California’s climate-cult-driven political leaders assumed gasoline demand would fade quickly as electric vehicles took hold. Acting on that prediction, they created conditions that forced refineries to close, blocked new projects, and added regulations expecting everyone would share their disdain for fossil fuels and reliable internal combustion engines.
But reality didn’t match their models. Tens of millions of drivers still rely on gasoline every day, and by shrinking supply faster than demand declined, our eco-activist bureaucrats created a fragile, high‑risk system.
Californians are being warned to brace themselves for the FO phase of the FAFO cycle.
Gavin Newsom’s green agenda and global oil turmoil will risk sending California’s gas prices above a wallet-crushing $8 a gallon — potentially returning drivers to the desperate fuel rationing not seen since the 1970s, state lawmakers and industry experts warned.With drivers in the Golden State already facing the highest gas prices in the US, Southern California state Sen. Suzette Valladares has urged the governor to scrap California’s cap-and-invest program that charges oil makers for carbon emissions. She dubbed Newsom’s program the “cap-and-tax” scheme, and warned that closing any further oil refineries in the state could trigger economic collapse.“It’s not scaremongering at all,” Valladares told The California Post of a report from the USC Marshall School of Business that found gas prices could reach $8 a gallon by the end of 2026.
Legal Insurrection readers may recall that back in the summer of 2024, Chevron, which had been headquartered in California for over 140 years, moved its offices to Texas.
The company has just issued a warning letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom that the state is poised for economic collapse if it doesn’t reverse its economy-crushing policies.
The oil giant’s bleak outlook in the letter to Newsom and the California Air Resources Board (CARB) came amid calls to block proposed amendments to the Cap-and-Invest program, which places a strict limit on greenhouse emissions that decreases each year.Chevron argues that the carbon-cutting program will “cripple the survivability” of the state’s remaining refineries, with devastating effects on the Golden State and its residents.“The proposed regulation will cripple the survivability of the state’s remaining refineries, which will result in California losing the entire industry to this misguided program,” read the letter from Chevron President Andy Walz, obtained by the California Globe.“This regulation will increase transportation and aviation fuel prices for consumers. It will risk significant job losses, including many high-paying union jobs, while reducing funding for essential public services. It will upend California’s fuels market and threaten critical energy and national security assets,” the letter from Chevron continued.
Let’s look at some numbers for a moment to further demonstrate how senseless adhering to cap-and-trade is in light of all we know about carbon dioxide and real climate impacts.
The following is the fossil fuel industry’s real economic contribution to California:
- 536,770 jobs in California are supported by the oil and gas industry. That’s enough people to fill both NFL stadiums in California almost 4 times.
- $338 billion was the industry’s total economic contribution to California’s economy in 2022.
- $64.3 billion was contributed in local, state, and federal tax revenue to support schools, roads, public safety and other vital services.
By comparison, the Cap-and-Trade program took in $5.1 billion in 2024.
I guess by “NetZero”, what the “experts” really meant was revenue. But I digress.
Meanwhile, the market for electric vehicles continues to collapse. James Varney of RealClearInvestigations has a detailed review of the current situation, and it is dire for that market (hat-tip, Ace of Spades HQ).
When it comes to electric vehicles, the U.S. consumer has spoken, as Ford CEO Jim Farley said earlier this month. Tesla is one of the few profitable manufacturers, and even its numbers are falling. But while people may not be opening their private wallets for EVs, the public purse for them is bulging. An RCI analysis has identified tens of billions of dollars in federal, state, and local subsidies to support EVs in recent years. Now, in light of market headwinds that show tepid consumer interest in the product and looming competition from China, the likelihood that the taxpayer loans will be repaid is diminishing. Experts say this may result in multiple, costly debacles of public “investments” in green energy projects like the Solyndra loan debacle during the Obama administration, which drew headlines at $500 million.“This has been a colossal mistake,” said Thomas Pyle, president of the Institute for Energy Research. “This has been one of the worst examples of the government trying to impose its will on carmakers and the public.”
Katy Grimes of The California Globe notes that the target for any fix of this situation needs to be the California Air Resources Board (CARB), which is in charge of Cap-and-Trade as well as emissions policies.
As the Globe has reported for years, CARB operates like no other state agency. The rogue agency conducts its business in private, without the scrutiny of the public it is accountable to. Despite legislative and public outrage over the shroud of secrecy at CARB, then-Assembly Speaker John Perez was said to have crafted the language for SB 1018, which specifically exempted CARB from open meeting rules in cap-and-trade auctions, allowing CARB’s WCI Inc. to manage carbon trading auctions without any public scrutiny.
If you’re not a Californian, don’t laugh this off with the “they voted for it” attitude.
California’s self-inflicted energy crisis is more than just a local policy failure. It’s a national concern with serious economic and security consequences.
By shuttering refineries, throttling oil production, and empowering an unaccountable California Air Resources Board to dictate broad energy policy that bleeds into other states, our climate-cult leaders have undermined both our energy independence and national resilience.
The loss of domestic refining capacity doesn’t just drive prices skyward, as it also leaves California and the rest of the country vulnerable to foreign energy shocks and supply manipulation. Albeit, in the case of the Golden State, its vulnerability is all self-created.
It’s time for federal leadership to step in. The Trump administration must make reining in CARB a national priority before California’s ideological experiment drags the rest of the country down with it. America cannot afford to let eco-extremism jeopardize the very fuel infrastructure that keeps our economy, our industries, and our defenses running.
Also, enhancing protections to prevent vote fraud would probably help in changing who gets to make policy for Californians in the future.
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