Our View: Harder to keep on trucking

Amid the hype over this week's adoption by the state Air Resources Board of new regulations to curb greenhouse gases, much less attention was given to the ARB's companion action regarding diesel trucks.

While the costly, largely unnecessary plan to enforce 2006's Global Warming Solutions Act ultimately will be more broadly felt throughout California's economy, the new diesel regulations probably will be felt sooner. It will be a multibillion-dollar blow to an already aching economy.

By 2011, diesel truck operators must begin adding exhaust filters, at about $10,000 each, and replacing trucks beginning in 2012, at about $100,000 or more per vehicle. The ARB concedes truckers' total cost to be $5.5 billion, a huge sum even in good economic times. The industry says costs will be closer to $10 billion.

The trucking industry apparently doesn't dispute the state's claim that diesel exhaust is unhealthy and contributes to air pollution. But truckers complain that added costs will squeeze many companies out of business, and others will leave the state. The industry unsuccessfully requested more time to replace fleets with cleaner vehicles. Complaints like Southern California trucker Mark Binkley's failed to sway the ARB board, which imposed the costly rules on about 400,000 California-licensed vehicles and another 500,000 out-of-state trucks doing business here.

The ARB admits the state's diesels are getting cleaner every year, but not clean enough fast enough to satisfy Sacramento's unelected bureaucracy. Previously the ARB imposed similar mandates on tractors and bulldozers. At that time the agency also similarly stepped outside its area of expertise, presuming to tell private businesses how much they can afford and remain profitable. We suspect a large motivation for the ARB was the possibility of it losing billions of dollars in federal funding if the state doesn't meet other arbitrary federal clean-air standards.

Taxpayers also will be saddled with huge costs. Adding insult to injury, the ARB will make $1 billion in subsidies available to truckers to ease the financial pain.

The ARB contended that new regulations could save billions of dollars in health care costs. The difference is that while health care savings could occur, the costs to the trucking industry certainly will. Once again, on its own terms and timing, the government has imposed huge costs on the private sector, hoping to improve life, while certainly making life harder in the process.