Add The California Post on Google The LA City Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to ban new oil and gas operations within city limits and to get rid of existing fossil fuel infrastructure over the next twenty years.
Not one dissenting voice. Not one voice for lower prices, for “affordability,” for jobs, or for common sense.
(Moderate Democrat Traci Park was the only member not to vote for the ban on oil and gas; she had the good sense to be absent.)
The council targeted local oil and gas production this despite skyrocketing fuel prices, and despite the fact that the energy industry has provided good, paying jobs in LA for generations.
Los Angeles City Councilmembers Nithya Raman and Tim McOsker. Jonathan Alcorn For CA Post Indeed, oil was once part of LA’s civic identity.
Then Democrats decided that climate change was their new religion.
Never mind the science, and the fact that California, big as it is, has a negligible impact on global climate, especially with China and India burning ever-expanding barrels of fossil fuels with abandon.
Democrats decided that the oil and gas industry was the enemy.
Governor Gavin Newsom even came to the Baldwin Hills oilfield two years ago to sign legislations at phasing out the infrastructure there.
He blamed the fossil fuel industry for local air pollution, and illnesses like asthma. But the oil and gas infrastructure existed before the neighborhood did. (If anything, the energy jobs were once a draw to the area.)
Less than a year later, with gas prices soaring, Newsom backtracked, practically begging the industry to increase production.
Other Democrats also seemed to have learned their lesson.
In the recent gubernatorial debates, the one issue on which most of the Democrats broke with left-wing dogma was oil production.
They backed transgenderism in sports, and high-speed rail. But they no longer rejected oil.
All of them, except climate-change-johnny-come-lately Tom Steyer, said they would sign legislation to expand oil production in California. They understood that more production means lower prices.
Perhaps they also understood that California has become too dependent on foreign oil. That means it has to import oil and gas from conflict zones, and even relies on oil shipped through the Strait of Hormuz, unlike the rest of the country.
Ironically, those oil tankers burn fossil fuels to bring us the oil we need.
Yet evidently, the lessons of science and experience were lost on the LA City Council.
Pursue green energy, with enthusiasm. But don’t kill our local fossil fuels.
