But it isn’t just the wealthy. For Season 42, the Dorchester Triple Decker in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, the show worked with the owner of a working-class triple decker house which suffered damage from a fire. Unlike the very well-off homeowners we normally see on the show, this one had serious budget constraints, as the homeowner was not wealthy by any means, and the insurance settlement for the fire wasn’t huge.
And in the season 42, episode 23 show, the installation of the gas-fired heating and hot water systems — three of them, one for each apartment — was shown. The final episode, episode 26, showed that all three kitchens, one of which was to be rented not to family but a regular tenant, had gas ranges. We have previously noted that it “seems that almost everybody prefers a gas range,” even though the climate activists don’t want people to have that choice.
Naturally, with the recent stink about the Consumer Product Safety Commission reviewing gas ranges with at least a possibility of banning them, but with that report, both the commission and the White House hurriedly denied that such was anywhere under serious consideration.
Enter the very lovely and self-proclaimed foodie Amanda Marcotte, who took a far different tack.
Suddenly the party that despises kale and Dijon mustard wants to pretend they’re precious about culinary techniques
by Amanda Marcotte | Thursday, January 19, 2023 | 6:00 AM EST
It’s perhaps telling that Amanda Marcotte’s Twitter biography photo was taken in a bar.
“If the maniacs in the White House come for my stove, they can pry it from my cold dead hands,” Rep. Ronny Jackson, R-Tex., tweeted. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex. — essentially a chatbot that churns out culture war nonsense — falsely accused Democratic of being hypocrites for having gas stoves they never said they intended to ban. Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., tweeted out a stove-based Gadsen flag, declaring, “don’t mess with gas stoves!” So on and so forth. Very predictable and very, very dumb.
Here’s where Miss Marcotte fails: conservatives have recognized that many of the articles I linked above supporting the elimination of gas ranges also called for the elimination of all gas appliances, particularly gas furnaces, in favor of heat pumps. Continue reading →
Former Senator John F Kerry (D-MA), the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, then Secretary of State under President Barack Hussein Obama, and now President Joe Biden’s Special Presidential Envoy for Climate, knows just how special he is!
John Kerry to the elites gathered at the World Economic Forum in Davos:
"It's pretty extraordinary that we, a select group of human beings…are able to sit in a room and come together and actually talk about saving the planet." pic.twitter.com/ZjHabcg8Oo
So, the hoitiest and the toitiest get to fly, many on private jets, gather together in a posh Swiss ski resort, where they can vacation with their wives and mistresses, and tell those of us who are not so hoity and toity how we must live. I have frequently referred to the Patricians and the plebeians, and the distinguished Mr Kerry decided to give the rest of us an illustration of just what those words mean.
We plebeians, of course, don’t usually have anywhere near Mr Kerry’s $250 million, and surveys have revealed that 49% of Americans would have a difficult time with an unexpected $400 expense, but Mr Kerry, his “select group of human beings,” and the well-off all seem to think that they can simply impose, by government fiat, a whole bunch of additional expenses on us to fight global warming climate change.
We were told that no, the government isn’t coming for your gas stove. We were told that it was just gaslighting — pardon the very much intended pun — of conservatives. But I sure am seeing a lot of advocacy articles in my media sources from people who want to do just that, ban gas stoves.
After the Port Richmond explosion, the city must transition away from gas and toward electricity.
by Zakaria Hsain and Erin K. Reagan | Tuesday, January 17, 2023 | 5:00 AM EST
Erin K Reagan, from her LinkedIn biography page.[1]Zakaria Hsain is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Erin K. Reagan is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.
Erin Reagan? Not the Erin Reagan played by Bridget Moynahan on Blue Bloods? 🙂 No? Well, it is difficult to disagree with a pretty redhead, but, alas! I must.
Ahhh, there you have it! Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan aren’t just after your gas stove, but all of your natural gas appliances, including boilers and heaters.
Of course, Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan know, or should know, that modern gas appliances do not have the pilot lights to which they referred when they stated that gas appliances are releasing pollutants even when turned off. Rather, they have electric sparks which ignite the gas when the appliances are activated. Yes, older gas appliances do have those things, but as remodels and rebuilds gradually replace the older appliances, the pilot light appliances are gradually being reduced.
The evidence is overwhelming, and it clearly shows that using gas in residential buildings is dangerous to the lives, health, and long-term welfare of Philadelphians. Just as the new year began, Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood was rocked by an explosion that destroyed three houses and left many injured and traumatized. Some pipeline safety experts say that the cause may have been a gas leak, though an ongoing Philadelphia Gas Works (PGW) investigation found no flaws in its distribution lines.
