Much like any other Democrat-initiated disaster, America’s legacy media has largely opted to ignore California’s brush with rolling blackouts last week after a heat wave hit the state and much of the west coast.
Following government officials’ forecasts that the state would experience record levels of energy use during the heat wave, the California Independent System Operator (CAISO), which maintains and operates the state’s electrical grid, issued a Flex Alert on Sept. 6, which called for “voluntary conservation between 4 p.m. to 10 p.m.”
“Consumers were urged to keep air conditioners at 78 degrees or higher during the period and avoiding using major appliances such as ovens and dishwashers,” a local California news outlet reported.
Hair gel enthusiast and California Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom also issued a series of remarks on the matter, saying in a statement that Californians “stepped up in a big way during th[e] record heat wave, but with the hottest temperatures [ahead], the risk of outages is real.”
“We all have to double down on conserving energy to reduce the unprecedented strain on the grid,” he said.
Despite Newsom’s later claims that the state avoided any “emergency power outages,” several thousand residents in the San Francisco Bay Area cities of Palo Alto and Alameda were left without electricity for roughly an hour.
While barely managing to keep the lights on, the energy crisis unwittingly exposed the state’s overdependence on unreliable “green” energy. Much like President Joe Biden, Newsom and California Democrats have all but declared war on the fossil fuel industry and have pushed the state’s residents to adopt renewable sources of energy.
In addition to issuing new regulations banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars by 2035, California has “aggressively shut down more reliable nuclear, coal, and natural-gas power plants to boost demand for solar and wind farms,” with such policies “tremendously damag[ing] California’s electrical grid” and “placing the state at serious risk of unintentional mass blackouts.”
“Newsom pushed for a tidal wave of government regulations heavily favoring wind and solar power. He ignored green energy’s major drawbacks, or tried to paper over them with increased subsidies and schemes to force the purchase of it,” a National Review report reads. “Until recently, he had even gone along with plans to shutter the state’s last operating nuclear reactor under heavy pressure from environmentalists.”
“Since forecasts cannot predict the output of solar and wind plants with high accuracy, grid operators have to keep excess reserves running just in case, as they cannot be easily adjusted due to the unpredictability of weather. This also places extra stress on the grid, leading to brownouts or blackouts,” it added.
Newsom has since doubled down on his state’s transition to green energy and has simultaneously attempted to blame the avoidable disaster on Republicans.
“[Republicans] want to double down on stupid and continue to drill and actually do more damage,” Newsom said. “And get us more deep in the mess that we created that we’re trying to get out of, which is the hot is getting much hotter, the dry is getting much drier, and the extremes that are self evident, not just here in California, but all over the western United States and around the world, related to climate change.”
Covid 2.0
While Democrats’ cult-like fanaticism with destroying fossil fuels and propping up renewable energy sources deserves to be scrutinized, the rhetoric from California Democrats throughout the dilemma deserves a second glance. In a recorded statement published on his Twitter account, Newsom repeatedly called on all Californians to “do their part” in helping avoid the disaster that he and his party created.
“Everyone has to do their part to help step up for just a few more days,” he said. “Individuals, the state, industries, business, all doing their part to help reduce strain on the grid.”
Similar language was also evoked by California Democrats such as Rep. Eric Swalwell and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, with the former calling on his state to “rally” to “keep the lights on.”
“We all need to do our part to help avoid power outages this week,” Swalwell said in a tweet.
“We avoided an energy grid emergency yesterday because Californians did their part to reduce energy usage during the #FlexAlert,” echoed Feinstein. “With temperatures still very high, let’s do the same thing again today.”
Sound familiar? It should, because the same “Do your part!” rhetoric coming from California Democrats is the same language used by politicians and health bureaucrats over the covid lockdowns as justification for orchestrating the greatest assault on Americans’ freedoms in modern history.
Whether it was the stay-at-home orders, masking, or the experimental jabs, Americans were repeatedly preached to by the country’s power-hungry elites to “do our part” in stopping the spread of covid, no matter how much discomfort and damage such policies did to the lives of millions.
“Wear a mask to protect grandma!” they said.
“Get vaccinated to do your part in stopping the spread!” we were told.
Irrespective of how unscientific or overreaching the policies were, the mantra of “We’re all in this together!” was used as a weapon by American statists to silence, intimidate, and harass anyone who dared stand in their way of creating their dysfunctional neo-Marxist utopia.
Same Game Plan, Different Crisis
The parallels in rhetoric between the pro-lockdown crowd and California Democrats aren’t merely a coincidence, but a direct message to the American public. In the event that rolling blackouts become more common and the country’s energy crisis more widespread — which seems likely given Biden and Democrats’ ongoing bid to cripple the fossil fuel industry — America’s ruling class will not hesitate to recycle the same tactics used during the covid outbreak to wage an assault on the citizenry’s remaining civil liberties.
Just as the recommendations to stay at home, wear a mask, and get the vaccine devolved into mandates forcing people to choose between their livelihood and personal health, Americans should not be surprised if the suggestions to cut back on energy use coming from elitists like Newsom morph into government-enforced mandates. Look no further than the European Union, whose member states’ push towards green energy and overdependence on Russian oil has prompted the bureaucratic body to move towards adopting a measure that would force participating nations to reduce their overall energy consumption.
Such as with any crisis, the opportunity to amass greater command over the populace is too great for statists to ignore.
Americans wishing to avoid a repeat of overbearing government restrictions experienced during the covid years should take note of what happened in California and find ways to ensure that a similar situation doesn’t fall upon their community. Whether that means running for office, regularly engaging in local and state politics, or becoming active in grassroots organizations, the time for sitting on the sidelines while the country descends into chaos is over.
Shawn Fleetwood is a Staff Writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He also serves as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood
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