All this emissions business is a bunch of BULLoney regardless of what type of vehicle they're wanting to regulate.
Completely aside from the
verboten topic, there are good reasons for emissions controls. I grew up in Southern California, and I have seen the very obvious, and huge, difference that emissions controls have made in the quality of the air we breathe. The air there is FAR cleaner than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Visibly and unmistakably cleaner.
I have met two different people who moved to Southern California in the early summer, and went about settling in. Come fall, we usually get the Santanas Winds ("Satan Winds" but almost universally and incorrectly, called, "Santa Ana Winds"), which blow out of the desert and blow all the smog out to sea. They can clean it all out in a matter of hours.
These two different people woke up, did their morning routine, and headed out to go to work, and freaked out. There in front of them, plain as day and only about 10 miles away, were mountains they had never seen, and they didn't know they were there.
Think about that. These are 8-10,00 foot mountains, only 10 miles away from you, and you don't even know they
exist because the air is so thick with pollutants you have
never seen them.
Or how about going out to the desert when the normal onshore breezes are pushing the smog inland, and once you get a few miles through San Gorgonio Pass you can look back and SEE the brown airstream coming through the pass after you.
That can't happen any more, because the air is far cleaner. Even in the worst dog days of August, you can see those mountains clearly.
Yeah, they've probably gone overboard on some of it, but it's just plain stupid to think it's okay to pollute our environment with diesel and gasoline exhaust, throw our trash in the ocean, and otherwise muck up our planet.
I'm no tree hugger and have no use for them, but this planet was entrusted to us as a stewardship from God, and we will answer to Him for the careless, lazy, and stupid way we have treated it.