When it was reported that no gas line leaks were discovered, my mind went instantly to one thought: meth lab! Of course, I have no information at all confirming such, but if there were no gas line leaks, then a gas explosion had to be cause by something other than the problems the authors attribute to the gas infrastructure in parts of the 769-word OpEd that I have not quoted.
City leaders and PGW may promise to upgrade or better maintain an aging, nearly 6,000-mile-long gas distribution network to mitigate the risk of explosions, but this does little to address the other health and climate risks. Additionally, maintaining this network may expose PGW to financial distress and stranded asset risk if the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which Pennsylvania recently joined, should impose carbon pricing on gas utilities.
And not only maintaining but improving and increasing the electrical production and distribution network will not? How many older homes in the City of Brotherly Love have only 100-amphere electric service? To run the “heat pumps, electric resistance and induction stoves, and electric space heaters” the authors said should replace gas appliances in a paragraph further down requires modern, 200-amp service. Do you have any idea what it costs to have a qualified, licensed electrician — particularly in a union-dominated city like Philly — upgrade electrical service?
More, heat pump HVAC systems use forced air duct work, but if you live in a Philly row home in which your natural gas or heating oil boiler pumped hot water or steam into cast iron radiators, you’ll need all-new ductwork installed as well. Did the authors consider that?
The propane fireplace that is our secondary heat source. It sure is nice on really cold days.
The heat pump that is the primary heating unit in our home is powered by two 220-volt, 50-amp circuits, one for the condenser, and one for the HVAC unit. The HVAC unit has an emergency heat setting, in which electric heating elements are activated when it’s too cold outside for the condenser to draw much heat from the outside air. Then add another 220-volt, 40- or 50-amp circuit for the electric or induction ranges Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan want you to use, plus a 220-volt, 30- or 40-amp circuit for an electric clothes dryer, and you’re talking about some real electric demand.
We have the supplemental, and occasionally backup, heat source of a gas — propane, actually, since there is no natural gas available out in our rural area — fireplace. When the electricity fails — and, delivered via overhead wires, electricity is our most vulnerable-to-the-weather utility — our propane fireplace, range (not the oven) and water heater still work. As we have previously noted, we’ve been without electricity for 4½ days due to winter storms.
The authors, further down, state that the city:
should introduce a retailer rebate program to incentivize the installation of electric appliances, modify its building code to mandate electrification of new residential buildings, and set minimum energy-efficiency standards that would encourage the adoption of efficient electric appliances in existing buildings and improve insulation and construction practices. In all this, the city should prioritize the electrification of public housing units and provide direct financial assistance to low-income homeowners.
While some fear that electrification would be cost-prohibitive, costs to property owners can be kept modest if no new buildings are connected to gas, gas appliances are replaced as their lifetimes end, and the city commits to providing financial and technical assistance to households. To further defray the costs of electrification, the city can apply for federal funding through the $550 million Energy Efficiency and Conservation Block Grant program, as well as encourage eligible homeowners to benefit from up to $14,000 in federal incentives provided through the Inflation Reduction Act.
The last time I heard, Philadelphians also pay federal taxes, so it isn’t as though “federal incentives” don’t somehow cost city residents money.
Philadelphia’s leaders must get serious about the dangers of gas. Enacting policies that advance building electrification, while transitioning PGW to an alternative business model, is the only way to effectively safeguard the health and well-being of Philadelphians, now and in the future.
Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan write as though there are no dangers in electricity, but as someone who has done electrical work, I can assure you that there are. Electrical circuits improperly installed can lead to fires, and with the costs of getting licensed, professional electricians to install upgraded service and the additional wiring required to operate the new electrical appliances the authors want you to have, it’s not too difficult to imagine some homeowners or their jackleg brothers-in-law doing that work instead. Electric space heaters, which the authors mentioned as things people could use in their sixth paragraph, have caused, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, about 1,100 house fires across the country every year, roughly 32% of all home heating-caused house fires. Yet, with the heat pumps the authors advocate being relatively poor performers in extremely hot, on the air conditioning side, or extremely cold outside weather, people will be using those electric space heaters.
We have reported how well-to-do New Englanders, people living in very Democratic states, still love to have modern gas heating, ranges and water heaters installed during expensive remodels, because gas heating simply works best in the cold-weather states. Electricity is the primary heating ‘fuel’ only in the southeastern United States, with our milder winters in which heat pumps can usually keep up.[2]In the more rural southeast, fewer homes have natural gas service available, and it is much easier to run electric lines to homes separated from others by some distance. We have propane on our farm. Even the brutally cold days, of which we do get a few, don’t normally last too many days in a row.
