California set itself on a path Thursday to end the era of gas-powered cars, with air regulators adopting the world’s most stringent rules for transitioning to zero-emission vehicles.

The move by the California Air Resources Board to have all new cars, pickup trucks and SUVs be electric or hydrogen by 2035 is likely to reshape the U.S. auto market, which gets 10% of its sales from the nation’s most populous state.

But such a radical transformation in what people drive will also require at least 15 times more vehicle chargers statewide, a more robust energy grid and vehicles that people of all income levels can afford.

“It’s going to be very hard getting to 100%,” said Daniel Sperling, a board member and founding director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California-Davis. “You can’t just wave your wand, you can’t just adopt a regulation — people actually have to buy them and use them.”

Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom told state regulators two years ago to adopt a ban on gas-powered cars by 2035, one piece of California’s aggressive suite of policies designed to reduce pollution and fight climate change. If the policy works as designed, California would cut emissions from vehicles in half by 2040.

More to come

Other states are expected to follow, further accelerating the production of zero-emissions vehicles.

Washington state and Massachusetts already have said they will follow California’s lead and many more are likely to — New York and Pennsylvania are among 17 states that have adopted some or all of California’s tailpipe emission standards that are stricter than federal rules. The European Parliament in June backed a plan to effectively prohibit the sale of gas and diesel cars in the 27-nation European Union by 2035, and Canada has mandated the sale of zero-emission cars by the same year.

California’s policy doesn’t ban cars that run on gas — after 2035 people can keep their existing cars or buy used ones, and 20% of sales can be plug-in hybrids that run on batteries and gas. Though hydrogen is a fuel option under the new regulations, cars that run on fuel cells have made up less than 1% of car sales in recent years.

The switch from gas will drastically reduce emissions and air pollutants. Transportation is the single largest source of emissions in the state, accounting for about 40% of the state’s greenhouse gas emissions. The air board is working on different regulations for motorcycles and larger trucks.

California envisions powering most of the economy with electricity, not fossil fuels, by 2045. A plan released by the air board earlier this year predicts electricity demand will shoot up by 68%. Today, the state has about 80,000 public chargers. The California Energy Commission predicted that needs to jump to 1.2 million by 2030.

The commission says car charging will account for about 4% of energy by 2030 when use is highest, typically during hot summer evenings. That’s when California sometimes struggles to provide enough energy because the amount of solar power diminishes as the sun goes down. In August 2020, hundreds of thousands of people briefly lost power because of high demand that outstripped supply.

That hasn’t happened since, and to ensure it doesn’t going forward, Newsom, a Democrat, is pushing to keep open the state’s last-remaining nuclear plant beyond its planned closure in 2025. Also, the state may turn to diesel generators or natural gas plants as a backup when the electrical grid is strained.

More than 1 million people drive electric cars in California today. Their charging habits vary, but most people charge their cars in the evening or overnight, said Ram Rajagopal, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University who has studied car charging habits and energy grid needs.

If people’s charging habits stay the same, once 30% to 40% of cars are electric, the state would need to add more energy capacity overnight to meet demand, he said. The regulations adopted Thursday require 35% of vehicle sales to be electric by 2026, up from 16% now.

But if more people charged their cars during the day, that problem would be avoided, he said. Changing to daytime charging is “the biggest bang for the buck you’re going to get,” he said.

Both the state and federal government are spending billions to build more chargers along public roadways, at apartment complexes and elsewhere to give people more charging options.

The oil industry believes California is going too far. It’s the seventh-largest oil-producing state and shouldn’t wrap its entire transportation strategy around a vehicle market powered by electricity, said Tanya DeRivi, vice president for climate policy with the Western States Petroleum Association, an industry group.

“Californians should be able to choose a vehicle technology, including electric vehicles, that best fits their needs based on availability, affordability and personal necessity,” she said.

