Governor Newsom is vocally supportive of the Green New Deal that would take us back to medieval times. The Governor’s statement on July 12th was scary. He is looking into putting a moratorium on fracking for oil and wants to reduce the state’s reliance on fossil fuels.
The Governor seems to be oblivious to the fact that 100 percent of the industries that use deep earth minerals/fuels to “move things and make thousands of products” to support the economies around the world, are increasing their demand and usage each year of those energy sources from deep earth minerals/fuels, not decreasing it.
Electricity alone, especially intermittent electricity from renewables, has not, and will not, run the economies of the world, as electricity alone is unable to support the energy demands of the military, airlines, cruise ships, supertankers, container shipping, and trucking infrastructures.
Getting off fossil fuels would virtually negatively impact the following industries and infrastructures that are driven by the energy density of oil, coal, and natural gas:
• Medications and medical equipment that are all made with the chemicals and by-products of oil.
• Commercial aviation that has been accommodating 4 billion passengers annually.
• Cruise liners that have been accommodating more than 25 million passengers annually.
• Merchant ships that move products worth billions of dollars daily.
• The military presence that protects each country from each other, is increasing each year to save the world.
• Usage of fertilizers that accommodates growth of much of the food that feeds billions annually.
• Vehicle manufacturing as all parts are based on the chemical and by-products from fossil fuels.
• The usage of asphalt for road construction.
Getting-off-fossil fuels would reverse much of the progress society has made over the last few centuries. Until electricity storage technology can support intermittent electricity from wind and solar, the world will continue to have redundant fossil fuel backups for those windless and cloudy days to provide electricity to the world’s economies around the clock.
Further, Intermittent electricity from low power density renewables is expensive to consumers and have contributed to California household users paying 50% more, and industrial users paying more than 100% more than the national average for electricity.
While the state’s crusade toward 100 percent renewables continues, the intermittent electricity resulting from all those wind and solar farms (“100 percent by 2045”) has caused the state to increase its imports of crude oil to meet its insatiable energy demands. California could decrease its growing dependency on foreign crude oil simply by increasing in-state crude oil exploration, but environmentally correct state leadership refuses to even to consider such a plan.
The two prime movers of transportation, the jet turbine and the diesel engine, provide the backbone of our national prosperity, for both commerce and recreation. The demand for thousands of products refined from crude oil other than gasoline fuel—that is, the multitude of chemicals and by-products as well as aviation fuel, diesel fuel, and asphalt that the military and all infrastructures are dependent upon—directly supports our current lifestyles. Modern, high-energy societies enjoy a much higher standard of living than their historical predecessors, and these gains have naturally led to expectations of continued lifestyle improvements.
California is an “energy island” inhabited by roughly 40 million citizens and situated between the Pacific Ocean and the Arizona/Nevada Stateline, with no existing pipelines over the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Daily energy use for California’s 145 airports (inclusive of 33 military, 10 majors, and more than 100 general aviation) is 13 million gallons of aviation fuels, or one-fifth of the nation’s jet fuel consumption. California’s 35 million registered vehicles are consuming 10 million gallons a day of diesel and 42 million gallons a day of gasoline for those 90 percent of state-registered vehicles that are not EV’s.
The basic fact for California becoming a national security risk is that in-state crude oil production and Alaskan oil imports are both in decline, and thus unable to help meet California’s energy needs. The state’s solution has been to increase crude oil imports from foreign countries from 5% in 1992 to a shocking 57% in 2018, at a cost of more than $60 million dollars a day—and increasing each year.
California is the only state in the union that currently imports most of its crude oil energy from foreign countries. In fact, since the state operates what is, in effect, the world’s fifth-largest economy, its ever-increasing dependency on foreign countries for its crude oil needs not only causes inflationary challenges for its citizens and businesses but has the potential to put our national security at risk.
Products manufactured from fossil fuels have literally eliminated weather related deaths, are responsible for extended life expectancies and have critically reduced fatalities of mothers and babies during childbirth. The search for a cure for cancer is partially driven by chemicals developed from and used in laboratories built by fossil-fuel by-products.
For the sake of argument, yes, getting-off-fossil fuels would reduce emissions, but such an abrupt stop that Governor Newsom supports would also drastically impact the lifestyles to which we’ve become accustomed and consequently move us backwards to medieval times.
This piece originally appeared on Fox & Hounds.
Ronald Stein is the Founder and Ambassador for Energy & Infrastructure at PTS Advance headquartered in Irvine, California and a researcher and commentator on climate, energy, environment and public policy.
Photo: Steve Jurvetson, via Flickr, using CC License.
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