The northeast? Heating systems are most frequently fueled by natural gas or heating oil, because those systems simply provide more heat than electric heat pumps. People use what is available to them, and what actually works well. Dr Hsain and Miss Reagan either don’t understand that, or if they do, simply don’t care. The Patricians have never really cared about the burdens they impose on the plebeians.
Zakaria Hsain is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Pennsylvania. Erin K. Reagan is a doctoral candidate at the University of Pennsylvania.
In the more rural southeast, fewer homes have natural gas service available, and it is much easier to run electric lines to homes separated from others by some distance. We have propane on our farm.
The Food Network’s Molly Yeh, the only TV cook I’ve seen who uses an electric range. Click to enlarge.
It was just yesterday that we noted how the global warming climate change emergency activists want to require new homes being built, and older homes to be retrofitted, with electric heat, primarily heat pump HVAC — heating, ventilation, and air conditioning — systems. That the power might fail in the middle of winter, well, that never seemed to be a serious concern to them, even though with home electricity being primarily delivered via overhead wires, our electric utilities are the ones most vulnerable to weather-related and other damage.
Well, now the Biden Administration is taking a different tack, not pushing global warming climate change emergency reasons, but your kids’ health. From the New York Post:
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is mulling the action after recent studies showed emissions from the devices can cause health and respiratory problems, Bloomberg reported Monday.
“This is a hidden hazard,” CPSC Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr. told the outlet. “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.”
Reports by groups including the American Chemical Society and New York University Law School’s Institute for Policy Integrity found gas stoves — which are used in about 40% of US homes while the remainder use various forms of electric cookers — emit pollutants like nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine matter at levels deemed unsafe by the Environmental Protection Agency and World Health Organization.
There’s more at the original, and, unlike so many newspapers, the Post’s stories are not hidden behind a paywall. And yeah, I’m proud of my craftsmanship, so I’m willing to use yet another excuse to show off the kitchen I remodeled. 🙂
But there’s more. Here’s a bit more detail from the linked Bloomberg article:
Natural gas stoves, which are used in about 40% of homes in the US, emit air pollutants such as nitrogen dioxide, carbon monoxide and fine particulate matter at levels the EPA and World Health Organization have said are unsafe and linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems, cancer, and other health conditions, according to reports by groups such as the Institute for Policy Integrity and the American Chemical Society. Consumer Reports, in October, urged consumers planning to buy a new range to consider going electric after tests conducted by the group found high levels of nitrogen oxide gases from gas stoves.
Further down:
The Bethesda, Maryland-based Consumer Product Safety Commission, which has a staff of roughly 500, plans to open public comment on hazards posed by gas stoves later this winter. Besides barring the manufacture or import of gas stoves, options include setting standards on emissions from the appliances, Trumka said.
Lawmakers have weighed in, asking the commission to consider requiring warning labels, range hoods and performance standards. In a letter to the agency in December, lawmakers including Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey and Representative Don Beyer of Virginia, both Democrats, urged action and called gas-stove emissions a “cumulative burden” on Black, Latino and low-income households that disproportionately experience air pollution.
Well, of course the Distinguished Gentleman from New Jersey is going to find a racial angle in all of this!
If you don’t have an electric range, and want to install one, you’ll need a special circuit and receptacle for an electric range. Normally this will require a NEMA-14 receptacle, and a 240-volt, 30-amphere circuit. Do you have the knowledge, tools, and skills to install such a circuit? You do? Great! You don’t? Open your wallet again, and call an electrician.
As always, there’s more. As I noted in yesterday’s article, during our remodel we installed not just a propane — there’s no natural gas service out in the boondocks — range, but a propane water heater and propane fireplace. That fireplace has really helped, when the weather gets brutally cold and the heat pump that is our primary heating source couldn’t quite keep up, and when the electricity has gone out before. Propane fireplaces are as clean burning as an electric range top, and do not require a flue, but if the logic of the Consumer Product Safety Commission is held valid by federal regulators for gas ranges, then the same logic would apply to gas fireplaces.
And remember: the Environmental Protection Agency has already put in new regulations for wood stoves. The federal government have absolutely no reservations about imposing regulations on people’s homes.
I am not naïve enough to think that the calls of the global warming climate change emergency activists have had no impact on how the Consumer Product Safety Commission does its business; claims that this is just for our health will be magnified by claims that banning gas ranges is an environmental necessity. But the American people prefer gas ranges; that’s why you see even the wealthy, very blue state New Englanders installing gas ranges during home remodels on This Old House.
The Patricians have absolutely no problem telling the plebeians how to live their lives. If it was only a matter of them telling us what we should do, that would be an exercise in their freedom of speech. But the problem is that the Patricians in government want to exercise governmental power, and force people to do as they say, and that must be resisted, that must be fought.