Some difficulties seen

Many car companies, like Kia, Ford and General Motors, are already on the path to making more electric cars available for sale, but some have warned that factors outside their control like supply chain and materials issues make Californians’ goals challenging.

“Automakers could have significant difficulties meeting this target, given elements outside of the control of the industry,” Kia Corp.’s Laurie Holmes told the air board before its vote.

As the requirements ramp up over time, automakers could be fined up to $20,000 per vehicle sold that falls short of the goal, though they’ll have time to comply if they miss the target in a given year.

The new rules approved by the air board say that the vehicles need to be able to travel 150 miles (241 kilometers) on one charge. Federal and state rebates are also available to people who buy electric cars, and the new rules have incentives for car companies to sell electric cars at a discount to low-income buyers.

But some representatives of business groups and rural areas said they fear electric cars will be too expensive or inconvenient.

“These regulations are a big step backwards for working families and small businesses,” said Gema Gonzalez Macias of the California Hispanic Chambers of Commerce.

Air board members said they are committed to keeping a close eye on equity provisions in the rules to make sure all California residents have access.

“We will not set Californians up to fail, we will not set up the other states who want to follow this regulation to fail,” said Tania Pacheco-Warner, a member of the board and co-director of the Central Valley Health Policy Institute at California State University-Fresno.
…

«Попри війну, громадяни активно продовжують виводити з тіні кошти»
…

Йдеться про арештовані кошти ПАТ «Всеукраїнський банк розвитку», власником 100% акцій якого був старший син Януковича Олександр
…

In 1999, fewer than 1 million people graduated from college in China. This year, a record-breaking 10.7 million new college graduates joined the Chinese job market.

And many of them face a tough time finding jobs, according to official data.

Youth unemployment in China reached 19.9% in July, according to the latest data released by the country’s National Bureau of Statistics. That’s the highest rate since Beijing started publishing the index in January 2018, when the rate was as low as 9.6%.

July’s high unemployment rate for youth aged 16-24 — up from a previous record high of 19.3% in June — is largely due to an economic slump that China has been experiencing over the past few years, multiple China analysts told VOA Mandarin. That economic downturn has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and Beijing’s strict containment restrictions, including the “Zero COVID” policy, which reduced exports and consumer spending.

“They’re reaping what they’re sowing at the moment, and what they’ve sown for the last two years has not been great for the job market,” said Zak Dychtwald, CEO of the Young China Group, a consulting firm that does market research on youth in China.

The market may be even more discouraging to recent graduates and other jobseekers than the official figures suggest, said Dorothy Solinger, a professor emerita at the University of California, Irvine, who studies unemployment in China.

China’s “unemployment statistics are notoriously wrong,” Solinger told VOA Mandarin. “I’m surprised they’re announcing that it’s this high now, but it makes me think it may be even higher.”

Due to lengthy, pandemic-driven lockdowns in Shanghai and Beijing between March and May, the World Bank projected that China’s economic growth will slow to 4.3% in 2022, which is 0.8% lower than its original December estimate.

The pandemic “has made production and operation difficult, which has reduced the ability to attract jobs,” said Liu Pengyu, the spokesperson of China’s Washington, D.C. embassy, in an email.

“As the economy recovers and policies to stabilize employment, especially policies and measures to help young people find jobs, are strengthened, the employment situation on the whole will gradually improve and remain stable,” he added.

The pandemic isn’t the only culprit, Dychtwald told VOA Mandarin, since the issue of overall unemployment has been on Beijing’s radar for decades.

“For years, one of China’s biggest issues has been creating enough jobs for its educated class of young people,” Dychtwald said in an interview. “It’s just always been hard — and especially these last five or 10 years — to have the job market keep pace with the education rates.”

Even though unemployment is a perennial issue in China, that doesn’t mean the current unemployment rates don’t matter. Far from it, experts told VOA Mandarin, especially with the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party approaching in the fall, where President Xi Jinping is expected to secure a third term despite economic fallout from the pandemic, banking scandals and business practices that have caused a backlash and led some homeowners to stop paying their mortgages in protest.

