(FiveNation.com)- As a way to try to combat climate change, Democrat-led cities throughout the country are doing something a little crazy — they’re banning new gas stations.
Cities in Northern California near San Francisco are already doing so, as are some areas in New York and British Columbia in Canada. These moratoriums on developing new gas stations are becoming increasingly popular in some liberal cities, just at a time when the average price of a gallon of regular gasoline has soared to record highs.
It’s all part of a campaign called Safe Cities that is backed by Stand Earth, and environmental group. The group’s aim is support efforts on a local level to phase out fossil fuels.
The next city on the group’s radar is Los Angeles. They believe that if they are able to sign up the huge city in California’s south, it would give their movement a lot of momentum for other cities across the country.
Paul Koretz, a councilmember in Los Angeles, has already proposed a bill that would ban the issuance of permits for any new gas station. It also would bar existing gas stations to add any more fuel pumps to their stations.
The existing stations would be allowed to add charging stations for any zero-emission vehicle such as electric vehicles. Koretz said recently that his office is still working to develop the full ordinance, and that a committee hearing is likely to be held on the topic sometime in August.
Many people are criticizing this approach by Koretz and other Democrats, saying that it won’t be very effective at achieving any goals for sustainability. Critics believe that investments in and policies that would discourage driving, including improving their public transit and building more bike lanes, would work better.
Even Koretz admitted that banning additional gas stations is only “a modest step in the right direction.”
Part of that, he claimed, is because California has already announced that it would end the sale of any new car powered by case by the year 2035. He continued:
“It’s such a gradual common sense measure that once it’s picked up in Los Angeles — the city that’s most dedicated to cars — hopefully this spreads around the country.”
By not everyone agrees. The National Association for Convenience Stores’ spokesperson, Jeff Lenard, said that banning new gas stations isn’t the best idea, considering there are more than 280 million vehicles still on the road across the country.
A transition to fully electric vehicles is bound to be a “slow and bumpy process,” too, he said.
And since banning gas stations isn’t likely to have a huge environmental impact, it’s only going to worsen an already-existing problem — the price of gas. Limiting competition in the marketplace is likely to keep prices high in most cases, or make it even worse than it already is.
The lesson here for Democrats is that not all
