CARB has released for public review the Draft 2022 Scoping Plan Update. On July 22, the governor sent a letter to CARB, asking for more ambitious and quicker goals in the Scoping Plan (Governor Newsom Calls for Bold Actions to Move Faster Toward Climate Goals).

As has been posted here, the Scoping Plan is weak, and depends far too much on motor vehicle electrification, so the governor’s letter is a good move. It includes:

• Offshore Wind
• Clean and Healthy Buildings
• Moving Away from Fossil Fuels
• Methane
• Carbon Removal
• Increasing Climate Ambition

What the governor’s letter, and the Scoping Plan, does not include, is bicycling and in particular electric bikes. This is a sad oversight on the part of both. Conversion of motor vehicle trips to bicycle trips and especially e-bike trips, is the shorter and lowest cost pathway to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. CARB knows that, the governor knows that, but both are so committed to a windshield perspective and continuation of car dominance of our transportation system, that they ignore the simple steps.

The governor also announced the launch of the Climate Dashboard. On the dashboard, there are only two indicators that are red instead of green, and one is VMT. Yet despite this, the governor and CARB, and many other advocates who should know better, want to just convert fossil fuel motor vehicles to electric vehicles.

The Climate Dashboard also includes the following graphic, often used in text, as a comparison to show progress being made. The question which logically follows is: Why not just take the cars off the road?