The Chinese public will probably demand that Xi does more to address the unemployment crisis, especially ahead of the upcoming congress, according to Li Qiang, founder of the New York-based NGO China Labor Watch.

“This data may give him a wake-up call. This road is very difficult and will also affect the country’s political stability,” Qiang told VOA Mandarin.

Or as Dychtwald said, “If the government doesn’t address [unemployment], then it’s a potential powder keg, politically.”

Beijing has long maintained policies and programs to stimulate the economy and job growth, and much Chinese Communist Party rhetoric and art celebrates labor and workers, according to experts VOA interviewed. As one 2021 article in the state outlet Xinhua put it, “Only hard work brings happiness.”

In January, Xi wrote in the CCP’s journal Qiushi that no matter how much China  develops, the country must “steer clear of the idleness-breeding trap of welfarism.”

Manfred Elfstrom is an assistant professor at the University of British Columbia, Okanagan, whose research focuses on China, social movements, labor, and authoritarianism. To him, Xi’s article suggests the high youth unemployment rate China faces is of great concern to the CCP.

“If you are critical of people being ‘idle’ and relying on the government, then you also presumably feel pressure to deliver on job opportunities,” he told VOA Mandarin.

But it’s not just the CCP feeling the pressure. One of the most important factors impacting China’s younger generations is “the pressure to get ahead,” Dychtwald said, referring to “immense” social and familial expectations to excel in school, snare a well-paying job, marry and own property. “Pressure is the defining word.”

The CCP presents itself as a protector of the country and its people, so it’s more or less expected that the government will create an environment where people can find jobs, experts including Dychtwald said. With the realization that Beijing may not be meeting its end of the bargain comes dissatisfaction and disillusionment, particularly among the country’s youth.

China’s entrenched culture of overwork — which Dychtwald says is common in other countries like Singapore and South Korea — alongside fewer job prospects and relatively lower wages gave way to China’s “lying flat” movement in 2021.

The movement urges young people “to opt out of the struggle for workplace success, and to reject the promise of consumer fulfilment,” according to a 2021 Brookings Institution report.
…

Пакет на 3 мільярди доларів наразі є найбільшим із тих, що США зобов’язалися виділити Україні
…

Зокрема, збитки внаслідок забруднення повітря становлять 176 мільярдів гривень
…

President Joe Biden on Wednesday announced his long-awaited plan to deliver on his campaign promise to provide $10,000 in debt cancellation for millions of Americans — and up to $10,000 more for those with the greatest financial need.

Borrowers who earn less than $125,000 a year, or families earning less than $250,000, would be eligible for the $10,000 loan forgiveness, Biden announced in a tweet. For recipients of Pell Grants, which are reserved for undergraduates with the most significant financial need, the federal government would cancel up to an additional $10,000 in federal loan debt.

Biden is also extending a pause on federal student loan payments for what he called the “final time” through the end of 2022. He was set to deliver remarks Wednesday afternoon at the White House to unveil his proposal to the public.

If his plan survives legal challenges that are almost certain to come, it could offer a windfall to a swath of the nation in the run-up to this fall’s midterm elections. More than 43 million people have federal student debt, with an average balance of $37,667, according to federal data. Nearly a third of borrowers owe less than $10,000, and about half owe less than $20,000. The White House estimates that Biden’s announcement would erase the federal student debt of about 20 million people.

Proponents say cancellation will narrow the racial wealth gap — Black students are more likely to borrow federal student loans and at higher amounts than others. Four years after earning bachelor’s degrees, Black borrowers owe an average of nearly $25,000 more than their white peers, according to a Brookings Institution study.

Still, the action is unlikely to thrill any of the factions that have been jostling for influence as Biden weighs how much to cancel and for whom.

