By Samuel Strait, Reporter at Large – February 3, 2021

When you are trying to save the world from the blight of fossil fuels,
just how many people stop and examine just how bound up by petroleum we are in our daily lives.  When someone starts spouting the nonsense that we should do away with all production of fossil fuels immediately, I suppose the logical question should be, what are you willing to do without to make that happen?  Your laptop, or tablet?   Your Car, electric or gas powered?  Maybe your cell phone?  Most of the clothes
you wear, or maybe the food you eat?   Maybe all of that and thousands
of other things most people take for granted.

When surveyed in 2007, seventy two percent of respondents could not tell
the surveyor where plastic comes from.  I, myself, would have thought
the answer to that question was so obvious, that very few would not
know.  Then again, with the popularity of the “climate change” movement, I suppose it shouldn’t be all that surprising just how far afield common knowledge and common sense along with it has gone.  At last count, the modern world estimates over 6,000 products used daily in the average household are made from plastic.  The automobile, electric or gas
powered is composed of over fifty percent plastic.  The laptop, cell
phone, tablet, many electronic devices, the TV,  and DVD player are
about the same.

There seems to be many who think that cars, trucks, heating, and
lubrication will not be greatly effected by halting oil and gas
production, there is always green energy.  In the United States, the
entire production of “green” energy represents one tenth of the power
necessary to fuel the nations power grid.  Electric vehicles of all
kinds represent about eight percent of all vehicles and are heavily
dependent on fossil fuels to even exist.  Food production relies on
fossil fuel in countless ways.  Clothing is also dependent on those
fuels for the fabric, to production, to transporting it to the buyer,
and many other ways.  From the furniture in your house to the rugs you
walk on, all have an oil base to them.  Try driving your car, oops, I
forgot you don’t have one in your climate change world, on roads without
asphalt.  Try sitting on the toilet without a seat, or taking that cold
drink out of the refrigerator, sorry, can’t do that either.  I think if
everyone were to look at the list of common everyday items that would be missing from their lives, perhaps the overwhelming urge to forsake all
that for the risky notion that climate change would measure up to all
the doomsayers prophecies.

What we have here is a failure on so many levels to exercise a bit more
common sense in this world we live and begin to ask some questions how
is it possible to extricate ourselves from oil without totally
destroying the standard of living that most people enjoy.  Green energy
has not arrived in any way to be able to supplant the use of fossil
fuels.  Electric devices in any form will grow in number, over a billion
I phones and counting, all of which continue to put pressure on the
increasing demand for electric power of any kind.   Put millions of
electric cars, trucks and assorted buses on the road all of which add to
the current problems of whether there will be enough.  Here in
California, we certainly know the answer to that question.  The other
question remains out there to all of the world’s climate activists,
“Just how much deprivation are you willing to entertain in your personal
lives to eliminate fossil fuels in the hope of forestalling climate
change?”  The second most obvious question is, “What if it doesn’t exist
at the levels being forecast?”