Colorado should drop its membership in the California Clean Car Cartel. 

By Sean Paige | Guest Commentary, Rocky Mountain Voice

President Trump’s recent repeal of the “endangerment finding”—a Barack Obama-era rule that handed the federal government absolute power to regulate almost anything that emits CO2 emissions, in response to the alleged climate crisis—marks a potential turning point for Colorado. 

Why? 

Because it gives Colorado an opportunity, an invitation, to decouple from California clean car mandates we’ve been operating under for years. 

Most Coloradans probably don’t know that their state’s “clean car” mandates are written by an unelected board of all-powerful ecocrats called the California Air Resources Board (CARB.)  But why would most Coloradans know this, since it was never debated by the legislature or approved as a ballot measure?  

No, this outrageous surrender of state sovereignty flew almost totally under the radar. Here’s how the sad and tawdry tale unfolded, for those who may have missed it. 

Obama’s 2009 “endangerment finding,” as mentioned, was the scientifically sketchy legal foundation that allowed the federal government (and California, acting separately) to regulate “greenhouse gases” from cars and trucks for the past 17 years. 

On the heels of Obama’s endangerment finding, California and a dozen other deep blue states—including Colorado—formed a cartel aimed at out-regulating federal regulators when it came to clean cars. Already onerous federal standards weren’t costly and burdensome enough for these states. 

They wanted even stricter mandates imposed and tried to use a legal loophole to impose their rules on the rest of the country. 

The cartel couldn’t impose its will directly, of course. Sane states would have rebelled. 

Instead, the rogue states hoped that their combined market clout would force automakers to build vehicles to the cartel’s standards, not the national standards, like the proverbial tail that wags the dog. It’s not tenable for automakers to tailor-build vehicles to address the regulatory whims of individual states. 

The rogue states knew this and decided to exploit the situation to impose their will on an entire nation. And all was going according to plan until Trump’s repeal of the endangerment finding undermined the plan by rejecting the premise. 

Colorado’s participation in the California Clean Car Cartel wasn’t voted on by Coloradans directly in response to a ballot measure. Nor did elected representatives in the Colorado Statehouse pass a bill endorsing the plan. 

It was all done with two swipes of the pen by two Colorado Governors, making this alliance undemocratic as well as unholy.  

In June of 2018, then-Gov. John Hickenlooper (a lame duck) signed an executive order requiring the state to adopt California’s Low Emission Vehicle program. 

In January of 2019, on his ninth day in office, Jared Polis doubled down on Hickenlooper’s act of folly by signing another executive order directing the state to adopt California’s Zero Emission Vehicle program.

Colorado’s Air Quality Control Commission (an unelected governor-appointed board) rubber-stamped each step—including a unanimous vote on the LEV program—after pro forma ‘public hearings’ few Coloradans knew about.

In other words, an unelected Colorado board adopted clean car rules written by an unelected California board. We’re living under a regulatory regime written in Sacramento, adopted in Denver by executive fiat, and soon to be defended in court (using our tax dollars) by Attorney General Phil Weiser, who has built a career on suing Donald Trump and hopes to ride that dubious distinction into the governor’s mansion. 

Not much democracy there, right? 

None at all, some might say. And it was all orchestrated by the same people who take to the streets for “No Kings!!” protests aimed at President Trump—who just took the un-king-like step of liberating the peasants from the crushing tyranny of clean car mandates. 

That’s how we got here. But where does that leave us now?

Well, it leaves us at a crossroads. 

Trump offered Colorado an off-ramp if we want to take it. 

But Colorado probably won’t take it because that would force our current leadership to admit that they were wrong by making Colorado a caboose on the California crazy train. Our current leaders lured us into this mess. And they seem prepared to double-down, rather than to seize the moment to liberate us from a clean car regime that’s designed elsewhere and wrong for Colorado. 

They are too arrogant and under the sway of climate dogma to sever Colorado’s ties to the Cartel and publicly declare that we’re going our own way. 

Colorado’s unholy alliance with California has held Coloradans hostage to decisions made in Sacramento. It turned us into a California-Lite outlier among states. 

But now, thanks to the Great Deregulator, Trump, Colorado has an opportunity to escape Cali’s long shadow and adopt policies that serve the interests of Coloradans, not Californians. 

Jared Polis likes to call this “the free state of Colorado.” And he does it with a straight face. 

But how can Colorado call itself “free” when it has outsourced its regulatory authority to another state, and when the state presumes to tell citizens what to drive? 

Unless Coloradans demand a return to sanity and common sense, we are going to follow California off a cliff, with devastating future consequences for motorists. 

Tell your elected officials that you want Colorado out of the California Clean Car Cartel—and that you want all governments to stop micromanaging our personal vehicle choices. 

Sean Paige formerly served as the Editorial Page Editor for The Colorado Springs Gazette. He also served on the Colorado Springs City Council and Utilities Board. He was a Warren T. Brookes Journalism Fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market think tank in Washington, DC. You can write to him at seanpaige@msn.com. 

Editor’s note: Opinions expressed in commentary pieces are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the management of the Rocky Mountain Voice, but even so we support the constitutional right of the author to express those opinions.