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Mar 22, 2007

Do we really need the California Air Resources Board?

Long, long ago, in a state far ,far away... ok its not so far. California decided the US EPA wasn't doing its part to have clean air. California being the know all say all leader in the environment , started up its own EPA, the California Air Resources Board.

Skip forward some years, and EPA and ARB requirements for mobile sources(I am concerned with passenger vehicle requirements) are very similar however different. For some reason, California decides it must just be that much different than federal standards. Mostly just to ensure their existance. At $265 million dollar a year budget, they have to justify their existance some how.

Some years later the EPA made a decision that a state can meet EPA standards, or ARB standards, but can not make up its own. After ARB was established they didn't want to go down the path of 50 different state requirements.

I would love to see how much the automobile manufacturers would save if they had to meet a SINGLE EPA requirement, not an EPA and ARB requirement. How much less would the consumer pay on each car if their were a single requirement?

California is a big state with a lot of power, enough even to push the EPA around way back when, but with EPA and ARB requirements coming to parallelism, whats the purpose of the ARB ? Just to give the auto manufacturers a hard time over meeting two slightly different standards?

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