Who Will Save the Planet from Laura Capps and Friends?

By Andy Caldwell

The environmental movement reminds of the true-life story of a man who killed both of his parents and then sought to appeal to the sympathy of people by claiming the status of an orphan.

Enviros today, in the name of saving the planet from greenhouse gases (ghg) by virtue of the policies and projects they support, are killing whales and eagles and other endangered species, purposely polluting the air with sulfur dioxide, and serving to spew more ghg into the atmosphere than has been gained by any and all measures to reduce our carbon footprint. That is, the environmental movement is proving the maxim that anything in excess becomes a poison.

When the environmental movement began in earnest, some of the poster children of the movement included whales and eagles. Yet, these species have been sacrificed, respectively, on the altar of wind energy, off and onshore This should not be news to anyone, including the onshore wind farm in Lompoc that was given permission in its permit to kill endangered species: no harm, no fowl.

As Steve Milloy reported in the Daily Caller, the most interesting and tell-tale sign that the environmental movement has lost its way and its mind? Well, the air has become so clean that scientists have discovered the planet is warming up because air pollution once reflected sunlight, preventing it from reaching the surface of the earth.

What to do? Launch pollution, read that, sulfur dioxide, into the atmosphere to block the sunlight! The Biden administration, and nut jobs like Bill Gates have invested tens of millions of dollars into like-experiments, even though sulfur dioxide pollution, when combined with rain, still produces acid rain. Sulfur dioxide pollution was one of the reasons the coal industry became a villain before the advent of smokestack emission controls.

Who are the villains now?

Milloy also points out a study published in the journal Nature that 80% of the global warming spike of 2023-24 was attributable to global shipping fleets having switched to a lower sulfur diesel oil. Yet the environmental community is purposely releasing into our atmosphere the very same pollution they campaigned against vis-a-vis the coal industry and international shipping.

Dead whales and eagles, along with the so-called “sun blocking” efforts of launching air pollution into the atmosphere is child’s play compared to the policies in place in California that have created a disastrous fire regimen found nowhere else. That is, our local, state, and federal policies having to do with the preservation and protection of highly combustible overgrown chaparral and dangerously dense forests. The latter end up dying after suffering from pests and diseases because of too much competition for water, sunlight, and nutrients. The resultant fires have served to eliminate any and all “progress” in reducing ghg in California.

A research paper, “Up in Smoke,” published in the journal Environmental Pollution, was based on research by UCLA and the University of Chicago. It found that California wildfires in 2020 alone caused twice the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that the state reduced between 2003 and 2019. In other words, 2020's wildfire season, which set a record for the number of acres burned (4.3 million) in the state, essentially wiped out nearly two decades of efforts to reduce emissions through such policies as replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and providing incentives for electric vehicles. Moreover, the data suggests that future wildfire seasons akin to 2020 would completely zero out any reductions created by government policies and the tens of billions of dollars consumers and taxpayers are spending to implement those policies. Hence, the study demonstrates that all California has to show for its efforts are the highest gas prices in the nation and the second highest electricity prices.

Herein lies the foolishness of County Supervisor Laura Capps, who wants to blame the oil industry for fires. In reality, most all the major conflagrations that have occurred in CA have to do with fallen electrical lines igniting overgrown, mostly dead chaparral, and a portion of California’s 145 million dead trees, which is clearly a result of malign, not benign, neglect of proper forest management which would include, at a minimum, logging, thinning, grazing, control burns, and fuel breaks. To add insult to injury, when Capps courted the environmental community to stand with her in calling for the elimination of the oil industry in our county, one of the organizations to do so was the Los Padres Forest Watch which does everything it can to prevent forest management in our region.

Question for Laura Capps: When did our use of fossil fuels begin to foment wildfires? The answer is long before the invention of SUVs. Check out this chart provided by the county fire department!

The next chart, from the California Air Resources Board (CARB) demonstrates that in 2020, CA wildfires emitted over 106 million metric tons of CO2! The oil industry in our county, including both on and offshore, generated less than 1 million metric tons of CO2 in the aggregate per year, in its heyday. Today, the oil industry generates a fraction of that level of emissions, while forest fires have become perennial ecological disasters.

Finally, here are two charts putting the oil industry’s emissions into perspective. The point here is that if we quit producing oil locally, what is going to change? Virtually nothing, as we will continue to import oil from foreign sources. The first chart was part of a report produced by the Bren School at UCSB commissioned by the County’s Air Pollution Control District.

Lastly, this chart demonstrates that all of California’s efforts to reduce our climate footprint by restricting local oil and gas production is a farce. Consumption has not abated. California- and Alaska-produced oil has simply been replaced by foreign imports.

In conclusion, managing our forests would do more to clear the air than anything else our government is trying to ram down our throats while destroying our economy. Moreover, large-scale fires have been with us long before the advent of SUVs. Finally, the environmental movement has become so extreme and fanatical that it is now the environment’s worst enemy. It is safe to say no other state in the nation is this stupid. Nor will any other state soon be paying over $8 per gallon for gasoline while accomplishing nothing with respect to the environment.

Andy Caldwell, Executive Director, COLAB

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