It’s hard to imagine a more fitting start to a global climate conference than the lights going out. But that is what happened during the opening ceremony of the United Nations COP30 talks in Brazil. The event sank further into chaos when indigenous protesters broke through the security perimeter and U.N. staff had to be evacuated before order could be restored. The cherry on top of this fiasco was Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) flying in to push California’s failed energy policies as a model for the rest of the world.
The protests are particularly significant because California played a role in causing them. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva talks a good game when it comes to reducing carbon emissions, but he also recently approved new oil and gas leases in the Amazon rainforest just miles from the conference location in Belem.
This ties back to California because, while the Golden State once produced 62% of its petroleum needs, it now imports 65% of its crude oil from foreign sources, including Brazil. In fact, California imports half of all the oil extracted from the Amazon rainforest, far more than any other country. It’s raining ironies in the rainforest.
Why is Lula hosting a climate conference in the Amazon while, at the same time, amping up fossil fuel extraction from those same lands? Because the COP30 is like every other international climate extravaganza in that it is not really about reducing carbon emissions. It is simply a mechanism for poor nations, which are poor because they are badly governed, shaking down wealthy nations for massive wealth transfers. Wealthy nations go along with this because they are steeped in leftist guilt about their success and riches. Last year in Azerbaijan, wealthy nations, including the United States under President Joe Biden, signed an agreement promising poor nations $300 billion annually by 2035. This year, Lula is hoping to extort $125 billion from wealthy nations, supposedly to protect the rainforest from climate change, the same rainforest he is increasingly exploiting for oil and gas production.
Speaking to “the world’s top financial and business leaders” in Sao Paulo, thousands of miles away from the indigenous protesters in Belem, Newsom pitched California as proof that “climate action means jobs, clean air, and lower costs.”
What he left out is that California has both the highest gasoline and energy prices in the U.S. The average gallon of gas is $1.61 more costly in California than it is in the rest of the nation, so California families each spend an extra $30 at the pump every time they fill up their car. California’s electricity prices are double the national average, meaning California households each fork over an extra $125 a month for the privilege of living in Newsom’s “lower-cost,” climate-friendly economy.
While California has the most energy-efficient economy in the country, those metrics do not take into account the climate emissions from the oil tankers that deliver foreign crude oil to California refineries. By shutting down the state’s own oil production, Newsom has created a system of Californian climate colonialism that shifts oil production and carbon emissions to poorer regions such as the Amazon rainforest so the governor and would-be Democratic presidential nominee can sit smugly onstage and claim that his state is the model clean-energy economy. That’s $125 billion worth of BS. No wonder Lula wants to shake him down.
HAPPY TALK WON’T SOLVE ECONOMIC ANXIETY
If Newsom runs for president, voters in 2028 will face a stark choice. Do they want a country that shuts down domestic fossil fuel production and relies on costly foreign imports — widening trade deficits, weakening our strategic position, and shifting production to less environmentally sensitive people and places? Or do they want to develop American resources, lower consumer costs, strengthen the dollar, and restore energy independence?
California’s energy experiment earns Newsom applause on the global stage, but who wouldn’t be willing to clap loudly for a 12-figure payday? The money comes from ordinary families paying more. COP30 underscored the hypocrisy. If Newsom wants to take this model national, voters should think hard about the cost. America can follow California down a path of higher prices and greater foreign reliance or choose a future rooted in affordable energy, domestic production, and true independence.