Surprise, surprise.

California cities are banning new gas stations and other cities across the country are watching.

The bans are part of an ongoing quest to combat climate change, this time on a local, municipal level.

The movement is small so far, but now, even the car capital of the world, Los Angeles, even it's thinking about it.

I'm Gustavariano. You're listening to the Times, essential news from the LA Times.

It's Wednesday, August 24, 2022. Today, what would happen if L.A. hops on this no-new gas station brigade. And what can we learn from the cities that have already

done it? Grace Tui is an L.A. Times reporter covering breaking news. Grace, welcome the Times.

Thank you so much for having me. So what's this gas station proposal about in L.A.?

Yeah, so this was introduced by L.A. City Councilman Paul Coretz.

And so the idea of it is that it's really to try and phase out, you know, this reliance on fossil fuel infrastructure.

And so what it aims to do is just to stop the construction of future gas stations being built.

And so when it affects current gas stations, it's not going to take away, you know, the gas station on the corner that you go to every day now. But it's going to stop people from deciding, you know, I want to start up a new gas station or add one to this corner. And the idea is it's really based in environmental policy. This is kind of a climate change issue. And a lot of people are starting to

take up. And that's what they want to do in Los Angeles. What's kind of surprising to me is that this

is coming from L.A. Yeah, it's a really liberal city and very liberal city council. But all of

Los Angeles, all of Southern California, or so much of it relies on cars and trucks for basically

everything. You're exactly right. And I think that will be interesting to see, you know, what kind of success it actually finds. But what City Councilman Koretz has said is there's plenty of gas stations here in L.A. already. You know, we don't need more. The California Energy Commission actually tracks this. And they said in 2020, there were about

2,000 gas stations in the county. So, you know, there's a difference between the city and county,

but that's the county level numbers. And so we buy millions of gallons of gasoline every year.

No one's saying that there's a shortage of gasoline stations necessarily right now. And so for that

reason, he thinks that we can stop building new ones.

And if there's any sort of expansion of gas stations, he wants it to be dedicated to electric

vehicles or, you know, more sustainable technology coming into these gas stations or convenience

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