Imagine California without fossil fuels
Washington Examiner
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Just in time for April Fools’ Day, California passed a law that purports to stop “price gouging” by gas stations. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom’s communications staff, which cannot spell the word “vise,” boasted that the new law “creates a dedicated, day-in and day-out, independent watchdog to root out price gouging by oil companies and authorizes the California Energy Commission to create a penalty to hold the industry accountable.”
This is red meat for the economically illiterate. Gas prices are not higher in California because of “gouging.” It’s not as if the oil and gas industry is greedier there than in, say, Kansas, where gas is $1.75 less per gallon.
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California gas prices are so much higher because of all the other taxes and regulations that California Democrats have imposed on the state. It is their goal to force gas prices upward. It is not an accident. The party orthodoxy demands high gas prices to curb consumption and global warming. It needs to be understood that when Democrats complain about gas prices being too high, they are faking it. The proposed panel to harass the industry is cover for Democrats’ own policies.
This casts Newsom’s smug, triumphalistic posturing in a different but appropriate light.
“We proved we can actually beat Big Oil,” was Newsom’s comment at his signing ceremony. Or as he put it in a speech in New York, one of the only states that send more refugees to California than it receives in return, “Big Oil lost, and they’re not used to losing.”
That’s not quite true, either. When you are in a one-party state and you are the head of that party, you can bully anyone into leaving. Newsom knows all about this — a net 1.2 million Californians have moved away to other states since his inauguration in January 2019.
One Democratic legislator said of the bill that “fossil fuel obsolescence is on the horizon.” How should Big Oil respond? One response would be to do nothing — California is a big market, after all, and it won’t wean itself from gas and oil soon, no matter what delusional policies it adopts. Fossil fuels are so useful and life-sustaining that they remain profitable even under the worst of circumstances.
But here’s a much more fun idea: Why not call Newsom and the California Democrats on their bluff?
They claim to want a world without oil, so let them have it. Oil companies should understand where they’re neither wanted nor needed.
In recent years, the nation has seen many attempted strikes, such as the “Day Without Immigrants” and the “Day Without a Woman.” Those were not successful, but how about giving California a “Day Without Gasoline.”
What if every California gas station, or even just a large percentage of them, took a day or two or three and turned off their pumps just to make a point?
What would the Los Angeles commute look like then?
California uses less gasoline per person than most states, but it is still the second-largest consumer after Texas. If Newsom wants the state to quit gas cold turkey, the industry should give him a chance to show it’s possible.
California consumes more jet fuel than any other state. How will California’s leaders fly their private jets to urgent climate change forums without jet fuel? Surely, they can figure it out. Have they tried bicycling?
America’s fossil fuel companies may not have the guts to try this, but if they don’t draw the line, they’ll keep getting abused. Newsom is not a serious person. His “gouging” proposal demonstrates this. He is posturing for a future presidential run, and someone needs to expose his vacuous gambit.
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Also, Californians implicitly understand that after just a couple of days without gasoline, their state would look like something out of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.
Already, Californians are used to poor public services and an unreliable electrical grid, even though they pay some of the nation’s highest taxes and electricity rates. The gilded state’s remaining residents should be alarmed by Newsom’s harassment of those who supply a product without which their state and most of its population cannot survive.