Why California’s Renewables Agenda Is Impossible

A wind farm outside of Palm Springs, Calif., on May 26, 2018. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

Commentary

California’s regnant political class sees almost every policy in terms of inspiring the world to adopt policies similar to the state’s on global warming or climate change. A recently published book will disabuse anyone who reads it of that notion, because it shows our reliance on the traditional industrial-age fuels, coal, and petrochemicals inevitably will get greater, not smaller.

The 2022 book is “The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization,” by Peter Zeihan. I have objections to some of his analyses, such as his Keynesian view of monetary theory. But no matter. It’s the right kind of the book of this type, providing a great amount of data the reader can analyze and use to come to his own conclusions.

The reason for California’s lack of influence on climate policy is simple, and disturbing: The world already has entered a period of what he calls “deglobalization,” explained in a recent 10-minute YouTube video. In the book, he writes, a “deglobalized world doesn’t simply have a different economic geography, it has thousands of different and separate geographies.” The book came out just after the Russian invasion of Ukraine last Feb. 24, but events since have only confirmed his thesis.

A view of the Chevron refinery in Richmond, Calif., on Nov. 17, 2021. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

He posits that the world since 1945 has been maintained by what he calls the Order. After World War II, U.S. dominance was massive. The country’s economy was 50 percent of the global GDP. The U.S. military held similar dominance, with atomic bombs carried by B-29s able to incinerate any city on Earth. The Soviet Union, the second power, had suffered severe losses and was under a communist economic system; although it remained powerful because of its large conventional military, then with its own nukes starting in 1949.

This dominance allowed the U.S. to set up a global financial and free-trade economic system, while the U.S. Navy kept the sea lanes open for global trade; the Soviets never developed much of a deep-sea navy. An industrial revolution marched across the world, providing food and greater living standards for almost everybody. Free trade advanced to an extreme degree what economists call “comparative advantage.” For example, the average new car today contains 30,000 parts sourced from dozens of countries. That free trade sharply reduced prices for everything.

All of that already has started to change, for the worse. Zeihan writes:

Without the Americans riding herd on everyone, it is only a matter of time before something in East Asia or the Middle East or the Russian periphery (like, I don’t know, say, a war) breaks the global system beyond repair ... assuming that the Americans don’t do it themselves.

An obvious example is how the Ukraine War has disrupted energy supplies, increasing prices for almost everything. You might think higher energy prices would boost the search for renewables, such as solar and wind power, and some of that happens. But the problem is such new sources require investments at a time when declining living standards, and especially higher interest rates, are drying up investment capital.

Cars and pedestrians travel in western Los Angeles on Nov. 10, 2021. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

The United States will be relatively unscathed because it is independent, or can become so, in almost all areas: food, energy, industrial production, and such high-end fields as computer design. The People’s Republic of China (PRC), of the great powers, will be hardest hit. It has to import food. It does have its great manufacturing sector, but it is unable to produce the ultra-high-tech components currently made in South Korea, Japan, and of course Taiwan, which dominates the semiconductor industry.

Curiously, China also cannot produce high-end jet engines, although Russia can, with its industry dating back to the 1930s. And unlike the U.S., Japan, the Netherlands, the UK, and France, China lacks a deep-water navy. That means it won’t be able, by itself, to protect its global shipping from pirates.

All major industrial countries are suffering from low birth rates, meaning an aging population. And an aging population means people are moving out of the work force. Moreover, although the aging Baby Boomers in America are helping with investment, because older people tend to invest more, they’ll soon be gone—another hit to investment.

But America’s population still is growing because of immigration, assuming the divisions caused by this country’s political class—foolishly pitting one group against another—don’t drive us apart. What worked for centuries is the old “melting pot” model. We’re all from diverse places but come together in one great nation. It could work again.

Pedestrians cross a road in front of buildings in the central business district in Beijing, China, on Nov. 23, 2021. Qilai Shen/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Looming PRC Disasters

China’s one-child policy also is slamming it hard, with the population now decreasing. According to Zeihan, China won’t have enough people to man the factories and labs. Its food scarcity also will force people back to the farms. This by Zeihan is shocking:

In the best-case scenario, the Chinese population in the year 2070 will be less than half of what it was in 2020. More recent data that’s leaked out of the Chinese census authority suggests that date may need to be pulled forward to 2050. China’s collapse has already begun.”

