Editor, The Smithfield Times:

Virginia lawmakers recently took up a bill that would give localities the power to regulate or ban gas-powered leaf blowers. 

“It’s a baby step certainly for us here in Richmond,” Del. Richard C. “Rip” Sullivan Jr., D-Fairfax County, said. Baby step? Next they’ll be coming for your gas-powered lawn mowers, chainsaws, furnaces, grills, portable generators, stoves, water heaters, weed trimmers and vehicles. Don’t think it will happen? Think again.

Irrational fossil fuel bans are spreading throughout the country as climate-change hysteria is at an all-time high. President Joe Biden recently said that “the only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening than a nuclear war is global warming … .” Seriously?

Starting in 2024, California banned the sale of new gas-powered blowers, mowers, weed trimmers and chainsaws, and will ban the sale of single-use propane cylinders and portable gas generators by 2028, and the sale of natural gas furnaces and water heaters by 2030.

The state of New York will require electric-only hookups for appliances and utilities for most new buildings with fewer than seven stories beginning in 2026, and 2029 for taller buildings, with some exceptions (e.g., hospitals).

Virginia already adopted California emissions standards by mandating all new vehicles sold by 2035 be electric. EV mandates will significantly reduce consumer choice and make all vehicles less affordable.

While the U.S. is committed to net zero emissions by 2050, China is busy building more coal power plants, about two new plants per week, according to a 2023 Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air Report. China’s carbon dioxide emissions are more than the United States, European Union and India combined.

At the 2023 Climate Change Summit, COP28 President Sultan al-Jaber warned a fossil fuel phase-out would not allow sustainable development “unless you want to take the world back into caves.”

 

Joe Naneville

Windsor