President John F. Kennedy said, “The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived, and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the cliches of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
Let’s discuss the myths having to do with the “war on fossil fuels.”
Is it obvious that the war on fossil fuels is a war we can’t afford to win with gas prices on the Central Coast at $6 and rising? Moreover, how many Americans can afford to buy a $50,000 electric vehicle when many of them are one paycheck away from poverty?
The lie and the myth associated with the mandate to go all electric is that most all electricity in America is made from fossil fuels! Hence, there is no environmental benefit between filling your gas tank or charging an electric vehicle. In both cases, the source of the energy is fossil fuel.
Moreover, nearly every consumer product you use, including food, will go up in price because fossil fuels are used to make, transport and deliver medicines, plastic, tires, fertilizer, and clothes, just to name a few of the more than 6,000 products we use each and every day, meaning it is time to call a cease-fire in this war.
I once heard a presentation from a UCSB economist who demonstrated that the increase in environmental rules, regulations and activism resulted in a precipitous decline in our manufacturing and industrial sector jobs and output. Yet these jobs did not cease, they were simply moved offshore, as were the emissions and other environmental impacts associated with the same, thereby resulting in massive job losses with no commensurate environmental benefits.
Many troubling and dangerous implications arose from this transfer of jobs to other countries.
The most obvious is we lost the best-paying jobs for blue collar workers, thereby relegating scores of workers and their families to mediocre incomes. Second, the resultant global economy means we no longer have the security of independence. Instead, much of the world must rely on places like the Middle East and Russia for oil, and China for many of our manufactured products and raw materials.
Finally, we have thereby enriched communists, dictators, oligarchies and despots who use these monies to oppress their own people while destabilizing the world.
Consider the fact that China threatened to cut off our supply of antibiotics because we offended them by calling the coronavirus the “China Virus.” Furthermore, the precious minerals China uses for the raw materials for “green” batteries comes from strip mines in the Congo “manned” by children as young as 4 years old.
It was Saudi oil monies that ultimately funded the attacks on 9/11.
And it is the purchase of oil and gas from Russia that enables Vladimir Putin to aspire to create an empire.
America, long ago, lost the ability to fight a war on two fronts as we were able to do during World War II, and our enemies know this. Unfortunately, the war on fossil fuels is now the one war we and Europe have been fighting. Thereby, we have undermined the security of the free world. That is, the free world can no longer defend itself from various forms of blackmail via our dependence on these enemies of freedom.
For example, Europe dithered in containing President Putin’s ambitions because he controls the fossil fuel supply their “green” economy relies on. And now President Joe Biden proposes we become reliant on such “noble regimes” as Iran and Venezuela, instead of our own domestic supply of oil and gas, because somehow that is the “green” thing to do?
Andy Caldwell is the COLAB executive director and host of “The Andy Caldwell Show,” airing 3 to 5 p.m. weekdays on KZSB AM 1290, the News-Press radio station.