That is, by 2050, just 27 years from now, China’s population could drop from 1.4 billion to 700 million. A drop of 700 million. Even Mao killed only 60 million.

Zeihan again:

China’s embracing of narcissistic nationalism risks spawning internal unrest that will consume the Communist Party. Or at least that’s what happened before (repeatedly) in Chinese history, when the government could no longer provide its people with the goods.

I will add that the difference this time is the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) wields nuclear weapons.

And:

By far the biggest loser in this new dis-structure is China. Everything about modern China — from its industrial structure to its food sourcing to its income streams — is a direct outcome of the American-led Order. Remove the Americans and China loses energy access, income from manufactures sales, the ability to import the raw materials to make those manufactures in the first place, and the ability to either import or grow its own food. China absolutely faces deindustrialization and deurbanization on a scale that is nothing less than mythic. It almost certainly faces political disintegration and even de-civilization. And it does so against a backdrop of an already disintegrating demography. ...

In the CCP’s mind, moving away from debt-as-all is synonymous with the end of modern China, unified China, and the CCP. In that, the Party is probably correct. It’s no surprise then that the CCP’s preferred method of storing their wealth is in U.S. currency ... outside of China. It’s turning out that the policies of the CCP have been foolhardy. If they never had imposed the genocidal one-child policy and had allowed a little more democracy and the freedoms of free speech and religion, they would have had a better chance of surviving the coming tumult.

Chinese police officers wearing masks stand in front of the Tiananmen Gate in Beijing, China, on Jan. 26, 2020. Betsy Joles/Getty Images

One thing they never learned from America is that people need more to believe in than a rising living standard brought by an autocratic government. Religion, despite the problems we read about, always has provided people something to believe in other than themselves, especially when times get tough.

We Are Not ‘Done’ With Oil

As to California’s obsession with switching to noncarbon energy, such as Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order for all new cars sold to be noncarbon by 2035, Zeihan shows it’s a fantasy. Noncarbon energy is for rich people. As the world becomes poorer, fewer will be able to afford it. As I detailed previously in The Epoch Times, Europe, China, and India are increasing coal use, not decreasing it.

Zeihan provides a reason this will only continue: Whereas oil and natural gas require huge global infrastructures of pipelines and supertankers, coal generally is sourced more locally. Instability, such as more pirates attacking oil tankers, will reduce supply reliability.

Yet oil will remain as vital as ever, he writes, and “no matter what happens politically or technologically, we are nowhere near being ‘done’ with oil.” President Biden actually echoed that in his State of the Union, when he ad-libbed, drawing howls of derision from his fellow Democrats, “We are still going to need oil and gas for a while.” They actually believe we could get rid of oil in a few years.

And oil isn’t just used for energy. There’s a long list of stuff made from oil. Zeihan explains:

Modern petrochemicals are responsible for the bulk of what we today consider “normal,” comprising the majority of the inputs in food packaging, medical equipment, detergents, coolants, footwear, tires, adhesives, sports equipment, luggage, diapers, paints, inks, chewing gum, lubricants, insulation, fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and the second-largest component of material inputs in paper, pharmaceuticals, clothes, furniture, construction, glass, consumer electronics, automotive, home appliances, and furnishings. Oil-derived transport fuels do constitute the majority of oil use — nearly three-fifths, to be specific — but petrochemicals account for a full one-fifth. That’s about as much as the entire Persian Gulf exports in a typical year.

Substitutes? “Many of these products do have potential substitute inputs, but in nearly all cases that substitute ... is natural gas.”

Natural gas is transferred into the SoCalGas system after being collected and purified at a Calgren collection facility in Pixley, Calif., on Oct. 2, 2019. Mike Blake/Reuters

Then there’s the problem of how solar and wind power can operate only in some areas, that is, areas with a lot of sun or wind. California is one of the few places where both are abundant. However, he writes:

Zones for which today’s greentech makes both environmental and economic sense comprise less than one-fifth of the land area of the populated continents, most of which is far removed from our major population centers. Think Patagonia for wind, or the Outback for solar. The unfortunate fact is that greentech in its current form simply isn’t useful for most people in most places — either to reduce carbon emissions or to provide a substitute for energy inputs in a more chaotic, post-Order world. …

The entirety of the global electricity sector generates roughly as much power as liquid transport fuels. Run the math: switching all transport from internal combustion to electric would necessitate a doubling of humanity’s capacity to generate electricity. Again, hydro and nuclear couldn’t help, so that ninefold increase in solar and wind is now a twenty-fold increase. Nor are you even remotely done. You now need absolutely massive transmission capacity to link the locations where wind and solar systems can generate power to where that power would ultimately be consumed. …

Greentech in its current form simply isn’t able to shave more than a dozen or so percentage points off fossil fuel demand, and even this “achievement” is only possible within geographies fairly perfect for it. California inspiring the world to switch to solar and wind makes as much sense as it inspiring Kansans to take up surfing.