One of the problems for the global warming climate change activists is that even those who support their causes and want to see far more renewable and non-carbon dioxide (CO2) emitting power sources seem to want those non-CO2 emitting power sources to burden other people’s lives, not their own. From a subscriber-only article in The Philadelphia Inquirer:
The plan to run an electric power transmission cable from 98 offshore wind turbines to land in Ocean City has drawn local opposition, but also supporters.
Miles of power cables already snake through Ocean City to power its 5,000 households and light its famed boardwalk.
But the plan to run one cable under the beach to bring electricity generated by 98 offshore wind turbines onshore has sparked controversy. City and Cape May County officials, as well as other communities and homeowners, have lined up against it; other homeowners, environmental groups, and unions support it.
Note that: the plan is to run the cable under the beach, not over it. Once built, it would never be seen, save for some necessary maintenance access points.
Emotion is high enough that a virtual public hearing this week on running the cable under public property drew 244 viewers and dozens of commenters.
The Danish wind power company Ørsted has state approvals to build the utility-scale Ocean Wind 1 wind farm and run one of two electric power transmission cables from it under the beach at 35th Street, across the city, and along the bay north of Roosevelt Boulevard Bridge. The line would ultimately connect to a substation at the former B.L. England coal-fired plant on the Great Egg Harbor River in Upper Township, Cape May County.
The cable would run under four parcels totaling little more than a half acre of city-owned property for which the company would pay $200,000 for the “diversion” of public land, which is 13 times its appraised value. A public hearing was required because the land, including the beach, is considered part of the state’s Green Acres program aimed at protecting open space.
Four parcels, totaling less than an acre of city-owned land. Further down:
The proposal has met resistance from some residents who not only object to the cable but to the 850-foot-high turbines they believe will be visible from shore. Some just want the project moved farther out to sea.
However, Suzanne Hornick, of Protect our Coast-NJ, said her group doesn’t want the wind farm “in any way, shape or form.”
NIMBY: Not In My Back Yard!
So, the environmentalists who are wanting us all to drive plug-in electric vehicles — assuming we will be allowed to have personal vehicles at all — and live generally poorer, and who support wind and solar electric generating facilities aren’t so happy when those, in this case, wind-generated power facility, might be built where they might spot the tops of the windmill blades on a clear day, or have any way to get the power generated by such a facility to shore.
TRUFANT, MI — Rural voters delivered a crushing blow to plans for a 375 megawatt wind farm in mid-Michigan, where several local renewable energy ordinances were defeated across three townships and multiple officials were thrown from office for supporting the project.
On Tuesday, Nov. 8, midterm voters resoundingly rejected ordinances enabling the Montcalm Wind project by Apex Clean Energy, a developer attempting to erect 75 turbines on farmland in Montcalm County northeast of Grand Rapids.
I don’t normally use photos from news articles, but this one falls under Fair Use guidelines, as the photo shows a sign which specifically says “Not in My backyard!
Zoning ordinances in Maple Valley, Douglass and Winfield townships were voted down by substantial margins amid growing animosity toward wind and solar energy projects among rural residents in Michigan who see them as a potential threat to health and property values.
A Belvidere Township solar energy ordinance also fell amid the wave of referendums.
Seven township officials in Montcalm County were recalled over their support for the $463 million wind project, which would have generated $118 million for leasing property owners and $80 million for local governments and schools over 30 years, according to an Upjohn Institute report.
Voters recalled Winfield Township supervisor Phyllis Larson, clerk Colleen Stebbins and trustee John Black. Douglass Township supervisor Terry Anderson, clerk Ronda Snyder and trustee Tom Jeppesen were recalled. Maple Valley Township supervisor John Schwandt was recalled.
Voters told the Greenville Daily News on Tuesday that turbines are an “eyesore” and several cited disputed claims about their impact on wildlife such as migrating birds.
There’s more at the original, and this one isn’t behind a paywall like the Inquirer article cited above.
Everybody wants cleaner energy sources, but it seems that most people don’t want to see or hear those cleaner energy sources. Just from where do they believe the electricity will come, fairy dust and unicorn farts? People want cleaner-running cars, but most people want other people to buy the Teslas and Chevy Dolts, not themselves. While electric car sales are increasing, the electric vehicle share of the US market is still just 4.6%. The environmentalists demand sacrifice, but it seems that they want Other People to sacrifice, not themselves!
My good friend and sometimes blog pinch-hitter William Teach pointed me to this article from Nicholas Goldberg in The Los Angeles Times, which can also be found on Yahoo! News to get around the Times paywall:
by Nicholas Goldberg | Thursday, September 22, 2022 | 6:00 AM PDT
Why is the greatest threat to the planet of so little concern to most Americans?