Biden has faced pressure from liberals to provide broader relief to hard-hit borrowers, and from moderates and Republicans questioning the fairness of any widespread forgiveness. The delay in Biden’s decision has only heightened the anticipation for what his own aides acknowledge represents a political no-win situation. The people spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss Biden’s intended announcement ahead of time.

The continuation of the coronavirus pandemic-era payment freeze comes just days before millions of Americans were set to find out when their next student loan bills will be due. This is the closest the administration has come to hitting the end of the payment freeze extension, with the current pause set to end Aug. 31.

Details of the plan have been kept closely guarded as Biden weighed his options. The administration said Wednesday the Education Department will release information in the coming weeks for eligible borrowers to sign up for debt relief. Cancellation for some would be automatic, if the department has access to to their income information, but others would need to fill out a form.

Current students would only be eligible for relief if their loans were originated before July 1, 2022. Biden is also set to propose capping the amount that borrowers pay monthly on undergraduate loans at 5% of their earnings.

During the 2020 presidential campaign, Biden was initially skeptical of student loan debt cancellation as he faced off against more progressive candidates for the Democratic nomination. Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had proposed cancellations of $50,000 or more.

As he tried to shore up support among younger voters and prepare for a general election battle against President Donald Trump, Biden unveiled his initial proposal for debt cancellation of $10,000 per borrower, with no mention of an income cap.

Biden narrowed his campaign promise in recent months by embracing the income limit as soaring inflation took a political toll and as he aimed to head off political attacks that the cancellation would benefit those with higher take-home pay. But Democrats, from members of congressional leadership to those facing tough reelection bids this November, have pushed the administration to go as broad as possible on debt relief, seeing it in part as a galvanizing issue, particularly for Black and young voters this fall.

Democrats are betting that Biden, who has seen his public approval tumble over the past year, can help motivate younger voters to the polls with the announcement.

Although Biden’s plan is changed from he initially proposed during the campaign, “he’ll get a lot of credit for following through on something that he was committed to,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked with Biden during the 2020 election.

A survey of 18- to 29-year-olds conducted by the Harvard Institute of Politics in March found that 59% of those polled favored debt cancellation of some sort — whether for all borrowers or those most in need — although student loans did not rank high among issues that most concerned people in that age group.

Some advocates say Biden’s plan still falls short.

“If the rumors are true, we’ve got a problem,” Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, which has aggressively lobbied Biden to take bolder action, said Tuesday.

“President Biden’s decision on student debt cannot become the latest example of a policy that has left Black people — especially Black women — behind,” he said. “This is not how you treat Black voters who turned out in record numbers and provided 90% of their vote to once again save democracy in 2020.”

John Della Volpe, who worked as a consultant on Biden’s campaign and is the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics, said the particulars of Biden’s announcement were less important than the decision itself.

“It’s about trust in politics, in government, in our system. It’s also about trust in the individual, which in this case is President Biden,” Della Volpe said.

Republicans, meanwhile, see a political upside if Biden pursues a large-scale cancellation of student debt ahead of the November midterms, anticipating backlash for Democrats — particularly in states where there are large numbers of working-class voters without college degrees. Critics of broad student debt forgiveness also believe it will open the White House to lawsuits, on the grounds that Congress has never given the president the explicit authority to cancel debt on his own.

The Republican National Committee on Tuesday blasted Biden’s expected announcement as a “handout to the rich,” claiming it would unfairly burden lower-income taxpayers and those who have already paid off their student loans with covering the costs of higher education for the wealthy.

Biden’s long deliberations have led to grumbling among federal loan servicers, who had been instructed to hold back billing statements while Biden weighed a decision.

Industry groups had complained that the delayed decision left them with just days to notify borrowers, retrain customer service workers and update websites and digital payment systems, said Scott Buchanan, executive director of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance.

It increases the risk that some borrowers will inadvertently be told they need to make payments, he said.

“At this late stage I think that’s the risk we’re running,” he said. “You can’t just turn on a dime with 35 million borrowers who all have different loan types and statuses.”
…