Without Newsom’s support, moderate Democrats on the committee refused to vote for the bill and it failed. “This one really does go to shut down the oil industry in California,” Sen. Susan Eggman, a StocktonDemocrat, said. “We are not getting away from oil or gas in California in the next 10 years.” She spoke the simple truth that the vast majority of California’s 30-plus million vehicles run on petroleum-based fuels and despite Newsom’s declaration about 2035, that fact will continue indefinitely.

Supply and Demand Ultimately Dictates Decisions

California supplies about half of the petroleum it consumes, importing the remainder from oil-producing nations across the globe. Shutting down production here would make us more dependent on other suppliers, with a massive loss of jobs and exports of consumer dollars.

The same dynamics hold true in the other commodities that a modern society needs to prosper.

We need, for example, to double housing production, but construction requires immense amounts of lumber, concrete and steel, plus electrical fixtures and plumbing made of copper. These materials begin as raw resources, such as trees, limestone and copper and iron ores, which are then processed and transported to building sites via railroads and/or diesel-powered trucks.

Occasionally, we are reminded that electricity doesn’t come from the walls, gasoline doesn’t come from pumps, lumber doesn’t come from Home Depot and toilet paper doesn’t come from the supermarket.

We got such a reminder last summer, when a severe heat wave overcame the state’s electrical supplies, with air conditioning demand peaking in the late afternoon, just as solar power arrays were beginning to fade.

In response, the state suspended plans to phase out natural gas-fueled power plants, implicitly deciding that going green isn’t worth experiencing blackouts. We expect the juice to be there when we need it, and politicians such as Newsom will feel the heat —pun intended —if it’s not.