It’s shocking, frankly, that global warming ranks 24th on a list of 29 issues that voters say they’ll think about when deciding whom to vote for in November, according to the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. Only 30% of voters say they are “very worried” about it and more than two-thirds say they “rarely” or “never” discuss the issue with family or friends.
Actually, some of us see the United States and democratic Europe so willing to engage in a proxy war with Russia, a nation with a strategic nuclear arsenal, with seemingly little thought as to what could happen, as “the greatest threat to the planet”.
How can people be so blithely unconcerned when the clear consensus of scientists is that climate disruption is reaching crisis levels and will result not only in more raging storms, droughts, wildfires and heat waves, but very possibly in famine, mass migration, collapsing economies and war?
Uhhh, with a year-over-year 8.3% inflation rate in August of 2022, on top of August 2021’s year-over-year inflation rate of 5.3%, perhaps Americans are more worried about “collapsing economies” today than they are about such “crisis levels” in fifty or eight years?
Sure, there are some obvious reasons for the apathy: High among them is that fossil fuel companies have spent decades pulling the wool over the eyes of Americans. And Republican politicians have been complicit.
Well, of course it’s all the fault of evil, reich-wing Republicans and greedy fossil fuel companies! But Mr Goldberg, an associate editor and OpEd columnist for the Los Angeles Times, as well as the formerly being the newspaper’s editorial page editor, then changes his theme, and goes strongly toward a more marketing approach to persuade people to get worried about global warming climate change emergency. After pointing out what he sees as the activists’ naïveté in ignoring marketing techniques, he tells us that the only way to sell the activists’ ideas is to consider those who are not already on their side that people are stupid:
Deliver simple messages, for one thing. In general, climate activists lean toward complexity and nuance because they don’t want to patronize or condescend or mislead by oversimplifying to their audiences.
Once you have a simple message, repeat it over and over. Did you know that consumers generally have to see an ad more than half a dozen times before they will be persuaded to buy a product?
Embed facts and data in what (David) Fenton calls “moral stories that tug at the emotions.” Anyone who has ever watched TV ads knows that strategy can make arguments far more powerful.
Talk about what people care about. There’s been too much talk about the effect of climate change on polar bears, and not enough on what it means for humans.
Use language people understand. Research shows, Fenton says, that many people don’t understand the phrases “existential threat” or “net zero” or “climate justice.” They understand what “pollution” is, but not what an “emission” is — which suggests that it might make more sense to use the former term.
That practically drips with condescension: Mr Goldberg is saying that those who aren’t already on the side of the global warming climate change emergency activists just can’t understand.
Still, at the end, he throws at least a little bit of concern that people will have to make “sacrifices”:
Is (Mr Fenton) right when he says the climate problem can be solved in a way that enhances economic prosperity? I hope so; that’d be great. But I worry — and this is just my opinion, not an expert’s analysis — that we’ve waited too long, and that to avoid the worst effects of climate change we are going to have to sacrifice, whether it sells or not. I take the gloomy approach.
Either way, we can all agree there’s an awful lot to be done. And Fenton is certainly right that you can’t mobilize people for war if they don’t know they’re under attack. Public education is obviously a missing piece of the puzzle.
Somehow we need to awaken a nation of sleeping, underinformed and insufficiently motivated citizens and persuade them to rise to the great challenge of modern times. To do that, the unmanipulation process needs to begin in earnest.
Apparently, for Mr Goldberg, those who do not support the global warming climate change emergency activists are victims of ‘manipulation’ by fossil-fuel companies and wicked conservatives, but it’s “unmanipulation” to market to people his ideas.
With a guesstimated annual salary of $88,663, and net worth of $845,000, and a wife, Amy Wilentz — who didn’t respect her husband enough to take his name — who earns a similar salary from The Nation as well as being an English Professor at the University of California at Irvine, perhaps the distinguished Mr Goldberg doesn’t truly understand that working-class Americans might be more concerned with paying the rent, keeping the electricity turned on, and food on the table now than they are in projections of doom fifty and eighty years in the future. With the high inflation rate, with which wage increases have not matched, Americans are poorer, in real terms, than they were two years ago.
Mr Goldberg wrote that he believes that “we are going to have to sacrifice,” but, with his wife’s and his resources, they are not going to have to sacrifice nearly as much as the average American. Whatever sacrifices they will have to make, perhaps fewer dinners at nice restaurants, or having to pay an electrician to install an at-home charging station for a Tesla, won’t be as stressful for them as the sacrifices made by the single mother with two kids left her by a deadbeat ex-boyfriend in Pittsburgh, or the family in eastern Kentucky trying to survive in a poor area in which the coal mines have all closed.
