In a guest commentary piece last month in The Baltimore Sun, lobbyist Albert Wynn wrote that Maryland should abandon its commitment to move toward electric vehicles (EVs) and separate itself from the other progressive states working to combat climate change. The column so distorted reality that it compels a response.

Maryland, he suggests, should abandon its distinction as a leader among its peers in the EV revolution. We simply must not cave to this tortured logic. If we did, the result would be for Maryland to rely even more on gas-powered cars and increase greenhouse gas emissions, which threaten not only Maryland, but our planet.

Apparently Mr. Wynn doesn’t watch the evening news. Many nights, the top stories show severe storms, flooding, hurricanes and sea level rise all across the nation. The flooding in Frankfort, Ky., the death of four Pennsylvanians due to storm damage, or the loss of 25 lives in the South and Midwest due to flooding and tornadoes cannot be ignored, though climate deniers might try to. Mr. Wynn seemingly chooses to align himself with President Donald Trump, the gas and oil industry, and other climate deniers.

We should see the failure of federal leaders to help find solutions to the climate change crisis as an impetus to redouble our efforts to move forward, not use it as an excuse to settle for the dangerous inertia of the status quo. Mr. Wynn has the audacity to say the “feds have been largely unsuccessful in delivering the promised charging stations” for EVs. Quite a creative sleight of hand: President Trump, upon taking office, aggressively blocked the burgeoning national charging program called NEVI, stopping already promised funding. While Mr. Wynn claims that “the tax incentives are gone,” as of this writing, that’s simply not the case. For many EVs, buyers can get a $7,500 rebate.

Mr. Wynn also suggests that EVs are not what customers want. Yet the real-world data suggests otherwise. The number of registered EVs in the state of Maryland has grown faster than most every projection said it would. As 2024 drew to a close, there were more than 120,000 EVs registered in Maryland . There were more than 31,000 new registrations added in 2024 alone. And lest anyone claim that this growth occurred only in affluent areas, it is important to understand that well over half of the zip codes in Maryland have more than 50 EVs registered in them. Residents in all parts of the state are clearly drawn to the declining purchase prices and lower operation and maintenance costs of EVs, to say nothing of their reduced environmental impacts.

Mr. Wynn also makes the dubious contention that there are only 15 publicly available charging stations in the state. Yet Mr. Wynn’s own citation makes it clear that this number only represents those stations operated by the Maryland Transportation Authority. For the record, at the end of 2024, there were almost 1,700 charging stations in Maryland and almost 5,000 publicly available charging ports. That figure includes almost 400 new ports added in 2024 alone.

The author doesn’t simply offer wild assertions as facts, he justifies Maryland’s move back to buying fossil fuel gas guzzlers by appropriating from the pro-choice, abortion rights movement. He says, “Preserving the right to choose is what will help Maryland…” That and using scary “mandates” as his boogeyman create a weak foundation for his anti-EV rant. None of this should come as a surprise given Mr. Wynn’s lobbying firm represents multiple gas and oil energy firms, including the American Petroleum Institute.

Maryland’s Climate Pollution Reduction Plan reminds us that the transportation sector accounted for 35% of Maryland’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2020, with most emissions (82%) in this sector coming from on-road vehicles powered by gasoline or diesel. That makes it imperative that we find ways to cut emissions in this sector, lest we slip back toward the days when Maryland had some of the dirtiest air east of the Mississippi River. That is not a vision for a future Maryland that I or any member of the Moore-Miller administration shares.

Instead, the Maryland Energy Administration is taking aggressive steps to boost public charging infrastructure — in line with Gov. Wes Moore’s announcement last year of a signature initiative to fund EV chargers in under-resourced communities and multi-family dwellings.

Maryland must continue to employ an all-of-the-above approach to cut its transportation pollution, and EVs need to be a key pillar of that strategy. Rather than using economic downturns or failures of presidential leadership to justify a U-turn on the path to progress, Maryland needs to hold steady on its course and keep its eyes on the horizon.