Economy
San Francisco gas-furnace ban will gouge residents and strain vulnerable electric grid
Progressive California is digging itself deeper and deeper into a literal energy crisis. Last week, twenty members of the Air Quality Management District “approved the plan to phase out and ban gas-powered systems that emit nitrogen oxide, or NOx, and that contribute to air pollution. Three board members were absent, and one member abstained” writes National Review.
The ban will phase out the sale of new gas furnaces and water heaters in Northern California. As a result, it will “be costly for residents, will further burden an already stretched electric grid, and will have minimal environmental impact” energy experts and economists told National Review.
“The move is emblematic of California’s approach to energy, which involves ramping up the demand for electricity while gutting the state’s ability to meet its electricity needs,” they said.
Specifically, it is “a regressive policy that’s going to increase costs in a state that is already unaffordable, it’s going to do minimal in terms of reducing [greenhouse-gas] emissions, and it’s going to stress a problem that we already have no plan of addressing, which is [that] our grid is going to be unable to provide reliable electricity,” said Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics at the California-based Pacific Research Institute who is studying the state’s electricity shortfall.
Winegarden said California already has a major housing-affordability problem. “And now we’re going to make it even less affordable,” he said. While there are state and federal incentives and subsidies for people to purchase and install electric heating systems, Winegarden, an economist, called it a “shell game.”
“Subsidies don’t get rid of the costs,” he said. “They just redistribute the costs.”
The board’s vote did not address natural-gas stoves because it doesn’t regulate indoor air pollution, notes National Review. However, earlier this year, the Biden administration’s Consumer Product Safety Commission was considering restrictions, and possibly a ban, on natural-gas stoves.
As Republican candidates gather for a debate, the skeleton in the closet remains the ballooning national debt, a subject that’s largely been relegated to the shadows of political discourse.
While the candidates may briefly touch upon the issue and offer surface-level solutions, the uncomfortable truth is that addressing the national debt’s growing burden would require difficult, unpopular choices. Candidates find themselves in a precarious position, tasked with both solving the problem and securing votes, all within the constraints of a 90-second debate response.
Since surpassing the $33 trillion debt threshold, the United States has been accruing over $800 million in new debt every hour, adding more than $2 billion daily in interest payments. The most recent debt ceiling bill has suspended any cap on this debt until January 2025, casting a long shadow over the nation’s future freedom and prosperity.
Democrats have occasionally pointed to the “Trump Tax Cuts” as a driver of the deficit. However, the tax cuts did stimulate economic growth and resulted in record-high Treasury revenues, albeit without corresponding spending cuts.
One feasible solution begins with fixing the federal budget process, though it is by no means an easy task. Nonetheless, it would substantially rein in Congress’s control over the spending pie chart. A recent Heritage study revealed that only 10 percent of the $7.5 trillion in COVID-related spending actually went to healthcare. The remaining 90 percent, charged as overhead and other expenses, underscores the need for significant reform.
According to reports from Fox News, while the discretionary budget, including debt interest payments and defense spending, constitutes less than 25 percent of overall expenditures and continues to shrink, the true driver of federal deficits lies in mandatory, programmatic spending. These are expenditures Congress does not address annually but continues unabated.
Furthermore, they encompass popular transfer programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, student loans, and healthcare initiatives like Obamacare, among countless others. Altering these programs involves a political third rail, a risk few presidential candidates are willing to take.
Mandatory, programmatic expenditures are perpetual and don’t undergo annual scrutiny or adjustment. There is virtually no constituency for tackling these fundamental issues, despite their role as the primary drivers of the nation’s fiscal challenges.
Many citizens believe that trimming discretionary spending, such as congressional salaries or foreign aid, or rooting out “waste, fraud, and abuse,” can resolve the debt problem. While these are valid concerns, the real target for reform should be mandatory, programmatic spending to ensure the sustainability of essential programs.
The Republican candidates vying for the nomination face a daunting question: Who among them possesses the courage and leadership to make the unpopular decisions necessary to restore fiscal responsibility to the nation’s future?
On the other side of the aisle, Democrats seem unlikely to embrace responsible spending as part of their agenda, leaving the issue largely unaddressed in their political DNA.
In a political landscape dominated by divisive issues and partisan debates, the national debt looms as the silent crisis that few are willing to confront.
The path to fiscal responsibility requires acknowledging the harsh reality that popular programs must also be on the table for reform. Only then can America hope to secure a stable financial future for its citizens.
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MaineIdea
March 22, 2023 at 6:53 pm
What these dolts don’t understand is that every speck of green energy being produced is already in use. The rest is produced by fossil fuels (and nuclear if you don’t consider that green). Every gas, natural gas, or diesel piece of equipment that you convert to electric causes great harm to the environment and CO2 emissions. Not only the metals that have to be extracted for batteries from places that don’t do it cleanly, but every new item that gets converted to electric causes a power plant somewhere to burn a little more fossil fuel. And guess what…. directly turning natural gas into heat by burning it on your kitchen range is way more efficient than burning that gas to make heat to produce steam to drive a turbine to produce electricity to be transmitted 100’s of miles to power a resister (stovetop burner) to make heat. There is an efficiency loss at every step so for every pound of gas you would burn on your stove to boil water, a power plant will have to burn 1.3lbs?? to boil the same water on an electric stove. Even worse for electric cars that have to charge batteries and then turn that back into electricity. Ugh…
BillInOK
March 23, 2023 at 7:56 am
Not to mention the expense to homeowners who will need to add the wiring for powering any and all replacement units. One for stove, one for water heater, one for dryer, one for furnace… It just won’t be possible.