocarbons per mile driven than a 2004-model-year car."

The staff researchers also said that by the year 2010, cars built before 1982 "are projected to account for 22 percent of the hydrocarbons and 11 percent of the nitrogen oxide emissions ... despite accounting (for) only 2.6 percent of the vehicle population and 1.3 percent of the miles traveled."

Lieber said she got the idea for the legislation from Thomas Addison, advanced projects adviser for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

In an e-mail to The Chronicle, Addison said car enthusiasts should stop worrying.

"Car buffs who say this hurts their hobby have been misled about what the bill would do, or are being disingenuous," Addison wrote. "All pre-'76 cars are specifically exempted from smog under the bill. True car buffs maintain their vehicles, so those who own post-'76 cars have nothing to fear. They'll pass smog easily since they keep their cars maintained. But those who want to strip the smog control equipment off their vehicles oppose this bill, because it will be harder for them to break the law if it is signed."

Nonetheless, auto buffs see this newest wrinkle as an example of what they call an encroaching and meddlesome bureaucracy whose agents will appear at your door some day in the not-too-distant future with a court order to confiscate, for example, all non-smog-conforming Corvettes, or all 356 series Porsches.

So far, it hasn't happened. But the hard and fast reality -- and it is nothing new to California -- is that the government wants to get older vehicles off the road. To this end, the air quality district in the Bay Area sends out letters like the one Fischer got last month, asking him to "consider an alternative to driving" his 1980 Porsche, which, incidentally, passes the state's smog tests.

The district said it would be happy to pay Fischer $500 for the car as part of its program that eventually scraps "1981 and older vehicles."

He declined the offer.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2004/09/18/BAGG08QTDM1.DTL

Well hey, it for the children.......

Come on Leno and all you other libs that enjoy FREEDOM, I am now going to set back and LMFAO, hell I may even lobby FOR THE BILL, just to see you fall in line and to qoute your buddy fienswine,     Mr and Mrs Car collector, HAND THEM IN........

Dont like it do ya Leno.....

All democrats are like that. it's called selfishness. They're attitude is it's all about them and only them. They don't care about anyone else or anything. They don't care who they hurt or who' rights they violate. It's sad that these are the same people who preach about equal rights and the constitution, yet at the same time they want to strip away parts of it simply because they don't like it. No other reason. I don't think a day goes by that I don't honestly question whether or not this country is truly going to survive the next ten years. I'm pretty much set that in the next ten years this country is going to fall. Unless it turns itself around of course, however with Hillary running for office, I think we're screwed, I mean John Kerry or not. The Clintons are among the most diabolical people in this country. They're paranoid, hateful and tyrannical. I honestly don't think we'll last with her(or any democrat) in office for much longer. To be honest I really don't know what we can do except prepare for immenent(sp?)collapse. They're is just way too many laws on the book. We need to reset this country. It'd be nice if there was a reset button for all laws(nix the constitution of course).