Should Los Angeles join a handful of Bay Area cities that have banned new gas stations?
At first glance, the idea proposed by Councilman Paul Koretz sounds like a logical step. To avoid disastrous climate change, we need to stop building new fossil fuel infrastructure. That means enacting policies to swiftly replace gas and diesel-guzzling vehicles with zero-emission models, but also doing much more to support the widespread and equitable deployment of charging stations as the number of electric vehicles on the road climbs. And with California poised to phase out sales of gas-powered cars by 2035, it seems foolish to keep building more fueling stations, especially in a city that is already saturated with them.
But stopping the building of new gas, diesel or other fossil-fuel pumps in the city would have little real effect and should not be a top priority of city leaders, who have more effective actions they can take to accelerate the switch to electric cars and make planet-endangering fossil fuels a thing of the past.