Two men walk along geothermal mud pots near the shore of the Salton Sea, where the company Controlled Thermal Resources is mining for lithium, in Niland, Calif., on July 15, 2021. Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP Photo

Scarce Metals Getting Scarcer

Another big problem is that the metals used in producing the batteries for electric vehicles are scarce and sourced from only a few places. The U.S.-led Order, now ending, made shipping those metals as cheap as possible. With the Order over, prices will go much higher. Zeihan:

Greentech requires two to five times the copper and chromium of more traditional methods of generating power, as well as a host of other materials that do not feature at all in our current power plant inputs: most notably manganese, zinc, graphite, and silicon. And EVs? You think going to war for oil was bad? Materials inputs for just the drivetrain of an EV are six times what’s required for an internal combustion engine. If we’re truly serious about a green transition that will electrify everything, our consumption of all these materials and more must increase by more than an order of magnitude. ...

Not only does greentech fail to generate sufficient electricity in most locations to contribute meaningfully to addressing our climate concerns but also it’s laughable to think that most locations could manufacture the necessary components in the first place, simply due to the lack of inputs. In truly unfortunate contrast, one product that does exist in most places is low-quality coal. The end of globalization doesn’t just mean we are leaving behind the most positive economic environment in human history; we may soon look at our carbon emissions of the 2010s as the good ol’ days. For me, the return to coal is ironic. When my paternal grandfather immigrated to America in 1905 from today’s Romania, his first job was digging coal in Pennsylvania. Eventually he came to Detroit, worked in factories, then studied nights to become a carpenter. Now, it’s back to coal and 1905!

Artisanal miners working at the Shabara artisanal cobalt mine near Kolwezi on Oct. 12, 2022. Junior Kannah/AFP via Getty Images

OK, just one more Zeihan report about green follies, on cobalt. Nearly all of it is refined in China, with Canada a distant second. Zeihan:

You think that electrifying everything and going green is the only way forward? As of 2022, cobalt is the only sufficiently energy-dense material that even hints that we might be able to use rechargeable batteries to tech our way out of our climate challenges. It simply cannot be done — even attempted — without cobalt, and a lot more cobalt than we currently have access to, at that. Assuming all else holds equal (which is, of course, a hilarious statement considering the topic of this book), annual cobalt metal demand between 2022 and 2025 alone needs to double to 220,000 tons simply to keep pace with Green aspirations. That won’t happen. That can’t happen.

Oh, and the cobalt itself, before refining, mostly comes from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, another unstable country.

What about batteries to store electricity, a key to a green future? Zeihan:

The American state that is most committed to the ideology of a green future is California. The state as a whole has but enough total storage — not battery storage, total storage — for one minute of power. Los Angeles, the American metropolitan area with the most aggressive plan for installing grid storage, doesn’t anticipate reaching one hour of total storage capacity until 2045.

The Los Angeles skyline is seen from Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area in Los Angeles on Jan. 17, 2023. Damian Dovarganes/AP Photo

Conclusion

To quote Humphrey Bogart in “The Maltese Falcon,” which adapted the line from Shakespeare, California’s green future is “the stuff dreams are made of.”

California itself is a symptom of deglobalization. Its population is shrinking as its political and economic structure has made living in the state difficult for most of the middle class. Its most famous product, the iPhone, depends on a global supply chain and free trade that now is beginning to decay. The state has copious natural resources, including oil, so it could be energy independent, but it isn’t.

In a similar fashion, America could be energy independent—indeed it was under President Trump. Only when President Biden reduced permits for oil drilling did it once again become dependent on oil imports.

California also has enjoyed its location on the Pacific Rim, uniting Asia, Latin America, and the United States. The connection with Latin America, according to Zeihan, should remain mostly stable, due to the Monroe Doctrine and the U.S. Navy. But connections with Asia, especially the PRC, will become unstable.

In short, California will have to give up its global ecological fantasies and rejoin America.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.