Commentary: How Trump built an energy crisis

Garvin Walsh’s column “How Sacramento Built an Energy Crisis,” from the April 3 issue, is just another example of outmoded, extremist right-wing thinking. But blaming California for the current crisis is simply comedic.

We lived through an energy “crisis” in the 1970s as well. Afterward, Americans wised up, at least for a minute, and bought smaller cars. Folks saw that our dependence on fossil fuel was destructive. Not only was it economically unstable, it was also polluting our air and endangering the ecosystems of the planet.

Fortunately, California stepped up and became the architect of policies designed to help end our fossil fuel addiction. They made so much sense that nations all over the world voluntarily adopted our emissions standards.

Sadly, Americans fell off the wagon when gas prices decreased, again buying huge cars. But we were an outlier in the civilized world, as most developed countries started moving away from carbon-based fuels. The world seemed to finally understand just how destructive fossil fuels are.

And with that, the great energy transition got underway. There was optimism: We would finally stop burning carbonized dinosaurs and destroying our children’s future. It was a rare moment of global unity.

Even auto manufacturers and oil companies saw the writing on the wall and started moving ahead, albeit grudgingly, with the changes necessary for our grandkids to live healthy lives. California had spearheaded the whole thing.

Then around 2016, along came a mad conman with a campaign against clean energy. He knew absolutely nothing about the subject and was just blathering out of his backside. But somehow, against all logic, he became the president of the U.S. Soon we were leaving the international climate agreements every developed nation understood were necessary.

The mad conman decreed that reckless oil consumption was a good thing. And somehow — as if we were living in a bad zombie movie — many Americans followed him. Fortunately, while America was backsliding, California was steadfast, the nation’s environmental conscience.

Now, years later, the mad conman single-handedly started a war that has brought on a new oil crisis. With irony raining down from the skies he, himself, made it clear just how absurd his pro-oil arguments had been all along. He’d caused a shortage of the very thing he’d been celebrating. Thousands of people were killed in the process. Billions of tax dollars wasted.

Despite all this, at the very moment when the danger of our dependance on oil couldn’t be clearer, Mr. Walsh chooses to argue that California is the problem. That our environmentally centric policies caused the crisis. Pling! Welcome to the alternate Republican universe, where facts and history are irrelevant.

Mr. Walsh even argues we should increase fossil fuel production to meet the demands of the mad conman (and his Gulf State mafioso cronies). Does this include drilling off our coastline?

I only hope it’s clear to all Californians just how foolish such politics are — because they’re a continuation of the madness that got us into this mess in the first place. 

Darius Degher is a Leucadia resident.