Greenpeace

According to an article in the NYT today:

California regulators cut by 70 percent the number of emission-free vehicles that automobile manufacturers must sell in California in the three years beginning in 2012. At the same time, the regulators effectively required, for the first time, that tens of thousands of plug-in hybrid vehicles be sold in those years.

According to the NYT's reporter, Felicity Barringer, this was an action that "dismayed some environmentalists," though these same unnamed environmentalists were supposedly mollified by the potential for this action to lead to new research into hybrid vehicle technology.

Now, hybrids are definitely a step in the right direction and all, but they still create at least some pollution. No matter how you spin it, this is a drastic scaling back of the very progressive campaign originally launched by CA in the early 90s to get fossil fuel-burning vehicles off CA roads. Basically, it would seem the California Air Resources Board ( CARB ), the regulatory body that made this decision, caved to the automobile industry.

Granted, this isn't as big a scale-back as the 90% cut in "pure" zero emissions vehicles that had been proposed to the board -- a proposal that prompted the Union of Concerned Scientists to post an internet action alert. It's obviously too late to "Save California's Electric Vehicle Program," but, hell, why not go ahead and keeping letting CARB know how you feel: the action alert is, as of my writing this, still up. 

Or you can just contact them directly:

California Air Resources Board
Headquarters Building
1001 "I" Street
P.O. Box 2815
Sacramento, CA  95812

Phone: (916) 322-2990 or (800) 242-4450 or FAX: (916) 445-5025