by Robert W. Benson

About the author: Robert W. Benson is a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Ihave been commuting to downtown Los Angeles since 1991 in my electric car, getting the thumbs-up from other drivers, happy that my converted Volkswagen Karmann Ghia (license plate SMOGLSS) emits not an iota of tailpipe pollution. So, I was aghast to read a report from Carnegie-Mellon University asserting that electric cars may make the environment dirtier. “If this is true,” I told my wife, “I’ll get rid of the car tomorrow.”

Cleaning Up an Environmental Mess

After all, I bought SMOGLSS only because I felt that as a Los Angeles driver I had contributed more than my lifetime share to dirtying the air. As a professor of environmental law, I thought the time had...