Why Invest in Electric Cars When There’s a Better Option, Governor Newsom?

Just about a month ago, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-79-20, banning the sale of combustion engine cars in the state by 2035. At first glance, Newsom's policy may seem like a bold move towards combating the climate crisis--perhaps even one that elected officials should echo across the country. However, it is important to acknowledge that this executive order, like others before it, is working within the climate crisis-perpetuating economic system of capitalism, not breaking it. Rooted in inequality, our modern day economic system is incompatible with sustainability due to its demands of resource exploitation and profit maximization. Newsom’s order is an attempt to regulate this system, but it falls short of the drastic action we need to combat the climate crisis. Instead of perpetuating systems that fall short of our environmental goals, California should be prioritizing the creation of a transportation sector that provides clean, green, and accessible transportation to all Californians. In order to tackle the pollution that our combustion engine car fleet produces, our state must take bold action against the climate crisis and make a firm investment in a public transit system that provides equitable access to green transportation.

To start off, we should dissect what Newsom’s Executive Order actually outlines. Newsom directs the State of California to set a straightforward goal that “100 percent of in-state sales of new passenger cars and trucks will be zero-emission by 2035.” Right off the bat, reading this raises the question of how this will impact low income Californians and communities of color. The transition to a fleet of electric cars will require the infrastructure to withstand the high demand of increasing electrification. And not only that, but infrastructure like charging stations must be made accessible to low-income communities. It is crucial for Newsom to provide state-funded initiatives geared towards increasing access to low-cost zero-emission vehicles, especially to prevent Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and low-income households from being disproportionately affected by this order. And reading through his executive order, he seems to have thought this exact issue through with an environmental justice lens. His order asks to “accelerate deployment of affordable fueling and charging options for zero-emission vehicles, in ways that serve all communities and in particular low-income and disadvantaged communities.” Among other things, this climate action policy seems to act on environmental justice.

Oftentimes when leaders like Newsom have enacted orders like this in the name of climate change, they’ve done more harm than good. A famous example of that is the Gilets Jaunes riots that erupted after French President, Emmanuel Macron, placed an enormous tax on gas in hopes of lowering transportation carbon emissions. In 2018, the Gilet Jaunes (Yellow Vests) protesters, consisting of working class folks who couldn’t afford to buy gas anymore, rose up in the countryside of France for 14 straight weeks demanding social and economic equity. Undoubtedly, a prominent leader like Governor Gavin Newsom would have learned from this neoliberal policy failure and his executive order seems to reflect that in how it accounts for environmental justice. However, even at its best, Newsom’s order still works within an inequitable system. While Newsom may have sculpted these policies to be accessible to all Californians, transitioning to an electric fleet of vehicles is only adding fuel to the fire of capitalism; an economic system that accelerates the climate crisis.

Not only does Newsom’s order uphold an inequitable economic system, it also works off of infrastructure created in the name of segregation. In the 1910s, Los Angeles was a relatively unsegregated city where about 36 percent of Black Los Angeles residents owned their own homes (while other cities like New York City had a  Black home ownership rate of 2.4 percent). However, LA’s population tripled from 1910 to 1930 and many of these newcomers were poor Black folks from the South. In response, LA’s white population demanded their local officials to ramp up their city’s Jim Crow laws. In 1944, under the Federal-Aid Highway Act, California legislature--with the full support of the federal government--targeted racially diverse neighborhoods and erected thousands of miles of highway through them. Ultimately, BIPOC paid the price and were segregated into poor neighborhoods that are disproportionately affected by the pollution created by the highways even today. The moral of this story is that we should not try to fix a system that was built to oppress. Jim Crow era laws are now long gone, but the systems they created have caused lasting damage to Black Americans. Our transportation infrastructure was built on the foundational de jure segregation and although Newsom’s bill would dramatically reduce carbon emissions from our transportation sector, why invest in trying to make this racist system work like it’s our only option?

What our state needs is a radical investment in a public transportation sector that would provide equitable access to zero-emission transportation and break our destructive capitalist society. In one of my city planning courses at Cal, a guest lecturer named Karen Trapenberg Frick said something that has stuck with me ever since. She said that if you build a city to have traffic, you get traffic, but if you build a city to have public transportation, you get a city that uses public transportation. If our state hopes to create an accessible zero-emission transportation sector, it will require a multifaceted approach; We must build a state that has the infrastructure to provide transportation to all Californians while lowering carbon emissions, decluttering our freeways, providing living wage union jobs, and providing transportation to all Californians.

The only mention of public transit in Newsom’s order is a brief bullet point allusion to the California State Rail Plan. This plan hopes to increase the number of people that ride California’s trains from about 100,000 people to 1.3 million people per day by adding more train stops to California’s suburbs and rural cities. The only problems with this plan are that it relies solely on our railway systems and that the state intends to reach this goal by 2040. For a state of almost 40 million people, we must invest in a multifaceted transit system that provides access to all residents on a timeline that would build this system before the climate crisis is irreversible.  

So what does a future with green public transportation infrastructure look like? The short answer is buses, metros, and high-speed monorail systems. Much like how the US is behind other countries in having universal healthcare and free college, US cities are behind the curve of public transportation. Metropolitan cities like Tokyo have some of the best public transportation systems in the world and what makes them so good is how accessible and robust they are. Tokyo alone has a railway system, a bus system, and a metro system. And while LA has all of these things, our infrastructure pales in comparison to Tokyo’s.

This is a map of Greater Tokyo’s Railway Network. What makes it effective is that there are different lines that go certain speeds based on their destination tracks. There are local, rapid, express, limited express, and semi-express railway lines that have their speed based on how many stops they have. So, if you need to get from one side of the city to the other quickly, you’d take the express line. But if you just needed to hop over a couple of blocks, you’d take the local line. Tokyo passed a 710 million dollar budget this year that would have their public transit system become zero-emission by 2050. So, while they have the most effective transit system in the world, they don’t have the greenest one. This is where California could step in as climate leaders, by innovating a system like Tokyo’s and applying Governor Newsom’s demands for a zero-emission transportation sector. 

While transitioning California’s fleet of cars from gas-powered to electric seems smart, this policy fails to address the root causes of climate change--capitalism. Capitalism’s demands for never ending growth have accelerated climate change and Newsom’s order is an attempt to make capitalism “green.” Green capitalism falls short of the radical action that is necessary to prevent the damage that climate change is already causing. If California was to invest in a public transit system in cities like Los Angeles, the lives of the working class and people of color would be radically different. Transit-dependent populations--those who cannot afford to purchase and maintain a car, those with disabilities, and young and eldery folks--would be able to access a zero-emission transit system instead of having to navigate a transportation system dominated by cars and highways. Our freeways would be less congested, reducing the traffic and pollution that disproportionately affects BIPOC. And most of all, California would be leading the nation in the radical climate action that we need to make actual solutions to the climate crisis. A robust public transit system is not a pie in the sky idea and implementing it across California would provide something that a fleet of electric cars cannot — justice.