California’s Energy Policies Are Using Its Population As Sacrificial Lambs – OpEd

California is obsessed with the concept that JUST electricity from wind turbines and solar panels can replace fossil fuels. All the policymakers of the State are oblivious to the reality that wind and solar can ONLY generate “electricity”, as they CANNOT make any products for society.

Energy literacy starts with the knowledge that crude oil is the basis of our materialistic society.Conversations are needed to discuss the difference between just “ELECTRICITY” from renewables, and the “PRODUCTS” that are the basis of society’s materialistic world. All the parts for wind turbines and solar panels are themselves MADE from oil derivatives, and only generate occasional electricity from favorable weather conditions but manufacture NOTHING for society.

California remains intent on following Germany’s “green” Energiewende” plan that has German consumers paying the highest electricity prices in the world. The California population of 39 million represents only about 0.5% of the world’s population of 8 billion. The other 99.5% are mostly in poorer developing countries with miniscule environmental policies to limit their emissions.

Germans have been forced to come to grips with the sober electricity of its Green Revolution that has made their electricity prices among the world’s highest, so it’s no wonder that the country’s economy is hemorrhaging economically, and companies are shutting down and moving out.

Since all hospitals, airports, communication systems, militaries, planes, trains, and vehicles are based on the products that did not exist before the 1800’s, that are now made from fossil fuels, Governor Newsom will not discuss his plan to support a supply chain of the products and fuels demanded by today’s materialistic society and economy, as America reduces its dependency on crude oil.

Governor Newsom will never discuss how to maintain the supply chain of cost-effective PRODUCTS that are essential to the materialistic demands for human flourishing. 

California policymakers pursuing net-zero emissions are oblivious to the reality that wind turbines and solar panels do different things than crude oil, thus Mandatory Emissions To Achieve Net-Zero Is A Fool’s Game.

Latinos make up about half of Californians living in poverty, despite being less than 40% of the population. By comparison, about 10% of white Californians live in poverty. 

For the growing poverty of the State of California, a State that only represents 0.5% of the world’s population, California continues to demand that its residence continue to “pay” for green policies to set an example for the 99.5% of the world’s 8 billion that do NOT live in California.

Affordable and reliable electricity is of major importance to the poor, because they spend the largest percentage of their income on electricity and fuels and are harmed the most by high energy prices.

Green policies are the primary cause for the escalating California electricity and fuel prices. 

ELECTRICITY:

• Over the last two decades, the state retired 11 coal-fired power plants that were providing continuous uninterruptible electricity.
• The San Onfre Nuclear Generating Station closed I 2013, that was also providing continuous uninterruptible electricity.
• Today, California imports more electricity than any other US state, more than twice the amount of Virginia, the second largest importer of electricity. California typically receives between one-fifth and one-third of its electricity supply from outside of the state.
• Electricity prices have increased more than 98% over the last 15 years.
• The Diablo Canyon Power Plant, the state’s last nuclear plant, that also provides continuous uninterruptible electricity has been scheduled for closure.

FUEL:

• California drivers pay 40% more than the national average. Higher gasoline taxes and a shortage of local refineries also factor into the high prices.
• Newsom, by continually decreasing in-state oil production, continues to force California, the 4th largest economy in the world, to be the only state in contiguous America that imports most of its crude oil feedstock to refineries from foreign countries. That dependence, via maritime transportation from foreign nations for the state’s crude oil energy demands, has increased imported crude oil from 5 percent in 1992 to almost 60 percent today of total consumption.

NATURAL GAS:

• Prices are high because the state has long discouraged local production (like the States’ success at discouraging oil production), importing more than 90% of its natural gas from other states. There is also a shortage of natural gas storage facilities.

With the average debt in this country greater than $100,000 per person (across credit cards, mortgages, auto loans and student loans), and with more than half of Americans living paycheck to paycheck, society is facing an unsustainable problem where those “financially challenged” will never pay off their continuously increasing debt.

Many have no retirement savings, as a graying America is worrying more and more about how to make ends meet. Everyday expenses and housing costs, including rent and mortgage payments, are the biggest reasons why people are unable to save for retirement. Thus, with the loss of just one paycheck, there are many millions of people on the verge of joining the growing homeless population.

California is already home to more than 180,000 homeless people. With the average person in heavy debt and unable to save for retirement, California leaders refuse to forecast how fast the States’ homeless population is expected to GROW and its impact on businesses and the economy.

When we look outside California and the few wealthy countries, we see that at least 80 percent of humanity, or more than six billion in this world are living on less than $10 a day, and billions living with little to no access to electricity, politicians are pursuing the most expensive ways to generate intermittent electricity. Energy poverty is among the most crippling but least talked-about crises of the 21^stcentury. We should not take energy for granted. The financially stable folks within the wealthy countries may be able to bear expensive electricity and fuels, but not by those that can least afford living in “energy poverty.”

California, desperately need dependable, affordable electricity AND THE PRODUCTS AND FUELS MANUFACTURED FROM FOSSIL FUELS to create jobs, lift families out of poverty, modernize homes, schools, and hospitals, provide clean water, and replace wood and animal dung for cooking and heating. 

Even today, millions of parents and children in poorer developing countries die from respiratory and intestinal diseases that are unheard of in wealthy countries, because they don’t have electricity nor any of the 6,000 products made from oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.

Like Germany, the “Greener” California gets, the bloodier its economy becomes as the “green” polices are the primary cause for the escalating cost of electricity and the escalating cost for the products and fuels from crude oil. Costly California looms as an example of poor energy policy with the states’ population being used like sacrificial lambs to set an example for the 99.5% of the world’s 8 billion that do NOT live in California.