Mr Goldberg is not, like the “great princess” mention by Monsieur Rousseau, saying “Let them eat brioche,” but is suggesting that those who eat cake might occasionally have to eat bread instead. What he misses is that there are those who can only afford bread right now, and the policy proposals of the activists would take that away from them as well.
Those people are already sacrificing under the current economy, something today’s left just really don’t understand. Oh, they say that they are concerned, say that they know and understand, but they simply do not: you cannot understand people who are living paycheck-to-paycheck and concomitantly propose mandatory programs which will make them even poorer.
There has been much mockery of the California’s announcement that, beginning in 2035, only zero-emissions personal new vehicles could be sold in the Pyrite State, followed just a couple of days later by pleas that owners of plug-in electric vehicles not be recharged at home during peak energy use hours, and that was followed by the threat of rolling blackouts, to avoid a major collapse of the state’s power grid. If the power couldn’t be kept on during a heat wave, and people couldn’t recharge their Chevy Dolt’s when there just aren’t that many of them on the roads, how could things be handled if only plug-in electric vehicles could be sold come 2035?
Somehow, in all of that, what Patterico used to call the Los Angeles Dog Trainer managed to use 2,351 words to actually document what all of this means.
It was the sort of bold, climate-focused initiative that California has developed a reputation for — an effective ban on the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035.
Now, as officials seek to fundamentally change California’s automotive culture — thereby reducing its largest source of planet-warming carbon emissions and air pollution — experts say those past initiatives may shed light on whether California’s nation-leading auto plan can work.
In Los Angeles, the dense smog that once smothered the city is regarded today as folklore. At its worst, between the 1950s and 1980s, the caustic haze was so thick that people could see only as far as a city block. It irritated people’s throats and lungs, and gave them bloodshot eyes. Back then, there were more than 200 days with unhealthy air annually, according to the Air Resources Board.
Since that time, there has been tremendous progress toward reducing smog and air pollution, much of it due to cleaner cars. The amount of smog-forming nitrogen oxides has been slashed by more than 50% in the last two decades, substantially improving public health.
But California’s progress in fighting air pollution has stagnated in recent decades, and the state is still home to the worst air pollution in the nation. The South Coast air basin — Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and part of San Bernardino counties — has yet to meet any federal health standards for ozone levels, including the oldest measure enacted in 1979.
“If you’re looking back 70 years, we’ve done a wonderful job,” said Joe Lyou, president of the Coalition for Clean Air. “If you’re looking back over the last decade or two, not so good. And if you’re looking at the legal standards that demand that we provide healthy air for people to breathe, we’re not doing well at all.”
Naturally, I have to cut a lot of the text, to avoid plagiarism and copyright violations, but what follows next is a brief history of the state’s efforts to reduce smog produced by exhaust pipe emissions. It notes that California was the first state to require catalytic converters. Then, in 2006, the silly cap-and-trade system was introduced.
It was in 2002 that I was part of a meeting in which a cap-and-trade proposal was made at the ready-mixed concrete company for which I worked. Because the company used flyash as a pozzolan, or partial cement replacement, it would have carbon ‘credits’ for the Portland cement that was not used. Those credits could be sold to a company which was supposed to reduce its CO2 emissions, but found itself unable or unwilling to spend the money to do so. I saw it for what it was: not the reduction in CO2 emissions, but simply the moving around of money.
One of California’s landmark climate programs, cap-and-trade was initially launched in 2006 with the aim of reducing the state’s greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. It exceeded expectations, and in fact reached the target four years ahead of time.
In 2017, the program was reauthorized with a much more ambitious goal: Slashing greenhouse gas emissions to 40% of 1990 levels by 2030. To get there, the program uses a system of pollution credits that essentially lets large carbon emitters buy and sell unused credits with the aim of keeping everyone at or below a certain total.
Experts say it only sort of worked. While the program has remained a key element of California’s climate strategy, emissions were down about 11% in 2020 — far from the 40% goal. What’s more, that number likely accounts for emissions reductions tied to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was a point which covered only half the issue. Yes, the panicdemic — no, not a typo, but the word I intended to use, because the biggest effect of COVID-19 was panic — would up reducing greenhouse gas emissions, but only via the mechanism of throwing millions of people out of work.
Despite California’s green reputation, it remains the seventh-highest oil producing state in the nation, extracting about 358,000 barrels per day, according to state data.
However, oil production has been declining for decades, and the California Geologic Energy Management Division, or CalGEM, reported that “more permits have been issued to plug and permanently seal existing wells than to drill new ones since 2019.” The agency issued 564 new well permits in 2021, down from 1,917 in 2020 and 2,665 in 2019.
