From sanctuary cities to brutally high taxes, California is the undisputed center of gravity for today’s far-left.
If you want to see how liberal policies would look on a national level, you don’t have to imagine it. You can just look at the thousands fleeing the once-great state.
In the latest chapter of California’s descent into liberal madness, the city of Berkeley – a hotbed of radical liberalism – became the first city in America to ban natural gas from new homes and businesses, including restaurants that use natural gas for stoves.
Environmentalists are reportedly hailing this development as a major victory, and it might not be an isolated incident. More than 50 other cities in California are considering following Berkeley’s lead.
While it’s unsurprising that Berkeley – a city that’s already banned plastic straws – would ban natural gas, that’s little consolation to the citizens who have not yet fled.
Natural gas is a critical fuel used by homes, both for cooking on gas ranges and for heating. Berkeley’s new law hurts homeowners both by depriving them of freedom and by forcing them to use more expensive alternatives, notably electric stoves and heating.
There are major advantages to gas cooking. Those include finer temperature control, quicker temperature response times, easy cleaning, and reliability when the power goes out.
Ask anyone who watches the Food Network or who works at a restaurant whether they’d like to use a gas range or an electric range.
Natural gas is typically half the price of electric heating. It’s even more efficient and heats up homes faster on average.
The logic behind the Berkeley ban seems to be this: we can help the planet and reduce carbon emissions by eliminating natural gas and switching to electric heating and cooking. This is completely warped: the electric grid is powered predominantly by fossil fuels.
The state prides itself on having very little coal, but it imports electricity from neighboring states like Utah and Arizona where it is generated by coal. Somehow displacing the emissions from California to another state, and charging the taxpayers more, fulfills the criteria for being “green.”
Natural gas is incredibly clean, producing very low emissions. In recent years, thanks to the fracking revolution, American natural gas production has exploded – and it’s just the beginning.
Experts estimate that Alaska is sitting on 200 trillion cubic feet of untapped natural gas, and the state is working on building a new pipeline to help bring it to market.
Berkeley’s natural gas ban adds to the ever-increasing cost of homeownership in California, which has already been stressed by eco-demands.
The state is mandating that, beginning next year, every new home must be fitted with solar panels, raising the cost of a new home by $10,000.
Higher home prices, higher electric bills, fewer choices – that’s the future Californians are being promised by their government.
It’s no wonder families are fleeing the state, and that California is led only by New York in out-migration.
Just look to our friends in Europe to see how damaging eco-policies can be. Citizens of Germany and Denmark, for instance, face electric rates around three times that of America.
Is this the future we want for our country? I, for one, think the answer is clear, but it seems those running city government in Berkeley have a different idea.
That American citizens should be deprived of access to natural gas makes very little sense from an economic, environmental, or even logical sense. But that didn’t prevent Berkeley from pursuing it anyway.
During the high of California’s drought, it was the rich who didn’t conserve water and who continued lawn and pool upkeep. It was the poor who were fined.
Similarly, under this silly plan, Berkeley’s wealthy will find a way to bypass the law and get the gas stoves and gas heating they want. It’s always the regular, average citizens who suffer when elites decide to be “green.”
The eco-left has sunk its teeth into state and local government in California, and it will be struggling families who pay the price.
Read more at Fox News
Some people credit Berkeley as being ground zero for the nation wide increase use of illegal drugs. When I was in my twenties I lived about 60 miles from Berkeley. It seemed as if most everyone was using drugs. I worked for a high tech company that was on the leading edge of the technology. Parties were often held attended by the high tech employees, most were single. Someone would then go out and come back with drugs; I would leave immediately. In order to have a drug free social life I ended up choosing my friends from the straight laced religions.
Some time in the early 70’s the Berkeley City council froze construction of large office building. They used their power to do so as extortion of force the businesses to provide free services. By all rights Berkeley should be an economic dead zone. After the city’s behavior in the 70’s it is only a matter of common sense not to do business there.
The United States has reduced emissions more so than most industrial nations. This has been done by increasing the use of natural gas which emits the less than any other fossil fuel per unit of energy. Some climate activists have even suggested that natural gas is useful in fighting climate change. Berkeley’s decision is likely to increase emissions. The electricity that replaces the natural gas has to be generated from something. In a large part that something will be natural gas, diesel, or coal in other states. This requires inefficiencies. If natural gas is used in the home, it is used at the task. If natural gas or other fossil fuel generates the electricity to replace the natural gas, energy has to go through generators, which have losses, and then through the power grid, which has more losses.
Berkeley has lost touch with reality their stuck forever in Liberal Stupidland where reality and truth are strangers and Stupidity and Nonsense are the Normal
My gawd these people are crazy and the people that keep voting them in are even crazier. First it’s plastic bags, then plastic straws and now they’ve kicked it up a notch by banning natural gas. Next on their list will be the internal combustion engine. Instead of the state going forward they are going backwards, back to the horse and buggy days.
If you are stupid enough to vote them in, then you deserve what you get.
They are following the Netherlands. As part of the aim to reduce CO2 emissions by 80% in 2050, the Dutch government is disconnecting households from gas. Many new neighborhoods are already being built without a gas pipe.
https://energypost.eu/a-revolution-the-netherlands-kisses-gas-goodbye-but-will-it-help-the-climate/
And while those green lunatics in Holland try to ban gas, countries around them are promoting natural gas for households…
Indeed. In neighboring Germany, households can apply for subsidy if they have a gas boiler installed in their homes.
This moron move by the clowns in Berkeley is going to cost existing natural
gas customers as the utility providing service will rightfully demand a higher rate of return on capital .
Well done rocket scientists .
The only cure for stupidity is death. The Big One would be The Miracle Cure.
Bezerkeley (and the rest of California) deserves everything they get. But unfortunately many of those fleeing the high costs of living there are bring with them the same politics that is quickly destroying what was once a beautiful state. Nevada has pretty well flipped to blue, Arizona isn’t far behind and the same is true with my home state of Colorado.
Stupid in Berkeley just how much more stupider can they get in Berkeley? Next on the ban list Backyard BBQ’s and SUV’s which brings to mind a movie EXPELLED NO INTELLIGENCE ALLOWED Berkeley is run by idiots
Allegedly smart people telling the rest of us how to live. And totally messing things up as they go. But don’t worry, they will get the whole socialism thing right this time around, unlike all the other socialism governments. Trust me.