California Governor Newsom became further convinced that voters continue to support his bizarre energy policies when they defeated the 2021 California gubernatorial recall election on September 14, 2021, thus keeping the incumbent elected for the term January 2019 to January 2023.
With California having the highest prices for fuel in the nation, the highest poverty and homeless rates, and barely able keep the lights on as its climate policies bite the electric grid, Governor Gavin Newsom is undaunted. With his ego at an all-time high, on Friday September 23rd he signed at least 40 new climate bills to ramp up California’s green-energy shock experiment onto the same citizens that defeated the recall.
Newsom does not realize that wind turbines and solar panels CANNOT manufacture anything for society.
The reasons why subsidized wind and solar electricity are not replacing fossil fuels, is that they can only generate electricity intermittently from breezes and sunshine. When we look at Newsom’s pledge for an all-electric world, it is obvious that Newsom remains oblivious to the reality that everything that needs electricity is made from the oil derivatives manufactured from crude oil.
Newsom has short memories of petrochemical products and human ingenuity being the reasons for the world populating from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years. Newsom, like Biden, has no “replacement” for oil, just a delusion that intermittent electricity can replace oil.
California, which has been closing continuous uninterruptible electricity generation from natural gas and nuclear plants for years, has forced the state to import over 30 percent of its electricity from other states. This has made California the nation’s largest net electrical-importing state by a wide margin. By 2050, state consultants estimate that electrification mandates, including those for cars and trucks, will cause total demand to skyrocket, with some estimates of demand rising 60 to 90 percent by that time, hoping that adjoining states will have the extra power.
California, a state that was virtually independent of imported crude oil from foreign countries in 1995, today California is the only state in contiguous America that imports oil, now at more than 60 percent of the needs of the fifth largest economy in the world.
At today’s price of crude oil around $90 per barrel the imported crude oil costs California more than $150 million dollars a day, yes, every day, being paid to oil-rich foreign countries, depriving Californians of jobs and business opportunities, and drivers to pay premium prices for fuel.
Even with that huge cost burden to the state, Newsom continuously seeks further reductions of in-state production that will place greater dependency on foreign countries, with significant less environmental controls than California, and further increasing the daily cost to the state to meet the demands of its economy.
Newsom believes that an all-renewable electricity system from unreliable weather conditions, WITHOUT the products and fuels from fossil fuels, can work to support a modern economy.
All parts for renewables are all manufactured from crude oil. These manufactured items from oil did not exist before 1900. Ridding the world of crude oil would eliminate wind turbines, solar panels, and vehicles!
In Newsom’s all-electric world, Newsom believes that the products and fuels manufactured from fossil fuels, which are supporting infrastructures, lifestyles, and economies, which did not exist before 1900, are dangerous and polluting and is causing dangerous climate change.
In Newsom’s all-electric world, Newsom believes that all the infrastructures developed in less than two centuries, from the products manufactured from crude oil, are NOT needed by future societies, such as medical, electronics, communications, and the many transportation infrastructures such as airlines, merchant ships, automobiles, trucks, military, and the space programs.
Read the rest of this piece at CA Political Review.
Ron Stein is an engineer who, drawing upon 25 years of project management and business development experience, launched PTS Advance in 1995. He is an author, engineer, and energy expert who writes frequently on issues of energy and economics.
Photo: Courtesy California Political Review.