Eric Noble works in the automobile industry, but that doesn't mean he doesn't worry about climate change. When he and his two sons, 11 and 15 years old, travel south to surf on Baja's Pacific Coast a few times a year, they can detect the impact greenhouse gases are having on the earth. “We can see the sea level rising,” he says. “Little coastal roads we used to be able to drive on are inundated now. This is happening.” He understands that transportation is responsible for more than a quarter of the greenhouse gases that linger in our atmosphere, and light-duty vehicles—passenger cars, mostly—emit close to two-thirds of that pollution.
And so Noble, who is president of the Orange County, California-based automotive consulting firm CarLab, also worries whether California's strict zero-emissions vehicle strategy, which forces automakers to market exhaust-free hydrogen-fueled and battery-powered vehicles in the state, is really the most consumer-friendly, egalitarian way to go. Not just in California and the nine states that have followed its lead on emissions standards, but throughout the nation.
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