California dreamin'

March 10, 2003
With deadline approaching, it was time to start thinking seriously about a topic for this week's Journally Speaking.

With deadline approaching, it was time to start thinking seriously about a topic for this week's Journally Speaking.

It can be a real challenge to come up with 700 words or so on a topic that is off OGJ's beaten path—not really news and not really technology—yet still is of interest to an especially demanding readership (you know who you are). And sometimes we use a JS to give readers a peek behind the scenes about how the magazine comes together every week. When a JS writer is really firing on all cylinders, he or she manages to provide some offbeat industry-related information in a way that's also insightful about how we do our jobs and manages to be entertaining.

That can be daunting, especially for those with somewhat subdued egos. So some OGJ editors dread writing this column. Not this one. A JS is a challenge, but it can be fun.

Still, one must choose a topic, and there are always more JS ideas than opportunities to write them. While bemoaning the glut of ideas near deadline, my litany was interrupted by a suggestion from Senior Staff Writer Steven Poruban: "California-bashing!"

Surely, Steve wasn't making a slightly sarcastic reference to my well-known penchant for often using this space to aim satirical barbs at the state I called home for 5 years, was he? OK, he was, and we had a good chuckle at my expense. Yes, there had been many trips to that well. And frankly, for satirical purposes, that well had a lot of sitting ducks. Or fish in a barrel; pick your own mixed metaphor.

ZEV: zero emissions, zero demand

Then, a few moments later, an e-mail popped in from Washington Editor Maureen Lorenzetti that alerted me to press reports about the latest developments in California's efforts to mandate an electric car.

Despite my unspoken pledge not to return to that well again or shoot those ducks, fish—whatever—the temptation proved too great. Yielding to the siren call of E-Z Satire, I reviewed the press clips.

To my mounting dismay, they told a grim tale indeed: California is (gasp!) abandoning its efforts to mandate an electric car. How could it be? For my entire career, nearly everything the state has done at the public-policy crossroads of energy and environmentalism has served as a ripe, juicy target for a columnist bent on satire in the name of regulatory sanity.

One of the longest-running such initiatives has been the requirement for a zero-emission vehicle (ZEV). In 1990, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) enacted a requirement that 2% of all new cars manufactured for sale in the state by the six biggest automakers be ZEVs by 1998, 5% by 2001, and 10% by 2003.

The real world has intruded since then, with almost no one—outside of a few movie stars flaky even by Hollywood standards—wanting to buy, for example, a Toyota RAV-4 for $42,000 (a small sport utility vehicle that can be bought for under $20,000) that can go maybe 100 miles before having to be plugged in for 6 hr to recharge. Toyota had been selling an average of 300 of these babies each year since their introduction in 1998. For perspective, Toyota sold 1.87 million vehicles in North America in 2001. Other major automakers already have pulled the plug on their electric-car programs. The original ZEV mandate was for 100,000 vehicles by 2003. A tad shy.

California regulatory sanity?

Even with some retrenchment in the ZEV targets, CARB soldiered on, until a court ruling in 2002 stemming from an automakers' lawsuit suspended the requirement.

Now the CARB staff has recommended the state back off the ZEV mandate and instead embrace hybrid vehicles. (You recall hybrids: low-emission, high fuel-efficiency vehicles that are fueled primarily by—the horror—gasoline.)

Other changes are afoot, such as a fuel-cell vehicle mandate that's a tad less ambitious and a pledge to revisit electric-car viability with a study in 2008. The board is slated to meet Mar. 27-28 in Sacramento and is expected to adopt CARB staff recommendations.

Is California regulatory sanity no longer an oxymoron? What's a poor satirist to do, when there are no fish left in the barrel?

Wait. Here's the California Independent Producers Association Monday Morning Report. Turns out some California state legislators have introduced legislation to impose a fee of as much as $1/bbl on crude refined in the state to pay for air-quality programs.

Sigh. All is right with the world again.

Sorry, Steve. I tried.