Some experts said that’s not aggressive enough.
“This transition can’t happen too slowly, because there is a climate crisis, and there are significant public health impacts on frontline communities,” said Bahram Fazeli, director of research and policy at Communities for a Better Environment.
Although there are ambitions to phase out California’s oil and gas production completely — most recently, Gov. Gavin Newsom set his sights on 2045 — there has yet to be an official deadline such as the one for the gas car ban.
Just like the panicdemic, reducing and eventually elimination petroleum production in California doesn’t mean that gasoline and diesel will not be used; it simply means that more of the state’s residents will be thrown out of work. Perhaps Governor Newsom thinks that all of the displaced workers will simply learn to code.
For example, reducing demand without supply could mean California ends up exporting its excess oil, Meng said, while reducing supply too quickly could leave communities that rely on the industry in bad shape. In Kern County, one of the state’s top producing regions, oil and gas extraction provide as much as 20% of the area’s property tax revenue.
A few silly paragraphs then follow concerning “equity,” or the notion that trying to meet the state’s goals must not disproportionately impact disadvantaged racial and ethnic groups.
Then comes the big part.
Although phasing out gas-powered cars is one of the state’s greatest priorities, that alone won’t be enough. Driving habits must change, too, if the state expects to achieve carbon neutrality.
The state climate plan depends on motorists driving at least 12% fewer miles by 2030, and no fewer than 22% by 2045.
How, I have to ask, can the state require people to drive less, when California is the poster child for suburban sprawl?
“Highway building and sprawl go hand in hand,” said Susan Handy, a researcher at UC Davis who has studied strategies to reduce automobile dependence. “That’s true in California, and it’s also true everywhere else. When we built highways, it made it possible to develop farther from city centers than ever before. And now we’re in a situation where we’ve got these sprawling development patterns and it makes it very hard to get around by means other than the car.”
As the state’s population has risen and more cars are on the road, state officials funded highway construction and expansion to ease congestion, which ironically fostered more driving.
The only major significant decreases in miles driven occur during economic downturns and, recently, with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 as more people have worked remotely. However, driving has rebounded to pre-pandemic levels.
There you have it: even the very liberal Los Angeles Times has admitted that driving is necessary for the state’s economic health. You cannot reduce the transportation abilities of the people without making people poorer.
The article continues to talk about changing people’s behavior, but let’s face it: that means making them poorer. Public transportation is cited as a replacement, but public transportation is a burden and an inconvenience. You have to leave your home and walk to or drive to, depending upon the distance and weather, the bus or train or subway stop, ride in a smelly, dirty and sometimes unsafe public conveyance to the bus or train or subway stop, hoping that isn’t like the SEPTA station on Allegheny Avenue, and then walk or taxi from that station to where you work. Hope it isn’t raining!
Of course, the state will need multiple thousands and thousands of public car charging stations, and
plans to construct at least 250,000 public vehicle charging stations by the middle of the decade; 10,000 of which should be fast chargers, according to the California Public Utilities Commission.
Uhhh, the “middle of the decade” is almost here! 2025 is less than 2½ years away.
If 240,000 of those public charging stations are not 480-volt “fast chargers”, that means that people would need eight hours to recharge their vehicles. Even the fast charging stations require 45 to 75 minutes to recharge fully a vehicle that is down to 25% of battery capacity.
The state also plans to require landlords of multifamily housing units to provide residents with a means to charge electric cars, though those details are still being worked out.
Really? Great! Now, how can that be done?
There are hundreds of thousands of apartment buildings which have no designated parking for residents; how can landlords get charging stations for such buildings? More, in those “multifamily housing units” which do have designated parking places, requiring landlords to provide electric car charging facilities costs money. The Pyrite State is already one of the most expensive places to live in the country, and half of the state’s 40 million people are renters. If landlords have to plow multiple thousands of dollars into car charging stations for their tenants, rents will have to be raised to cover that cost, and rents are already increasing significantly thanks to Joe’s Bidenflation.
So much of not just California’s, but the global warming activists’ plans nationwide show two very fundamental flaws: they don’t understand economics, and they don’t understand poor people and how they have to live. California has a huge homelessness problem, and major cities which can’t keep people from living and pooping in the streets are going to be impossibly pressed to provide the infrastructure to increase electricity supply and delivery by the amount needed to meet its goals. We have already noted how the Inflation Enhancement Reduction Act’s renewal of tax credit for electric car purchases has been met with electric vehicle prices rising, because economic forces trump the good intentions of liberal legislators. California’s legislators have already voted to keep Diablo Canyon, the state’s last remaining nuclear power plant, open several years longer, because as much as the left hate nuclear power, the state needs the sparktricity.
