Ozone cuts will transform Calif. trucking industry
By Tony Barboza, Los Angeles Times
At a laboratory in downtown Los Angeles, a big rig spins its wheels on massive rollers as a metal tube funnels its exhaust into an array of air quality sensors. Engineers track the roaring truck’s emissions from a bank of computer screens.
The brand-new diesel truck is among the cleanest on the road, the engineers at the California Air Resources Board testing lab say. Even so, its 550-horsepower engine spews out more than 20 times the smog-forming nitrogen oxides of a typical gasoline-powered car — and that won’t be good enough for the state to meet stricter federal smog limits adopted this month.
Cutting ozone, the lung-damaging gas in smog, to federal health standards while meeting state targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions will require a radical transformation of California’s transportation sector over the next two decades, air quality officials and experts say.
More destruction of small businesses. Mom & pop truckers will have to fold. Giant corporations can absorb the costs and pass them on to us.
Unintended consequences?
Lung damage < business.
When are the authorities going to regulate the pollen that every year inundates Lake Tahoe and floods our lungs with very heavy doses of particulate matter that is full of carcinogens? Is it time to cut down all pine trees in the basin?
Gosh by gosh…brilliant reasoning.
If you got it, a truck brought it. Guess who pays in the long run?
I hope the fad of having diesel pick-up trucks ends soon. Just don’t understand why all the pencil pushers in town need one to haul their plastic kayaks to the beach.
Truck registration out of state will go up as they all leave along with the rest of the tax payers and legal US citizens. This state is driving all who work or pay taxes out in record numbers.