‘Electric vehicles cannot meet the demands of my constituents,’ Republican congressman told Fox News Digital

 By Thomas Catenacci Fox News

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-democrats-join-republicans-voting-strike-down-californias-electric-vehicle-mandate

Published September 14, 2023 4:30pm EDT

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More than 20 states slam Biden for his new electric vehicle proposal

Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron argues Biden’s electric vehicle proposal is unsustainable and would worsen the economy on ‘America’s Newsroom.’

The House voted Thursday afternoon in favor of legislation striking down environmental regulations in California mandating electric vehicle (EV) purchases.

In a 222-190 vote, the House approved the Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act with 214 Republicans and eight Democrats voting in favor. A group several Republican lawmakers led by Rep. John Joyce, R-Pa., first introduced the bill, which has been endorsed by the energy industry, in March, arguing EV mandates would hurt the economy and violate consumer choice.

“The simple fact is that electric vehicles cannot meet the demands of my constituents,” Joyce told Fox News Digital in an interview earlier this week. “Coupling the mountains with the harsh winters and the intense heat of summers makes driving an electric vehicle both unreliable and ultimately unrealistic for many of my constituents.”

“This legislation, H.R. 1435, is an option. It is not an anti-electric vehicle legislation,” he added. “For those who would like an electric vehicle, they should have the option of buying one. But it doesn’t help my constituents — it doesn’t help in any district to require an individual to buy an EV regardless of what they want and regardless of the demands of the market.”

MORE THAN 150 REPUBLICANS UNITE TO CONDEMN BIDEN’S ‘ILL-CONSIDERED’ ELECTRIC VEHICLE PUSH

Rep. John Joyce, R-Pa., is seen on the House steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on March 27, 2020. (Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call))

The Preserving Choice in Vehicle Purchases Act, if enacted, would block the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from issuing waivers to states seeking to ban or limit internal combustion engine vehicles. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is currently empowered to grant California a waiver to implement stricter emissions standards than the federal government.

In March 2022, the EPA reinstated California’s authority under the Clean Air Act to implement its own emission standards and EV sales mandates, and allowed other states to adopt California’s rules. The move came after the Trump administration revoked the state’s authority to pursue standards that run counter to federal rules.

CCP-TIED ELECTRIC VEHICLE COMPANY AWARDED MORE THAN $500 MILLION IN TAXPAYER MONEY FOR SECOND US PLANT

Months later, on Aug. 25, 2022, the California Air Resources Board, a state environmental agency, announced new regulations banning gas-powered cars, and mandating electric cars, by 2035. California Gov. Gavin Newsom celebrated the regulations, saying the state would continue to “lead the revolution towards our zero-emission transportation future.”

In addition, another 17 states have laws in place that tether their vehicle emissions standards to those set in California, meaning the electric vehicle mandate would impact tens of millions of Americans nationwide. Overall, it is estimated that the states adopting California’s 2035 rule represent more than 40% of total U.S. car purchases.

The Biden administration granted a waiver to California for the state to pursue electric vehicle mandates. Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom said his state’s resulting mandate would “lead the revolution towards our zero-emission transportation future.” (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

“This legislation is about ensuring Americans can continue choosing the vehicles that best suit their lives. It’s about making sure people have the option of driving practical, functional, and affordable cars,” House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., said in support of the bill. “And it’s about embracing the legacy of the American auto industry.”

“The answer is not through restrictive government mandates,” she continued. “Yet that is exactly what President Biden’s EPA, California, and others allies are trying to do.”

CALIFORNIA’S GRID FACES COLLAPSE AS LEADERS PUSH RENEWABLES, ELECTRIC VEHICLES, EXPERTS SAY

However, several Democratic lawmakers blasted the legislation ahead of the vote Thursday. The Democrats lauded California’s EV mandate, saying it would reduce pollution and help combat climate change.

Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, D-N.J. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

“The transportation sector is the single-largest contributor of greenhouse gas emissions and other dangerous air pollution,” Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, D-N.J., said in a floor speech. “But once again, Republicans want to bury their heads in the sand and ignore reality, even while more than 100 million Americans are right now living in counties with unhealthy levels of air pollution.”

“We should focus on supporting these policies, not weakening them. Sadly, H.R. 1435 would toss aside decades of legal precedent, upending the California waiver process and threatening innovation already underway,” Rep. Paul Tonko, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee’s environment subcommittee, added in separate remarks.

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The legislation was ultimately passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee in late July, teeing up the floor vote Thursday. Companion legislation in the Senate was introduced by Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., a month prior and is still making its way through the chamber.