It doesn’t matter how good or noble or necessary the state’s liberal leaders believe their intentions to be; reality cannot be denied, and what they want California to become is simply not something which can be legislated into existence. Construction takes time, often lots of time, and it takes money, usually lots of money.
But more, they believe that they can change the culture of the state in ways people do not wish to change. Who wants to take the bus to the grocery store, and have to lug grocery bags back several blocks by hand?
California’s car culture emerged because that was what the people of the Pyrite State wanted. But, then again, the left have never really cared what other people want.
In the 51 years since I left my mother’s house, I have lived in apartments, rented single family homes, an owned half-duplex, an owned single family home, and now, finally, an owned farmhouse on actual farmland. We have exactly one neighboring home, about 100 yards away, as our houses are the only two on a country road down which the Post Office will not deliver, and let me tell you: this is the best way to live. My real neighbors are the deer and opossums, our dogs and cats and chickens, and the unspoiled vista that is our view from our northwest facing screened-in porch.
So it was with some amusement that I read how Jason Peasley thinks we ought to all live in apartment buildings: Continue reading →
Electricity delivers diverse services to all sectors of the American economy. The transition to a clean electricity system has been accelerating in recent years — driven by plummeting costs for solar and wind technologies, federal and subnational policies, and consumer demand. Building on this success, the United States has set a goal of 100% clean electricity by 2035, a crucial foundation for net-zero emissions no later than 2050.
We can affordably and efficiently electrify most of the economy, from cars to buildings and industrial processes. In areas where electrification presents technology challenges — for instance aviation, shipping, and some industrial processes — we can prioritize clean fuels like carbon-free hydrogen and sustainable biofuels.
About those “plummeting costs for solar and wind technologies”? From The Wall Street Journal:
‘Greenflation’ problems are particularly acute in U.S., where tariffs targeting China helped increase project costs, led to delays before Russian attack
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is further driving up the price of renewable-energy projects, which were already facing supply-chain strains and raw-materials increases before the war.
The new pressures, which are hitting two years after the pandemic created bottlenecks for wind and solar developers, are adding to delays for completing many projects.
The Biden administration and other governments around the world have called for speeding the transition to renewable-energy sources to avoid reliance on Russia for oil and gas. But project developers say it might be nearly impossible to move faster in the near term.
Wind and solar development has boomed world-wide in the past decade as a result of rapidly falling costs that made the projects more competitive with traditional sources of power generation such as natural gas and nuclear, as well as growing government pressure to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions to combat climate change.
Globally, wind and solar accounted for about 6.4% and 4% of power generation last year, respectively, up from 3.8% and 1.4% five years prior, with further sharp growth projected, according to S&P Global Commodity Insights. The cost of solar generation fell to $45 for a megawatt-hour last year, down from $381 in 2010, S&P estimated. The cost of onshore wind generation, meanwhile, fell to $48 for a megawatt-hour, down from $89 in 2010.
Sounds good so far, but trouble comes with the next paragraph:
But like many other businesses, renewable-energy projects are now being hit by soaring post-invasion prices for key materials such as aluminum and steel, as well as higher transportation costs stemming from higher oil prices, which have surged by more than 50% this year.
The rising costs are particularly acute in the U.S., where many projects were already facing increases in part because of trade tariffs targeting China, a dominant producer of solar cells and other renewable-energy components. A third of U.S. utility-scale solar capacity scheduled for completion in the fourth quarter of 2021 was delayed by at least a quarter and 13% of the projects planned to complete this year have been delayed for a year or canceled, according to a new report from Wood Mackenzie and the Solar Energy Industries Association.
Currently, the People’s Republic of China completely dominates all phases of solar panel production, producing 66% of polysilicon, 78% of all solar cells, and 72% of solar modules. More, 4% of solar cells and 1% of solar modules are produced in the Republic of China, Taiwan, which could be taken over by the People’s Republic any day.
U.S. projects have also faced long wait times to receive necessary approvals to connect new projects to the electric grid, as developers rush to bring wind and solar farms online to capitalize on aggressive state mandates to reduce emissions, overwhelming grid operators. Those delays are adding to uncertainty for project investors.
How, exactly, are we going to pay for this huge power generation transformation, all within 13 years? We’re going to be borrowing money, from Americans, from foreigners, and from China, to send to China, and having to pay back to investors, including Chinese investors.
We could, of course, do something really radical like build solar panel and module plants in the United States, but that will take years and, let’s tell the truth here, it will mean paying American wages, probably American union wages, to American workers, rather than the much lower Chinese wages, to build the solar collection systems, making them more expensive.
