by Katy Grimes, E&E Legal Senior Media Fellow and California Globe Editor
As Appearing in the California Globe
Petroleum products are found in nearly everything we use today in modern society
California is rich in natural resources which once powered the state: natural gas deposits in the Monterey Shale formation; geothermal energy, abundant rivers and waterways such as the San Joaquin River Delta and hydroelectric dams; the Pacific coastline; 85 million acres of wildlands with 17 million of those used as commercial timberland; mines and mineral resources, vast farming and agricultural lands, and hunting and fishing.
But California politicians and appointed agency officials, under pressure from radical environmental organizations and lobbyists, decided to ignore the energy producing natural resources, and instead move to an all-electric grid, and the only approved “renewable energy:” solar and wind energy, or “boutique fuels.”
The push by environmentalists and the left to rid California and the United States of oil and gas is real, and it is ramping up under the guise of “Climate Change.”
It was only in December 2018 that the United States exported more oil than we imported, for the first time in nearly 70 years. This is called energy independence. Gas was $3.62 per gallon. And it happened not because of the previous 50 years of dubious federal “energy programs” heavily regulating oil and gas, while promoting alternative energy, but despite them.
For decades elected leaders and environmentalists have peddled the myth of energy scarcity rather than promoting energy development.