In a statement of administration policy issued this week, though, the White House hinted that President Biden would veto the legislation if it made it to his desk.

“The Administration strongly opposes passage of H.R. 1435, which would amend the Clean Air Act to preclude EPA from issuing federal preemption waivers for California pollution standards that directly or indirectly limit the sale or use of new motor vehicles with internal combustion engines,” the White House said.

HISTORICAL NEWS

SEPTEMBER 12, 20231 COMMENT

https://studyfinds.org/humans-evolution-accident/

by The Conversation

Depending upon how you do the counting, there are around 9 million species on Earth, from the simplest single-celled organisms to humans.

It’s reassuring to imagine that complex bodies and brains like ours are the inevitable consequence of evolution, as if evolution had a goal. Unfortunately for human egos, a recent study comparing over a thousand mammals – the group we belong to – painted a less gratifying picture.

Evolutionary biologists in the late 18th century, including Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, reasoned that life must have an innate tendency to evolve into ever more complex forms, and believed this reflected God’s design. However, by the mid-19th century, Charles Darwin showed that natural selection has no direction, and will sometimes make organisms simpler.

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Because most organisms are still very simple, one possibility is that maximum complexity has increased “accidentally”, like the diffusion of a drop of ink in a glass of water. If true, this could be a blow to our human sense of significance as the most complex organisms.

Another theory is that increasing complexity is driven, on average, by natural selection. Sometimes selection acts on many, independent branches of the tree of life in a similar way and in parallel. This can produce similar effects in many of those branches and is known as a driven trend.

While driven trends need not imply divine purpose, they at least suggest that complexity was mostly an improvement, which is reassuring for us humans.

So which pattern is the most common in the evolution of complexity: accidental diffusion or driven trend?

Most changes and mutations are bad, and these variants are usually weeded out through a process called stabilizing selection, which acts to maintain the status quo. But if most mutations make things function less well, doesn’t this make it very difficult for evolutionary novelties to arise?

In fact, evolution often operates on multiple copies of things. For example, a single gene might be duplicated within the same organism.

Provided one copy maintains its original function, the other copy can accumulate mutations without putting its bearer at an immediate disadvantage. These mutated copies are usually edited out over time, but occasionally they acquire a new function that gives an advantage.

Even more remarkably, whole genomes – every single gene in an organism – can be duplicated in one generation. Under these circumstances, there are many chances that copies of some genes will acquire a new function.

For example, sturgeons and paddle fishes underwent a whole genome duplication 250 million years ago, and this may explain how they survived the biggest ever mass extinction that wiped out 96% of other marine species.

Identical copies of structures such as segments and limbs can also be made via duplication processes. For example, millipedes have lots of legs, but they are the same design copied lots of times.

Shrimps, by contrast have many different types of legs modified for feeding, walking, swimming and brooding eggs. A biological principle called the zero force evolutionary law states that these copies will tend to become less similar by accidental diffusion alone, unless stabilizing selection acts to keep the status quo. Of course, natural selection may also act to make the copies less similar if this has an advantage.

Our paper shows that increasing complexity in mammals has both diffusive and driven aspects. Rather than marching towards greater complexity, mammals evolved in lots of different directions, with only some lineages pushing the upper bounds of complexity.

Unfortunately, there is little research addressing this question. One of the few published studies demonstrates that crustaceans (crabs, lobsters, shrimps and their relatives) evolved with a driven trend for increasing complexity over the last half a billion years.

Like crustaceans, and all vertebrates, we have bodies made of repeating blocks of tissue (called somites). These are most visible in our vertebral column (or spine) and ribs, and in the six-pack of a lean athlete. Across mammals, the number of vertebrae (the bones that make up the spine) varies and they are shaped to do different jobs in the neck, thorax, back, sacrum and tail.

Counting the number of bones in different regions can quantify one aspect of complexity across all mammals. In our study sampling over a thousand mammal species, many groups – including whales, bats, rodents, carnivores and, our own group, the primates – independently evolved complex vertebral columns. This suggests higher complexity can be a winning formula, and that selection is driving this in multiple branches of the mammal tree.

However, many other branches have a low plateau in complexity or even become simpler. Elephants, rhinos, sloths, manatees, armadillos, golden moles and platypuses all thrived despite the fact they have relatively simple vertebral columns. The direction of evolution all depends on context.

Research into the evolution of complexity has only recently started gathering pace, so there is much we still don’t know. But we do know that the story of mammalian evolution hasn’t been a directional “march of progress”, but rather has many characteristics of a random and diffusive walk.