Wyoming Republicans are taking a stand, they want to ban electric cars

Lawmakers in the country’s least populous state are taking a brave stand against modernity and climate action. They’re sponsoring SJ0004,”Phasing out sales of new electric cars by 2035An uncomplicated bill that articulates the state’s goal to phase out sales of new electric vehicles by 2035 and requires Wyoming industries and citizens to do their civic duty to resist EVs. Copies of the resolution will be sent to the White House, leaders in Congress, and the governor of California.

The motive, according to the bill’s preamble, is that the oil and gas industry is important to the state, a country with a population of less than 600,000. Wyoming takes pride in its oil and gas industry, and that gas—presumably here to mean “gasoline” and not the natural gas referred to in the first sentences of the bill—powers vehicles that ply the state’s vast stretches of highway.

The bill’s authors believe Wyoming’s interstate grid is too desolate for electric vehicles, especially since there is no existing infrastructure for charging electric vehicles, they claim.

The authors also deplore the fact that EVs require certain critical minerals—which the state of Wyoming does not currently provide—and that, in apparent ignorance, these vehicles may end up polluting Wyoming landfills. The enormous recyclability of electric vehicle batteries.

Therefore, in order to protect the income of people who make money extracting hydrocarbons from the ground or transporting them around the state, sales of new electric vehicles should be banned in Wyoming by 2035, the bill says.

History is not accidental. 2035 is the year by which California wants to phase out sales of new cars with internal combustion engines. And in the same year that US President Joe Biden wants At least 50 percent of all new cars sold in the United States to be EVs.

It looks like a projection to me

The politics of resentment come loud and clear from the bill’s primary sponsor, State Senator Jim Anderson. Anderson said Cowboy State Daily If the Wyoming Legislature succeeds in telling the rest of the world that, “If you don’t like our petrol cars, well, we don’t like your electric cars.”

But even if the bill were passed—not impossible, given tight Republican control of both houses of the Wyoming legislature—it would commit the state to no action other than a general sense of disdain for battery-powered cars.

In fact, State Senator Brian Bonner, another politician behind the bill, was quoted by the Cowboy State Daily as saying that some might call the bill “tongue in cheek, but it’s clearly a very serious issue that deserves some public discussion.” .