I am not one of those that believes I am saving the environment. I grew up in LA in the fiftties when on smoggy days my eyes stung and my lungs hurt when I excercized so I am thankful for the emission standards that cleaned up the air in California. I have driven over 200,000 miles in my EVs since 2012 and the economic benefits are more than enough to justify the expense for me. I do enjoy the tax benefit but did not always get a tax credit but purchased or leased anyway.
This is not really aimed at you.
The key is education.
For example, EV drivers today are not paying the road tax that is part of gas tax. They are aleady talking about remediating that little hole of EV owners (Which will make their TCO much higher almost immediately).
Then we get into tires (EVs are heavy and use up tires much faster, tires also are major source of particulate, so EVs actually do MORE of real pollution).
Modern ICE cars actually produce very few emissions (This is very noticeable when you go to third world which still uses a lot of older ICE cars)
Then we get into battery production and recycling (or lack there of, cost, environmental impact, etc, etc - and this is barely scratching the surface of EV problems).
As for California - the state has been so badly mismanaged by government, I am not even sure it can be salvaged anymore, almost everything costs more in California.