Did You Know? By Bonnie Donovan
Government actions in the world, in the United States and especially in California are committed to combating global warming. It is one of the greatest challenges to humankind.
It will call for the complete transformation of our lives: in how and what we produce, how and what we consume, and how we move about.
The 2015 multi-national, Paris Climate Treaty became effective for action by all participants on Nov. 4, 2016. The objectives were to reduce carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050, with the overall objective of maintaining global warming at no higher than 1.5 degrees Celsius above the average global temperature in the 1880s, before the growth of the Industrial Revolution.
In 2022, an official report on progress has determined that six years later, globally, we are on a trajectory to actually increase emissions by 10% by 2030. This means that all participants will become under even greater pressure to make changes even faster than planned. California will be at the forefront of accelerating changes to how we produce, how we consume and how we move about.
In this part 1 of our column, we discuss how these actions could become a part of a confluence of adverse events in their impacts on the current population and the possible repercussions.
Did you know that economic and societal collapse is often the result of a confluence of large, adverse events, including natural and human-made disasters. It is usually triggered by one of those events that then causes a cascade of failure in the others.
The list of potential adverse events over the next 10 to 12 years in California is long and could be highly interactive.
SOURCES OF CONFLUENCE IN ADVERSE EVENTS
Sources include:
— Governmental-forced transfer from fossil fuels to wind and solar, combined with the loss of hydroelectric power and nuclear power, including near-term heavy taxation of oil, natural gas and coal on which 95% of the population depend for energy.
— The accelerated banning of all vehicles, machinery, appliances and other uses that depend on fossil fuels.
There are 15,400,000 vehicles registered in California. Of them, only 425,300 are electric-powered. So, in the next 10 to 12 years, the government of California will try to coerce vehicle owners to eliminate up to almost 15 million gasoline and diesel-powered cars and buy electric cars, or downgrade to electric bicycles.
At the same time, the government will attempt to force homeowners to discard natural gas stoves, gas-fueled home heating furnaces and water heaters and replace them with their approved electric alternatives. According to government statistics, there are 13.1 million households in California and 60.8% of them have natural gas-fueled home heating furnaces and water heaters.
Just in these two confluences of government decrees, we would have simultaneous assaults on the finances of millions of hard working Americans.
In total,15 million vehicles have to be scrapped and more expensive electric cars purchased at the same time. In almost 8 million homes, owners must replace their gas stoves, natural gas-fueled home furnaces and water heaters, with electric versions.
So the average two-car family will have to virtually junk their existing cars to replace them with electric versions, on average costing $66,000, according to Kelly Blue Book. In addition, for those homes with gas-fired furnaces, the average cost of replacement with an electric furnace is $4,359 within a range of $1,682 to $7,036 depending on size, the complexity of installation and whether duct work is required.
Replacing a gas-fired water heater with an electric water heater cost between $1,300 and $2,500 depending on size and installation complexity. Replacing gas stoves with electric stoves would add another $1,200.
By the way, the natural gas industry that our governments are so intent on destroying employs 3 million people in 50 states.
California is highly dependent on other states for supplies of energy, particularly electricity. These states will be going through the same transformation to electricity-only energy simultaneously with California. When Californians connect up to 15.5 million cars to battery chargers and households turn on 13.1 million kitchen electric appliances and 13.1 million electric water heaters and furnaces, the same will be happening in adjacent states.
We already know the fragile state of electric supplies in and into California and the inability of California’s electric grid to distribute large amounts of electric power.
Unless there is a massive, unceasing investment in reliable and adequate power generation and distribution within California over the next 10 years, we shall see rationing of electricity in our future.
The question is: Where will the money come from.?
Meanwhile, the state government continues with the utterly wasteful $100 billion spending on a high-speed train that cannot run fully at high speeds and will be a large drain on all taxpayers to subsidize the privileged few who actually use it.
Did you know that communist China, communist North Korea and formerly communist Russia are/were ruled by a Central Committee of the Communist Party? Well, California politics and government are a monopoly of the Democratic Party, and in California, the party rules through a series of central committees. Did you ever wonder why our local representatives, whom we elected to protect our interests, don’t ever push back seriously against dictates coming from the Sacramento legislature or the Governor’s office?
It is because, in just Santa Barbara, as an example, candidates for supposedly non-political positions in local government have to be vetted and approved by the local Democratic Party central committee before they have a chance of being elected to represent districts. Only candidates who are elected at large, as in the case of Santa Barbara Mayor Randy Rowse, have a chance of being elected without Democratic Party approval.
When Gov. Gavin Newsom in October announced he was leading the effort to build 3.5 million new homes in California by 2025, at 500,000 a year — in a state that in 50 years has hardly exceeded that number by a small margin in only two years — there was a yawn at more hyperbola from a man known to announce improbable goals.
But he sponsored legislation to destroy single-family zoning by removing the local government authority to approve it and maintain it. Citizens and their families living in these peaceful subdivisions were shocked and angry at the huge increase in housing densities and accumulated, adverse, social and local infrastructure impacts that were going to be thrust upon them by government fiat.
While all this is going on, there is growing and alarming debt in all sectors of government and among the population. California alone is facing enormous shortfalls in government funding after the bonanza of giving away taxpayer’s money.
To be continued next week …
Bonnie Donovan writes the “Did You Know?” column in conjunction with a bipartisan group of local citizens. It appears Saturdays in the Voices section.
