Signals Crossed?

The folks in CARB's communications department are either not talking to each other or they are baffling us with their brilliance by executing an obfuscation strategy designed to head off criticism. I'll let you decide.

What is indisputable is that on the very day the press was reporting that CARB announced that it is going to revisit one of the fundamental tenets of its Low Carbon Fuel Standard because the numbers aren't quite what they thought they were, an opinion piece by Mary Nichols gets posted on the influential Huffington Post blog which extolls the virtue of the LCFS as "the first step of an effective long-term cure [for our nation's century-long addition [sic] to petroleum."

Dripping with irony or hypocrisy (again, you be the judge) the Nichols piece wraps the LCFS in the mantle of capitalism and free markets. Nichols states:

"The Low Carbon Fuel Standard breaks new ground because it does not anoint winners and losers. It leaves that decision to the marketplace."

Huh? The entire point of the LCFS is to identify and penalize certain fuels, while promoting others.

It's a lengthy piece, but it's Friday so I know you can find the time!

How California is Breaking the Petroleum Habit [Huffington Post]