Newsom’s ‘Climate Action’ is a Perfect Storm of Destruction

Kern County, California, is being destroyed by a perfect storm. But this storm isn’t due to “climate change.” It’s caused by laws and lawsuits designed to take away the industries that have sustained this county’s economy for over a century, oil and farming. In both cases, a hostile state government, abetted by activist bureaucrats and opportunistic litigators, has denied them permits, hit them with fines and crippling regulations, cut off their water, and sued them into oblivion.

Oil rich and farm rich, Kern County may be ground zero, but this storm is destroying the entire state. Every essential foundation of a healthy, affordable economy is under attack. But rather than acknowledge this storm, California’s intrepid governor is doing everything in his power to make it worse.

Gavin Newsom has called a special section of the state legislature to “protect California values in the face of an incoming Trump administration.” Newsom intends to allocate as much as $100 million to wage lawfare against the federal government. One of Newsom’s top priorities is “climate action.”

Unfortunately, “climate action” has not helped California’s environment, it’s just wiping out the state’s most vital industries. In pursuit of the goal to reach “net zero” by 2045, the Newsom administration has given billions in subsidies to the “renewables” industry, at the same time as it has relentlessly attacked producers of conventional energy.

As a result, California’s households and businesses have the nation’s most expensive electricity and gasoline in the lower 48 states, and all for nothing. California still relies on oil and gas for 80 percent of its energy, a reliance on fossil fuel which is exactly the same as the the national average. But while California’s dependence on fossil fuel is identical to America’s, where it comes from is very different. California imports nearly 90 percent of its natural gas despite sitting on tens of trillions of cubic feet of reserves. California used to produce 60 percent of the oil it consumed, but thanks to Newsom’s determination to destroy California’s oil industry, and despite reserves estimated as high as 30 billion barrels, in-state production is down to 23 percent of consumption.

This is stunning hypocrisy. Instead of safely extracting oil in a state with the most rigorous environmental and labor protections in the world, California’s refineries are forced to import oil from such paragons of human rights and environmental stewardship as Ecuador, Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. Meanwhile, California’s oil refineries are being shut down, one by one, without the option to import gasoline thanks to the special formulation the state requires to lower the “carbon content.”

This same hypocrisy extends to so-called renewables. Virtually all of California’s grid scale batteries are manufactured in Asia, and while California does have some manufacturing capacity, the supply chain of raw materials is controlled by China. There’s abundant reserves of lithium in Eastern California, but regulations prevent timely development. As for California’s alleged 50 gigawatts of photovoltaic capacity? The panels are mostly imported from China.

Perhaps the worst of Newsom’s schemes is offshore wind, for which the California Air Resources Board has planned 25 gigawatts of capacity. They clearly haven’t thought this through. Just offshore, California’s continental shelf rapidly descends to a depth of 4,000 feet, necessitating floating wind turbines, imported from Europe or China. At 10 megawatts each, the plan calls for developers to haul 2,500 of these, each one about 1,000 feet tall from the waterline to the tip of the blade, to points 20 miles offshore, there to be connected to the sea floor with cables nearly a mile long. High voltage underwater cables will transmit electricity to onshore substations. This is an environmental and financial catastrophe in waiting, but according to Newsom, only a climate denier would oppose it.

These are the consequences of a state ran by rent seeking renewables corporations and the useful environmentalist fanatics that offer them political cover. Newsom’s perfect storm of “climate action” is hitting every industry and every household.

California’s farmers are losing up to a million acres of the finest irrigated farmland on Earth, thanks to climate change fueled bureaucratic delusions that the only good water is water that is left in the rivers to run out to the ocean.

Californians can’t afford homes, thanks to a housing industry subject to climate change inspired laws that require “infill” to prevent emissions of “greenhouse gas” that accompany urban “sprawl.”

California’s forests now burn in superfires that annually release hundreds of tons of CO2 into the atmosphere—far in excess of reductions achieved through climate-inspired laws and regulations. But these intense fires aren’t, as Mr. Newsom alleges, caused by climate change. They’re out of control because environmentalists regulated the state’s timber industry to 25% of what it was in the 1990s. To prevent these massive fires, you must either harvest lumber or permit controlled burns. California regulators have made both nearly impossible, turning 50 million acres into unnaturally dense, overgrown tinderboxes.

Immediately following a summer of devastating wildfires in 2020, Mr. Newsom announced a mandate that all new car sales in the state must be electric vehicles by 2035. California’s shipping industry is also trying to cope with laws that mandate all-electric trucks and locomotives within the same timeframe.

While Californians from Kern County to Humboldt Bay suffer the inclement consequences of Mr. Newsom’s policies, the governor is positioning himself as the antidote to Donald Trump. He is betting on climate panic to deflect criticism of his policies, and keep him in the mix for 2028.

An edited version of this article originally appeared in the Wall Street Journal.

Edward Ring

Edward Ring is a contributing editor and senior fellow with the California Policy Center, which he co-founded in 2013 and served as its first president. He is also a senior fellow with the Center for American Greatness, and a regular contributor to the California Globe. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Forbes, and other media outlets.

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