You know those videos showing a log crackling in a fireplace?
Sometimes running for hours, the virtual logs provide a cozy atmosphere as you have a pretend fireplace in your home or office.
If you live in California, you might think of getting one of those videos to help stir your memories of what it was like to keep warm.
That’s because the California Air Resources Board, “committed to racial equity and environmental justice as a fundamental part of all it does,” according to its website, is honoring that commitment by banning gas heaters by 2030, KSWB -TV reported.
What’s the problem, you may say?
After all, it’s California, with those warm, lazy beaches of Los Angeles and San Diego and the tony shores of Santa Barbara. True, there may be a bit of a chill in San Francisco, but it’s nothing a sweater can’t resolve.
So what’s the problem?
It’s this — California is California and it has diverse geography.
There are things like the Sierra Nevada mountain range, where, about 100 miles northeast of Sacramento, near the Nevada border, there’s a place called Boca that hit 45 degrees below zero in 1935, according to patch.com.
Should stores be able to sell natural gas heaters?
Boca is near Truckee in Nevada County, which is the area where the ill-fated Donner wagon train got snowbound in the winter of 1846-1847, with some of the party resorting to cannibalism for survival. That area can get as much as 33 inches of annual snowfall, USA.com says.
Nearby Alpine County averages 140 inches.
Sacramento is no tropical paradise, either, with average winter low temperatures of 40 degrees. Redding, some 160 miles further north on Interstate 5, averages low winter temperatures of 38.
So how are Californians to keep warm?
With electricity, of course! That’s according to KSWB, which says after 2030, if their gas furnace or hot water heater breaks, Californians will have to replace them with electric appliances.
Except, as we know, following the recent CARB commitment to racial equity and environmental justice that’s requiring only electric cars by 2035, there is no electricity.
At least, not enough.
The California electric grid cannot now support power demand. Given that the once-mighty state seems to have no desire to get anything done anymore, it’s unlikely there will be any improvements by the deadlines CARB has imposed.
California has a strong commitment to wind and solar power. But there’s that saying about the futility of the best-laid plans – ask Texas.
Or see how, during a recent heat wave, California had to think beyond its magic renewable power sources and commit the eco-sin of firing up some nasty old gas plants just to pull through.
Yet, California law requires 60 percent renewable energy by 2030, according to E&E News, along with the call for electric heaters and, a bit later, electric cars.
At the rate California is demanding electricity without a reliable supply, there won’t even be enough power to run one of those video fireplaces.
