Climate Mental Nuts on Sacramento City Council Go After CA Restaurant Association
Buyer beware: The real goal is one energy source controlled by government
By Katy Grimes, August 25, 2023 2:13 pm
The Sacramento Bee has its knickers in a twist because the California Restaurant Association allegedly has attempted “to water down the city of Sacramento’s climate change proposal to require new buildings be powered by electricity.”
Stop the presses!
The restaurant industry isn’t buying the climate BS Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and the City Council is dishing out. The Bee even did an “investigation” on this egregious violation of climate ideology:
“Those efforts, detailed in a recent Sacramento Bee investigation, are also now drawing scrutiny from Sacramento Mayor Darrell Steinberg and Councilwoman Katie Valenzuela.”
Steinberg, a professional politician since 1992 and labor union lawyer, and Valenzuela, a 30-something Marxist and community organizer, are not scientists or meteorologists. But they love the implied control “climate change” affords them over businesses, industries, even if it means destroying them.
The Bee affirmatively claims:
“Pollution from heating, cooling, refrigerating and cooking in buildings make up California’s third largest source of carbon emissions behind transportation and industry.”
Their source is the deeply corrupted California Air Resource Board. Most of the CARB’S decisions under California’s AB 32 (the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006) result in killing jobs, based on a study by a staff “Ph.D.” who received his “diploma” from a diploma mill in New York.
California is pushing to become the first state to ban natural gas heaters, water heaters, and furnaces by 2030, a policy of the California Air Resources Board, entirely made up of appointees by the governor. And the climate mental patients on the Sacramento City Council are happy to beat that drum.
In 2022 The Guardian reported, “research has repeatedly found the emission of toxic chemicals and carcinogens from gas stoves, even when they are turned off, is creating a miasma of indoor pollution.”
This research link is from Harvard Health Publishing. The article is written by Wynne Armand, MD in September 2022 who claims “Cooking with gas stoves creates nitrogen dioxide and releases additional tiny airborne particles known as PM2.5, both of which are lung irritants. Nitrogen dioxide has been linked with childhood asthma. During 2019 alone, almost two million cases worldwide of new childhood asthma were estimated to be due to nitrogen dioxide pollution.”
This nonsense has been completely repudiated by scientists who point out that the earth needs CO2. And green energy isn’t green – at all.
Dr. James Enstrom of UCLA long ago debunked the PM2.5 epidemiology. He found no robust relationship between PM2.5 and total mortality. However, this claim about these airborne particles have been used for decades by the government and American Cancer Society “as the primary justification for many costly regulations, most recently the Clean Power Plan,” as Dr. Enstrom explains.
“Despite claims that solar and wind are rapidly replacing fossil fuels, they provide less than 5% of world energy—only electricity, ⅕ of energy—and, crucially, even that small percentage depends on huge subsidies and reliable (mostly fossil-fueled) power plants,” Alex Epstein reveals. Epstein, the author of The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels and Fossil Future, explains that Using “climate crisis” or “climate emergency” as the basic noun to refer to the state of today’s climate—thereby asserting a catastrophe without needing to provide any evidence.
And a catastrophe is exactly what leftist politicians need – real or not – to impose regulations on businesses and industries, and freedom constraining policies on individuals.
The Bee continues:
“The recent Bee investigation noted that contributions to the Sacramento-based restaurant association and its foundation from Sempra and its subsidiaries SoCalGas and San Diego Gas & Electric grew from $174,594 in years 2015 to 2018 to $1.8 million from 2019 to 2022 — a tenfold increase.”
Perhaps more important than contributions to the restaurant association to help fight these business killing policies, “The CRA successfully sued to overturn a gas ban in Berkeley and also strongly opposed a similar proposal in Sacramento in 2021.”
The California Restaurant Association filed suit alleging “the city’s ordinance is preempted by the Energy Policy and Conservation Act, which regulates energy use by appliances. Since the law forbids states and cities from banning appliances based on the type of energy they use, the city’s ordinance restricting the use of natural gas in new buildings amounts to an end-run around the EPCA.”
“Many restaurants will be faced with the inability to make many of their products which require the use of specialized gas appliances to prepare, including for example flame-seared meats, charred vegetables, or the use of intense heat from a flame under a wok,” the lawsuit says, the Globe reported. It also pointed out the local implications to restaurants, saying “Indeed, restaurants specializing in ethnic foods so prized in the Bay Area will be unable to prepare many of their specialties without natural gas.”
California opened a can of worms going back to AB 32, in 2006, the so-called “Global Warming Solutions Act” signed into law by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.
As Ed Ring wrote for the Globe in 2019:
California has long been proclaiming itself the leader in fighting “climate change,” and incoming governor Gavin Newsom promises to continue the efforts. The big push began over ten years ago, with Gov. Schwarzenegger, who pivoted left after failing to reform public employee unions in 2005. Schwarzenegger promoted and then signed, AB 32, in 2006. This so-called “Global Warming Solutions Act” set the initial targets for greenhouse gas reduction, empowering the California Air Resources Board to monitor and enforce compliance with laws and regulations aimed at achieving these reductions.
California has been agitating to become the first state to ban natural gas heaters, water heaters, and furnaces by 2030, a policy of the California Air Resources Board, entirely made up of appointees by the governor.
California cities seeking to ban the use of natural gas have been warned by the Ninth Circuit, the Globe reported.
As we reported Wednesday:
Climate change does not “pose a significant risk to our long-term economic success, impact the health and livelihood of the communities in which we operate and live, or disrupt the value chains on which we rely.” But banning fossil fuels does accomplish that. And pushing for an all-electric grid in California takes energy choice away from ratepayers and users, making all Californians the slaves of only one form of energy controlled by one source – government.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right? Notably, the White House kitchen is outfitted with a commercial natural gas stove, as are all of California’s world-class restaurants.
At Tuesday’s Sacramento City Council meeting, Mayor Steinberg and Councilwoman Valenzuela expressed concern over the process, the Bee reported. “Valenzuela said some kind of review of conflict of interest standards with advisory committees is necessary. ‘It’s really important as we move forward,’ she said, ‘that we think about what does conflict of interest policies and ethics policies look like for committees like this.’”
“Steinberg commented that The Bee investigation raised concerns about ‘influences from Southern California connected to some of our local advocates, trying to kill, frankly, at least some portion of the electrification ordinance.’”
What the Bee should investigate is why the Sacramento City Council is trying to force Sacramento restaurants into total electrification, and the collusion behind it with Sacramento’s Legislature and local politicians. Businesses have every interest in trying to kill the electrification ordinance; perhaps they need to file another lawsuit after the Berkeley win. Solar and wind electricity cannot replace all fossil fuel energy, and should local and state government continue to push this, will leave most of the state a single source of unreliable energy and power. But that’s the real goal, isn’t it – one energy source controlled by government?
Katy Grimes, the Editor in Chief of the California Globe, is a long-time Investigative Journalist covering the California State Capitol, and the co-author of California's War Against Donald Trump: Who Wins? Who Loses?
