Reminder for Newsom: Modern CA lifestyles depend on crude oil

As Newsom ambitiously envisions Life Without Petroleum for California, America Out Loud’s Tom Harris offers a reminder: Crude oil derivatives, to be banned as non-renewable energy sources, are needed to create thousands of products CA’ns utilize in everyday living. Ban petroleum? Watch for shortages, inflated prices, and disastrously altered—much less modern—lifestyles.

Six thousand products in our daily lives are made from oil derivatives that are manufactured out of crude oil. Besides all the obvious things derived from crude oil — gasoline, diesel fuel, av gas, kerosene, propane, butane, and all plastics used in hospitals and food storage — did you know that our homes are full of products derived from petroleum in their production? Things like construction materials such as roofing and housing insulation, linoleum flooring, furniture, appliances, and home decor such as pillows, curtains, rugs, and house paint. Even much of our clothing and our shoes use petrochemicals in their manufacture. Oh, and how about basketballs, golf balls and bags, football helmets, surfboards, skis, tennis rackets, and fishing rods? And where would we be without soap, shampoo, and toothpaste?

Yet our politicians are bowing to environmental extremists who want to rid the world of petroleum and its products. Of the 700 refineries in the world, marvelous chemical factories that produce the refined materials we need to manufacture all the things we rely on in our modern world, 20% of them are closing in the next five years. Limiting crude oil production will inflict massive shortages and inflation in perpetuity on everyone’s lifestyles. Yet enviros want to close them all. This would be a disaster unprecedented in human history. Billions would die.

This article originally appeared in America Out Loud. Read the whole thing here.

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