I just got back from a 2-hour lunch with one of the guys who serves on working groups and committees of the California Air Resources Board (CARB) and the South Coast Air Quality Management District (SCAQMD), and he shared his frustrations working with these agencies.
The frustration stems from the devastating impact that an enormously complex system of rules and regulations involving federal, state, and regional agencies is having on individual businesses and entire industries in California and the rest of the United States.
No one can argue that a certain degree of regulation of business practices is necessary to protect employees, the public, and the environment from the negative impacts of their operations. But over time, the federal, state, and local regulations have not only increased in number, complexity, and cost but have gotten so oppressively burdensome that it has become economically infeasible to produce certain products anywhere else except outside the United States.
Ironically, this outsourcing of our once-proud domestic manufacturing capability has bolstered the economies of our allies as well as our enemies.
Here in California, for example, bureaucratic agencies like CARB and the SCAQMD will follow federal law and enact even more California laws in the form of additional rules and regulations, which means they are doing everything possible to shut down all the emissions from the oil industry inclusive of oil production and manufacturing, i.e., refineries.
While the bureaucracies within CARB, SCAQMD, and other air districts, feel secure in developing and enforcing an endless stream of regulations, none of them has a replacement for the fossil fuels they are actively ridding the state of, nor do they have any concern about the unintended consequences on ALL of humanity, as they slowly achieve the elimination of the oil industry from California and inflict restrictions to the supply chain of products that are the basis of our economy.
Without a replacement for the fossil fuels that California wishes to rid the state of, the domino effects from tinkering with the supply chain of crude oil, is supply shortages and soaring prices for thousands of products that support the DEMANDS of the entire medical industry, all branches of the military, airports, electronics, communications, merchant ships, container ships, and cruise liners, as well as asphalt for roads, and fertilizers to help feed the world. Product shortages are fueling (no pun intended) inflation as it imposes serious damage on the energy and raw materials infrastructures.
The law of supply and demand guarantees further inflation and shortages in perpetuity as fewer refineries will be available to manufacture crude oil into the derivatives that account for more than 6,000 products for society, as well as manufacturing the fuels for 50,000 jets moving people and products, and more than 50,000 merchant ships for global trade flows, and the military and space programs.
Read the rest of this piece at CFACT.
Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”
Photo: courtesy CFACT.
Email this Story
