Energy News Beat
For years, California has received extensive press coverage for its high cost of living and the most expensive electricity and fuel prices in America.
California’s increasingly high cost of living, housing, and transportation, coupled with an increase in crime, smash-and-grab robberies, homelessness, pollution, and congestion, has caused many people and companies to relocate to more affordable cities and states.
The California Policy Institute counted more than 237 businesses that have left the state since 2005. Among these businesses were eleven Fortune 1000 companies, inclusive of AT&T, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Exxon Mobil, and Chevron. California’s net move-out number of residents in 2022 alone was more than 343,000 people that left California — the highest exodus of any state in the U.S.
Kamala Harris has a long relationship with California. She became the San Francisco district attorney in 2004. She served two terms in that role from 2004 to 2010. In 2010, she succeeded Jerry Brown as California Attorney General. She was sworn into the role in January 2011 and served until 2017, when she joined the U.S. Senate after being elected in 2016.
Kamala Harris continues to support California’s tax-and-spend, overreaching, and economy-crushing policies and their threats to America’s energy, agricultural, economic, employment, living standards, and national security future.
California’s de-carceration, de-prosecution, and de-policing have led to a toxic mix that has eroded public safety in the Golden State.
The growing number of smash-and-grab robberies on small businesses has another major associated cost: turning off the desire of shoppers to return to those stores that have been attacked and receiving press coverage that gets disseminated to others, giving the impression that the safety of the area is deteriorating.
The deterioration of the California lifestyle has led to the “California exodus,” the ongoing migration of residents and businesses from California to other states or countries.
ELECTRICITY
Electricity from solar and wind is specified by the state government and supported by Harris as critical to meeting California’s ambitious requirement to switch to 90% carbon-free electricity generation by 2035 and to 100% by 2045. Shockingly, the “green” wind and solar projects primarily exist because they are financed with taxpayer money, i.e., disguised from taxpayers as “Government subsidies.”
The “green” electricity policy has resulted in the state continuously shutting down coal, natural gas, and nuclear-generating stations that provide continuous uninterruptible electricity in favor of occasionally generated electricity from renewables.
However, in spite of the policy and renewable stations built at the expense of taxpayer dollars, otherwise known as Government Subsidies, California now imports more electric power than any other US state, more than twice the amount in Virginia, the USA’s second-largest importer of electric power. California typically receives between one-fifth and one-third of its electricity supply from outside of the state.
Power prices are rocketing into the stratosphere and, even before winter drives up demand, are being deprived of electricity in a way that was unthinkable barely a decade ago. But such is life when you attempt to run on sunshine and breezes. Further, these so-called “green” electricity sources of wind and solar are not clean, green, renewable or sustainable. They also endanger wildlife.
She is incapable of having conversations about how occasionally generated electricity from wind and solar will be able to address the coming increase in electricity demand. The U.S. Department of Energy recently made a startling admission about the U.S. electricity demand that is going to double by 2050, and meeting that soaring demand is going to require the equivalent of building 300 Hoover Dams.
Kamala remains ignorant to the reality that it’s becoming increasingly obvious that these supposed “green” alternative methods of generating electricity won’t work — especially as electricity demands are projected to double by 2050 due to AI, charging of EVs, data centers, government-mandated electric heating and cooking, and charging grid-backup batteries.
In addition, those so-called renewables, such as wind and solar, cannot produce thousands of essential products that require petrochemical feedstocks. In fact, all the parts and components of wind and solar are made from the same fossil fuels that Kamala Harris wants to rid the state of.
FOSSIL FUELS
As one of the most vocal “GREEN” policymakers, she remains oblivious to humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels from fossil fuels, as she is to these two basic facts:
She cannot comprehend that no one uses crude oil in its raw form. “Big Oil” only exists because of humanity’s addiction to the products and fuels made from oil! “Renewables” only exist to generate occasional electricity, as they CANNOT make any products or fuels!
If Kamala wants to rid the world of crude oil usage, there is no need to support California’s overregulation or overtaxing of the oil industry; she just needs to promote California residents to STOP using products and fuels made from crude oil, which would send California residents back to the Stone Age!
California’s regulatory and tax landscape has led to a steady drop in the number of California refineries. In the early 1980s, when California’s population was 24 million, there were 40 operating refineries in the state, which refined over 2.5 million barrels of crude oil per day. Forty years later, with a population of 39 million, the number of refineries dropped by 14, which refines less than 2 million barrels of crude oil per day currently. The reality is that gasoline and diesel supply is decreasing while demand is increasing; it is fuel (pun intended) for continuous price increases.
Refineries are also shutting down because California has imposed a new regulation that bans the sale of gas-powered cars and light trucks by 2035, and the State requires 35 percent of new car sales to be zero-emission vehicles by 2026. It makes no economic sense to invest in a new capacity in a state that has de facto outlawed the industry’s existence in a few years.
In addition, refineries are also shutting down because there are incredibly lucrative state and federal tax incentives to produce biofuels, totaling a whopping $1 per gallon, and cease the manufacturing of gasoline and diesel. A Marathon refinery that had a crude oil refining capacity of 166,000 barrels per day is being retrofitted to produce biodiesel and is expected to be producing biofuel next year. Similarly, Global Clean Energy is converting a 66,000-barrel-per-day-capacity refinery in Bakersfield to biodiesel, and World Energy has invested $350 million to convert a 50,000-barrel-per-day-capacity refinery to biodiesel.
California regulators and legislators are getting what they want: less crude oil produced and consumed. Californians, particularly low and middle-income households, are paying a dear price for the preferences of Tesla-driving legislators and regulators as fuel demand remains against a diminishing supply of gasoline and diesel.
She cannot comprehend that STOPPING the demands of society for the products and fuels made from oil will eliminate the need for crude oil!
Simplistically: STOP making cars, trucks, aircraft, boats, ships, farming equipment, medical equipment and supplies, communications equipment, military equipment, etc., that demand crude oil for their supply chain of products.
Harris is campaigning to rid America of oil and totally supports California Governor Newsom by continually decreasing California’s in-state oil production. Harris continues to support Newsom’s energy policies 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 energy 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.
California’s growing dependency on other nations for crude oil is a serious national security risk for America since the State is home to 9 International airports, 41 Military airports, and 3 of the largest shipping ports in America. California’s growing dependency on other nations, like Saudi Aramco, is a serious national security risk for America.
Now, with the presidential election around the corner, are the 300 million Americans not living in the West ready to duplicate California’s expensive electricity and fuel prices and increasingly high costs of living, housing, and transportation coupled with an increase in crime, smash-and-grab robberies, and homelessness?
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